Archipelago vs. archipelago? ---- Whether it's Le Monde, asserting that
"precarious housing... affects at least a third of the population of the[Mayotte] archipelago" (lemonde.fr, December 15, 2024), or even the
Pope, repeating his support "for all the inhabitants of the Mayotte
archipelago" following Cyclone Chido (December 18, 2024), the signifier
"archipelago" is the subject of a strategic reappropriation, conducive
to substituting a Francocentric cartography for the very geography of
the Comoros archipelago, of which Mayotte is one of the four islands.
Indeed, the press under orders now likes to talk about "the Mayotte
archipelago", no doubt in reference to Petite Terre and Grande Terre,
barely 1800m apart, to which can be added the northern islet of
M'Tsamboro, 70km from Anjouan, the nearest Comorian island. But it is
above all a linguistic element distilled by the Ministry of the Interior
at the time of Operation Wuambushu. Playing on the effect of concealment
implied by such semantic manipulation, Darmanin, visiting Mayotte (Feb.
2024), announced "general radar protection of the archipelago [sic]",
repeating at will "how magnificent the archipelago [resic] was". This
replacement of the Comoros archipelago with that of Mayotte is part of a
confusionist blurring of the lines that aims to dissolve, in both
discourse and representation, the very situation of the "Mayotte
archipelago" within the Comoros archipelago. Édouard Glissant writes:
"The island is not an isolated place; every island is part of an
archipelago." QED.
A natural disaster, they say...
Certainly, but Cyclone Chido of December 14, 2024, also reflects another
catastrophe, a social and colonial one, revealing the criminal contempt
shown by authorities, elected officials, and other "Mahorais"
collectives toward these fantasized Others, the nationals of the three
other islands of the Comoros archipelago, whether "undocumented" or not,
and more broadly toward all the superfluous poor from the perspective of
island capital, which exposes them even more to the state's militarized
management apparatus. Thus, "it is not the violence of the winds that
causes the 'catastrophe,' but the violence of an order that organizes
vulnerability."
... A disaster, also revealing the health precariousness that prevails
in Mayotte, due to the systemic deficiency of health structures,
combined with the inadequacy of a drinking water network (in addition to
sanitation infrastructure) which has been subject to drastic
restrictions for several months, without mentioning the difficulties of
access to the resource encountered by the inhabitants of poor
neighborhoods but also by African refugees, targets of discriminatory
pressure, exerted by "Wuambushu Moms", in the uncertain context of a
cholera epidemic (of which a post-Chido case was again identified by the
ARS on January 18), the emergency water supply itself being slow to
deploy on the island. But no matter, the local press does not fail to
substitute for the negligence of the public authorities in this matter a
marginal practice of "illegal water catchments" attributed to
"clandestine farmers" [meaning "Comorians"], accused of endangering the
water resource, "vital for the entire Mahoran population" [meaning: of
harming the lives of honest French citizens...] (linfokwezi.fr, 17
Feb.). While Mahoran MP Estelle Youssouffa (LIOT), who declared that she
understood, regarding the "Comorians" deemed illegal, that one might
wish to "exterminate all these vermin" (CNews, April 23, 2023), herself
spoke of a department "largely under-resourced with infrastructure that
was below capacity compared to the population's needs... serious water
problems before the cyclone... a health desert before the cyclone"
(CNews, December 15), "Comorian" immigration remains the core target of
her lamentations.
As for crops, the damage they have suffered is immense. From fruit trees
to market garden greenhouses, "everything is on the ground, everything
is crushed as if it had been put through a washing machine"
(linfokwezi.fr, December 21). But here again, the cyclone reveals a
rather degraded situation, particularly for popular self-sufficiency
agriculture, the planned decline of which is already well underway, to
the benefit of an economy now more than 90% dependent on imports, both
metropolitan and global, a proportion further increased by the passage
of Chido. Added to this, since 2023, is an "Agricultural and Forestry
Wuambushu" (Le Journal de Mayotte, June 2, 2023) led by the Department,
the ONF (National Office for Forestry), and the DAAF (Directorate of
Food, Agriculture, and Forestry) in conjunction with the Gendarmerie,
and whose stated goal is none other than... the destruction of so-called
wild crops, on the pretext that they contribute to the island's
deforestation. With Chido, this has been accomplished... In truth, this
string of hypocrisies masks a repressive exploitation of ecology for the
sole purpose of depriving illegal immigrants of their subsistence
(bananas, cassava, etc.), who are forced to take refuge in the hills
under police pressure during raids and other sweeps.
At the same time, Chido signals a more global climate change, marked by
an increasing frequency and intensity of floods, cyclones, and droughts.
According to François Gourand, a forecaster at Météo-France, Chido has
benefited from "an exceptional ocean environment for several years,
particularly this year, with surface temperatures, waters close to 30
degrees Celsius, and very deep warm waters, [creating] a large reservoir
of energy available for cyclones" (francetvinfo.fr, December 15); a
demonstration confirmed by Imperial College London, in a study released
on December 17, according to which "climate change has increased the
intensity of a tropical cyclone like Chido from category 3 to category 4."
Under these conditions, the French state, full of ecocidal extractivism,
can well declare a national mourning (November 23). It is part of the
problem.
The cyclone is other people.
Unsurprisingly, a more or less subliminal assimilation of "Comorians"
affected by clandestinity (or not) to the cyclone itself and its effects
appears in certain comments. Safina Soula, leader of the Mayotte
Citizens' Collective 2018, expresses herself thus regarding those who
are rebuilding a makeshift shelter among the rubble of their shantytown,
in a perverse reversal that denies even the poorest survivors the right
to urgently reconstruct the material framework for their survival: "We
cannot let the island be destroyed [sic]" (lepoint.fr, Dec. 17); and on
CNews, freewheeling, on December 30: "Help us prevent this mass
immigration that pollutes, kills and destroys our island... Chido has
passed... but the schools have been demolished, destroyed by humans, by
people who are salvaging materials to rebuild their banga" (CNews,
December 30). Anchya Bamana, a RN deputy from Mayotte, speaks of
"illegal immigration that is ravaging [sic] the territory..." (bfm,
December 14), thus making the supposed undocumented "Comorians"
literally responsible and guilty of a (migratory) phenomenon that is as,
or even more, catastrophic than Chido himself... Retailleau is not to be
outdone, who speaks of "migratory chaos" in Mayotte (lefigaro.fr,
December 22). In his address to the European parliamentarians, whom he
claims to want to "convince... to vote for an emergency subsidy for the
island", the RN European deputy André Rougé establishes a direct causal
link between the presence of the "Comorians" in Mayotte, that is to say
in one of the four islands of their archipelago, and the devastation
produced by the cyclone, the result according to him of a "long process
of abandonment to migratory submersion" (linfokwezi.fr, 18 Dec.); The
diluvial imaginary of the grand-replacement topos that Jonathan Siksou
(Causeur) mobilized as early as December 15 on CNews in his hot
commentary on the cyclone ("Mayotte is submerged by immigration from the
Comoros"), not without resonance with Jean-Marie Le Pen, who spoke in
the early 1990s of a "human tide phenomenon," now echoed by Prime
Minister François Bayrou who speaks of a "feeling of submersion" (lci,
January 26)...
Finally, how can we not mention the tragicomic ramblings of a teacher
(facing Bayrou, who was more than happy) for whom the impossibility of
ensuring the start of the school year as planned on January 13 was not
so much due to the cyclone as to vandalism-a security-related couplet to
boot, to the point of absurdity: "We don't understand why the police
didn't come to place... [in order to] ensure that schools remain in good
condition [sic!] (BFM, December 30).
This creeping assimilation of illegal (or not) "Comorians" with the pure
and simple destruction of the department does not fail to exploit the
ecological disaster of an island, yet prey to the imposed model of
development that contributes to the forced integration of Mayotte - its
flows, its developments, its ways of life - within the market logic of
capitalism, both national and globalized. In this context, the current
state of the "Mahorais" forests is seen much less as a Chido effect than
it is attributed to "illegal agricultural practices" [at the origin of]
destruction of the island's ecosystems," linked to "'informal villages'
and deforestation caused by people in an irregular situation"
(linfokwezi.fr, January 27). The forest fires at the end of January are
a godsend for the local press and the prefecture, who seize the
opportunity to fan the flames of xenophobia under the cover of
stigmatizing the (yet centuries-old) practice of slash-and-burn
agriculture. Global warming, the cause of increased erosion of basalt
soils, transformed into laterites (padza), is of course passed over in
silence; without mentioning the ecocidal project of a desalination plant
in Ironi Bé, thus destroying the mangrove and thereby aggravating the
already advanced deterioration of a coastal ecosystem conducive to
limiting erosion and flooding, as well as providing several marine
species with a privileged site for their reproduction. But for the
firebrands of island propaganda, the "Comorian" must atone. Therefore,
they pretend to ask: "The question arises: should we not finally tackle
this problem [of deforestation] head on by implementing a genuine
restoration policy, with substantial human and financial resources, to
preserve Mayotte and its natural heritage?" (ibid.). A poisonous
palimpsest: tackling the problem "head on," with a view to a
"restoration" dedicated to "preserving Mayotte" and its "natural
heritage"-all these are double-edged clues that indeed make up the
politically coded repertoire of a subliminal statement, whose intended
target is none other than the "Comorian," this body to be deported from
a natural space thus restored to its departmental purity-pre-genocidal
prolegomena, worthy of a Mille Collines radio station...
After the cyclone, the cyclone continues.
On February 7, 2025, the Prefecture announced the destruction of 70
"informal" housing units in the Hacomba neighborhood (Dzoumogné) for the
construction of a school. The argument proves to be highly pernicious:
the municipality is "facing a growing educational need among its
constituents"-meaning: the presence of undocumented (or not) "Comorians"
is hindering the education of "Mahorais"; "the demographic density of
people in an irregular situation [in this neighborhood] also offers a
refuge for newcomers to the territory"-a phraseology used by
eradicators; finally, "many of the village's most 'famous' delinquents
[have] taken up residence there"-a thoroughly gendarmes-like irony
(Mayotte la 1ère, February 8).
Formulated in particular by Darmanin at the time of Wuambushu and then
by Macron in the aftermath of Chido, following the former LR deputy
Mansour Kamardine as well as the senator Thani Mohamed Soilihi, this
strategic articulation of school and migration issues undoubtedly finds
its most radical version in the "Mahorais" deputy Estelle Youssouffa. A
former participant in the Young Leaders program of the French-American
Foundation (2011-2012 class), this lobbyist with multiple networks
claims that the construction of new schools would amplify in Mayotte "a
pull factor" which would encourage the increasing sending of children
from the three other islands of the Comoros archipelago. To the rescue
of its grand-replacement discourse, demographic bias is invoked, with
truncated statistics: in Mayotte, "80% of children [are] foreigners and
there [are] 10,000 births per year" (maire-info.com, January 14). The
Prefecture therefore resolves this infernal alternative in its own (very
pragmatic) way: building (a school) now implies destroying (a poor
neighborhood). As a reminder, in July 2018, Estelle Youssouffa organized
a rally in front of the Mayotte Prefecture, aimed at preventing the
issuance of visas to "illegal" high school graduates wishing to continue
their university studies in France.
In fact, a new, intensified cycle of "decasages" appears to be resuming
in Chido, as in Bouyouni (Bandraboua) and Pamandzi, on February 11 and
12. The prefecture also encouraged people to "report illegal
constructions [denunciations] to allow for rapid destruction within 96
hours [shock], avoiding lengthy legal proceedings [exception]"
(linfokwezi.fr, February 12). On March 13 and 16, it was the turn of
several precarious dwellings, respectively in the districts of Gouloue
(Mamoudzou) and Maevadouani (Tsoundzou) - and L'Info Kwezi dripped its
populist propaganda again and again: "It is by multiplying this type of
action that a policy of firmness is asserted [let it be said, my
captain!] in the face of illegal land occupation. "These people arrogate
to themselves the right to build slums without any title or respect for
standards,' the population denounces [?...]. A problem that, as Cyclone
Chido on December 14th demonstrated, represents a major danger to human
life [a compassionate screen] and has serious consequences for public
authorities [the poor...], forced to manage emergencies after each
natural disaster [it's true, we're sick of paying for these "foreigners"
who are dying under their roofs...] (linfokwezi.fr, March 16)...
"Now I know that even the person you dipped your hands in the dish
with... can kill you without hesitation" - Jean Hatzfeld, Dans le nu de
la vie. Récits des marais rwandais.
Gamal Oya, April 12, 2025
Notes
(1) For a reminder of the historical conditions and political issues
that made Mayotte the only island in 1975 to remain French within the
Comoros archipelago, which was also gaining independence. Nationals of
the three other islands of the Union of the Comoros were considered
"foreigners" or "illegal immigrants" on an island within their own
archipelago, particularly since the Balladur Visa came into effect in
1995, see Rémi Carayol's book, Mayotte, département colonie, La
Fabrique, 2024. Incidentally, see Gamal Oya, "Mayotte / Archipel des
Comores. Genealogy of a Politics of the Worst," Courant Alternatif, June
2023.
(2) An island where the Minister of the Interior, the frenzied
Retailleau, aims to establish a "forward base," dedicated to
intercepting canoes/kwassas carrying illegal immigrants from the Comoros
(lejournaldemayotte.yt, January 23, 2025).
(3) A Comorian namesake, shido means mirror.
(4) On the mortality rate of a hurricane. Mayotte, climate change, and
surplus population (artifices.blog, December 25, 2024). (5) See Gamal
Oya, "Mayotte: Abjection," muzdalifahouse.com, February 12, 2024. For
the fate of African refugees following Chido, see Gamal Oya, "Maoré
[Mayotte]. Hide this Africa that I cannot see," muzdalifahouse.com,
April 2, 2025.
(6) A press release from the Pasteur Institute dated December 12
specifies that the cholera epidemic that developed in Mayotte during
2024 (221 cases recorded, including 5 deaths) was caused by a strain
potentially resistant to 10 antibiotics...
(7) As of December 16, the Union of the Comoros declared a week of
national mourning.
(8) A revealing slip of the tongue? In the Assembly, Darmanin of his
Justice mentions Abdullah Mikidadi, the representative of France
Insoumise in Mayotte, a political party accused by the government, the
far right, and most elected officials in Mayotte of playing into the
hands of "migratory submersion": "Mr. Abdullah Mikiledi [sic] declared
in November 2023..." (Mayotte la 1ère, Feb. 7). The resonance with the
stormy Dikeledi - who succeeded Chido - is obvious. (9) A neo-fascist in
his youth, the former paratrooper Rougé (1961-) joined the RPR in the
1980s and became a parliamentary attaché to Michel Debré, then a member
of parliament for Réunion. Ousted from the UMP during the Sarkozy era,
he joined the FN/RN, within which he was appointed overseas delegate; It
is in this capacity that he accompanied Marine Le Pen during her visit
to Mayotte on January 5-7, 2025. He is a founding member of the
think-tank "Les Horaces," a supporter of the war of civilizations... A
secret agent.
(10) While Thani Mohamed Soilihi called on May 2, 2023, for a "Wuambushu
of education, health, and housing," Mansour Kamardine declared in a
column dated June 7, 2024: "Building more schools [aims to] always
welcome more Comorian children, so that within ten years, our schools
will be populated by more than 90% children of foreign parents, all from
the same country..." (mayottehebdo.com). (11) Each year, the United
States Embassy in Paris identifies those it believes are poised to train
the future French elite (young graduates of the ENA, business leaders,
journalists, etc.) and invites them to participate in this program...
(12) This xenophobic interweaving of educational, demographic, and
migration issues is an ideological theme of the European far right, now
at the center of gravity of public debate, in Mayotte as in France - and
beyond. One example among others: the book by former German Social
Democrat Thilo Sarrazin, also a former member of the board of the
Deutsche Bundesbank, and a notorious racist, Germany Is Disappearing:
Demography, Immigration, Education: Why the Future Is Dark (Editions du
Toucan, 2013).
P.S. On Mayotte in Courant Alternatif, recently:
Genealogy of a Politics of the Worst, CA 331 June 2023
Mayotte, Towards a Genocidal Drift?, CA 333 October 2023
Of Abjection, February 2024
An Assessment of Operation Wuambushu, February 2024
Blood, Soil, etc., February 2024
WHO SOWS THE PLAGUE REAPS CHOLERA, June 2024
Chido, a Colonial Cyclone, December 2024
Chronicle of a Convergence of Brutes, March 2025
https://oclibertaire.lautre.net/spip.php?article4441
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