“Mayotte, Colony Department” the work of Rémi Carayol which deconstructs the “myths”

During the 2000s, Rémi Carayol lived for six years in Mayotte, as a journalist. He participated in the adventure of the newspaper Kashkazi, then distributed in Mayotte, and in the Comoros islands. He then worked on West Africa, and founded the online magazine Afrique XXI in 2021. It was the Wuambushu operation that convinced him to write on Mayotte, to better reflect the reality. complex of this French island in the Indian Ocean.

Overseas the 1st: You combine, in your title, two terms which seem, at first glance, contradictory. How can Mayotte be both a department and a colony?

Rémi Carayol : This may seem completely contradictory, but in reality when we look at what is happening today in Mayotte, we are still in a colonial system. A concrete example: if we look at how the administration is constituted, almost all the heads are metropolitans, the executive positions are generally also occupied by metropolitans. On the other hand, so-called category C positions, therefore executives, are occupied by Mahorais.

There are still many reflexes, which may concern the private sector in the economy, but also behavior in society, where we see that we have groups, communities which look at each other a little like a dog. , who don’t really know each other, who don’t necessarily want to live together, who also sometimes despise each other. And there, we find a lot of what could have been written at the time of colonization, particularly in the 1950s. Works which demonstrated that the colonial society was made up of colonized and colonizers, and what I am trying to do to show in the book is that we are in this situation today in Mayotte.

You speak of Mayotte as a unique case of consented colonization. How to explain it?

A consented colonization, in the sense that in 1974, during the consultation of the Comorians, the Mahorais decided to remain French while the inhabitants of the other islands decided, in the large majority, not to remain French. But this process has a history.

The political elite, in the 1950s and 1960s, fabricated this consent, this desire to remain French because they wanted to break away from the other islands of the Comoros archipelago.. And for this, we had to shape consciences, and in particular accept the fact that faced with two colonizations, we had to prefer French colonization to Comorian colonization. So I consider that talking about Comorian colonization does not correspond to reality. Nevertheless, it was the speech that was given by the political leaders at the time, and who took responsibility for it. Younoussa Bamana, who was a major figure in the Mahorais departmentalist movement, told me this. But it has a story. It was a political construction.

Exactly, you revise some “myths“that many elected officials from Mahor still convey today. For example that of France which would have brought peace against the “quarrelsome sultans“Comorians… According to you, it’s not that simple.

The reality of warring sultans did indeed exist, but for a short period. At the end of the 18th century, at the beginning of the 19th century, there were indeed incessant power battles between the different sultans of the different islands of the archipelago. The problem is that this relatively short period has been essentialized. At the time of colonization, historians, researchers or people claiming to be researchers explained that it had always been like this. Comorian sultans have always been quarrelsome and incapable of getting along. And this was subsequently used by Mahorais elected officials to say: You see, we have been incapable of getting along since the dawn of time.

Another myth is to say: We gave ourselves to France. In reality, it’s much more complicated than that. Sultan Andriantsoly, who was not even legitimate at the time, sold his power and sovereignty to France. But it was not the inhabitants of Mayotte who decided by a single man to give themselves to France. This is again what former MP Mansour Kamardine says in a recent book. But it’s much more complicated than that.

Another myth, proven chronologically, is that Mayotte became French before Nice and Savoy…

Mayotte became a French possession in 1841. Indeed, before territories which are today considered to be part of mainland France, Nice and Savoy. Chronologically, it is a reality. But those who put forward this slogan still forget to say something essential: the opinion of the inhabitants of these territories had been requested. The men had been consulted. And this then gave rise to an agreement between the leaders of Nice and Savoy with the French leaders. But above all, from that moment on, they became citizens like all the others. This is not at all the case for the Mahorais, and more generally for the colonized territories. The Mahorais and the Comorians remained subjects until officially in 1946.

And again, even when in 1946 they became French citizens, that is to say people who had the right to vote for example, they were still second-class citizens because they did not have not the same rights as other French citizens. It is an exploitation to say that Mayotte has been French for so long that we cannot question this reality. Yes, it’s true, but we should remember that it was a colony and the Mahorais, like the other Comorians, were subjects.

You detail the role of the far right, in the 1970s, for Mayotte to remain French. What role exactly did she play?

Action Française, the Mauras royalists, weighed very heavily in this story. When part of the Mahorese elite decided to demand the departmentalization of Mayotte, the fight was far from won. In the 1970s, there was a political battle waged in Paris between those who wanted all 4 islands of the archipelago to become independent within a single framework, and those who believed that because in Mayotte there was has a movement that wants to remain French, we must support them. And this is where Action Française comes into play. It will carry out lobbying work, it will organize press conferences, it will send letters to parliamentarians, it will publish articles in its newspaper. every week to reiterate what we now call fake news.

It explains, for example, that the Mahorais are not like the Comorians because they are Catholic. We explain that they do not speak the same language, that they are much more Malagasy. There is an element of reality, but it is completely exaggerated. Above all, we explain that if we abandon the Mahorais to their sad fate, they will be victims of genocide. There is a whole propaganda work that is carried out by Action Française, but not only that. There are also figures of Gaullism who play an important role like Messmer or Debré.

The idea, for them, is to preserve the last confetti of the Empire?

Absolutely, they explain that what we have not been able to do with Algeria, we must do with Mayotte. Besides, they say that if we abandon them they will be the new harkis of France. And then, they also explain that if Mayotte falls, the other overseas territories will fall. And it’s an idea that we still hear today.

Overseas the 1st: 50 years later, we see that it is the extreme right which draws the electoral benefits from this situation…

Rémi Carayol : In the book, I write that the strategic companionship of the 1970s between Mahorese political leaders and the extreme right gradually transformed into ideological companionship. That is to say that over time, the xenophobic ideas promoted by the extreme right have gradually taken hold. In the 70s and 80s, we already had xenophobic speeches. But over the years, it has found its way to the ballot box. And the surge of the far right at the polls has been spectacular over the past ten years. In 2012, during the presidential election, the FN at the time did not garner 5% of the votes. In 2022, Marine Le Pen gathered nearly 40% of the votes in the first round.

For what ?

When for forty years, we deliver xenophobic speeches which point the finger at the foreigner, in this case the Comorian, inevitably after a while, even if I find that Mahorese society has long resisted this, it ends up find yourself in the votes. But the question of insecurity, which has exploded over the past ten years, gives rise to even more radical discourse and serves the discourse of the far right.

Between failed departmentalization and a refused rapprochement with the Comoros, you mention a third possible path. What form could it take?

I start from the principle that the path of departmentalization, and especially this attempt to distance Mayotte from the other islands, is a failure and leads to the current situation, which is a situation with uneasiness, a very significant unhappiness in Mayotte. The first thing to do is to re-establish dialogue between the islands. To stop trying to build a wall between Mayotte and the other islands, to try to work on common history, to try to see where it didn’t work, to try to find a modus vivendi .

This involves a long-term process, first of dialogue, then of imagining an institutional form to invent for living together. Either way. Afterwards, the form to be invented in relation to its relations with France and the other islands of the Comoros is something which obviously remains open. Everything has to be invented, in reality. I don’t claim to have the solution, what I just see is that we’re heading straight into the wall. The first thing to do is change your mindset. And to estimate that, perhaps, the path taken for 50 years today is a failure.

Since September 21, a Mahorais has joined the government. How do you interpret the appointment of Thani Mohamed Soilihi as Secretary of State for the Francophonie?

This was seen in Mayotte as a symbolic victory since it was a first. And anything that allows Mayotte to be anchored a little more, including symbolically, in French territory, is considered a victory because there is always the fear of being attached to the other Comorian islands. In my opinion, this remains symbolic. I’m not sure this has many political implications, but time will tell.