the Voice of
The Communist League of Revolutionary Workers–Internationalist
“The emancipation of the working class will only be achieved by the working class itself.”
— Karl Marx
the Voice of
The Communist League of Revolutionary Workers–Internationalist
“The emancipation of the working class will only be achieved by the working class itself.”
— Karl Marx
May 5, 2024
The following article was translated from an article appearing in Lutte de Classe #240, May 2024, the political journal of Lutte Ouvrière, the French Trotskyist organization. [Mayotte is one of the four main islands of the Comoros, an island chain between Madagascar and East Africa. Comoros, an independent country, comprises the other three islands, while Mayotte remains a colonial possession of France.]
For five weeks, from January 21 to February 29, Mayotte was paralyzed by an explosion of anti-immigrant anger and the erection of roadblocks on the island’s roads. Those manning the barricades, grouped under the name of Forces Vives (“Living Forces”), have mutated into militias against foreigners. The Forces Vives are responsible for the violence that has hit the country’s poorest department hard.
There is nothing new about the legitimate anger generated by underdevelopment and violence ravaging the island. Initially directed against metropolitan France and the French state, it has now turned against immigrants, whether from the Comoros or Africa. Forces Vives’ hate-filled rhetoric has spilled out all over local television. Even today, it’s the only political expression on the air, shared by politicians of all stripes.
This heterogeneous movement includes notables, elected representatives from both left and right, and union leaders, including the CGT, as well as some workers, who were drawn into this anti-immigrant one-upmanship. How did we get here? To understand, we must see how French imperialism, with the support of local notables, for over fifty years has been putting together a time-bomb, which has now begun to explode.
Although this is happening over 8,000 kilometers away, we are directly concerned in several ways. First, because it’s our people, the exploited, who are threatened by this civil war. It is also in our name that successive governments have pursued a policy of security, fomenting division between workers. Mayotte serves as a training ground and laboratory for implementing xenophobic policies, changing laws and empowering the most reactionary faction of the state apparatus. It also shows how far-right militias, ready to impose their law, can grow stronger. What’s more, as the crisis of capitalism deepens, the disintegration of working-class neighborhoods, with its attendant rise in violence, is the future for many of us: on Reunion Island, in the West Indies and in many neighborhoods in mainland France. Faced with the danger of a war between the poor, it’s vital that we give ourselves a policy suited to our own camp, the camp of all the exploited.
The Forces Vives were mobilized against immigrants, under the blue-white-red flag. This nationalism is rooted in France’s history of maneuvering to keep Mayotte in its fold. The fate of the vast majority of Mahorais [residents of Mayotte], who are very poor, was the least of the French state’s concerns, as it pursued its own interests as a second-rate imperialist.
Mayotte is one of the four islands of the Comoros archipelago, a French colony until 1975. France wanted to keep Mayotte, in order to have a military base in this strategic region: north of the Mozambique Channel, one of the gateways to the Indian Ocean, and located on an important maritime trade route.
Faced with aspirations for independence, France organized a referendum in December 1974 and chose to consider the votes island by island, in order to detach Mayotte from the rest of the archipelago, in the name of the “right of peoples to self-determination.” France then divided a people—and, for the past fifty years, has only deepened this divide. It was France that pitted one section of the population against the other, and manufactured foreigners.
France was able to rely on a small fringe of local notables who, from the 1960s onwards, campaigned for Mayotte to remain French, including Marcel Henry and Younoussa Bamana. Landowners, among the few to have access to school, they wanted to secure a little power for themselves, without competition from their counterparts on other islands, and also to make a good deal by speculating on the price of their numerous plots of land. These notables poisoned the workers with French-Mahorese nationalism. They created a “Mahorais identity,” supposedly distinct from the other islands of the archipelago, all the more easily because they silenced opponents.
In 1995, the division was deepened by the introduction of a visa to travel from the Comoros to Mayotte, forcing the poor to risk their lives on makeshift boats, the kwassa-kwassa, to find themselves undocumented in Mayotte.
While thousands of poor people died trying to make the crossing, French imperialism secured its position in the region, and the notables of Mayotte made a nice career for themselves. Younoussa Bamana reigned for thirty years at the head of the departmental council. Marcel Henry was a senator for twenty-seven years. Then their children or descendants took over. They campaigned tirelessly for Mayotte to become a French department. This change in status represented an opportunity for them both in terms of jobs and land speculation.
The 101st department, created in 2011, breaks all records: the youngest, the poorest, the most unequal of all of France’s departments. Half of the 310,000 inhabitants live on less than 260 euros a month, while the cost of living is 10% higher than in mainland France. The official unemployment rate is 34% (five times the French average). A quarter of housing units have no running water, and tens of thousands of inhabitants are crammed into the tin huts of shantytowns, known as bangas.
But while Mayotte may be the poorest department in France, as seen from the Comoros or Madagascar, the island appears rich. Per capita GDP is nine times that of the Comoros. So, like everywhere else, the workers and the poor try their luck and emigrate. Half the population of Mayotte is of foreign nationality.
Departmentalization has increased inequalities between workers. It has created a number of jobs in the new administrations and local authorities. In fact, some of these positions are a way for local elected officials to attract voters through clientelism. Beyond this phenomenon, the workers who occupy these public jobs find themselves above the great majority of the working classes. They constitute a social stratum apart, linked to the State. Their salaries are paid every month, and were increased by 40%. Meanwhile, in the private sector, workers have to get by on a minimum wage that’s 300 euros lower than in mainland France. And for all those who have been turned into illegals by the French state, it’s mostly small jobs and side-hustles for a few hundred euros a month. Farming a small plot of land, toiling on building sites or in logistics, at the mercy of the arbitrary rule of the boss: this is the daily life for tens of thousands of poor people.
The fraction of workers with French papers pinned their hopes on departmentalization, which was sold to them by French governments and Mayotte notables. Disillusionment deepened as the problems increased, against the backdrop of the worsening general crisis in the capitalist economy and the rising number of exiles fleeing wars or misery in East Africa or neighboring Comoros. In 2016 and 2018, disappointed workers led long, hard strikes, denouncing the lower wages and living standards compared to metropolitan France. Their struggle was legitimate, but it excluded from the outset island workers who are not French nationals.
In 2016, they rightly demanded “real equality” with the other departments, even though the RSA (Revenu de solidarité active) was half as high, the working week was 39 hours long, and only a quarter of the articles of labor law had come into force. They denounced the leaders’ contempt—they had claimed that too great a rise in living standards would destabilize the island’s economy. But in doing so, they left out all the undocumented workers for whom these rights were just empty words. Mobilizing as French people rather than as workers can lead to opposing those who don’t have the same identity card.
In 2018, strikers demanded more resources for public services, and denounced the violence that was spreading. But, once again, they were demanding rights as residents of a French department, not out of the need for all the island’s inhabitants to live in dignity.
It would have been possible to take the anger aroused by the state’s very real contempt for the island’s poor as a starting point, and turn it into a rallying point for all workers. For in the shantytowns, whether French or not, everyone lives in appalling conditions. But no one, not even among the island’s trade unions, defended class politics, and the denunciation of insecurity opened the door to divisions among the poor.
The state then put its resources into repression, because it was much more economical than investing in all other areas, and it reinforced the division between French and Comorians, by creating scapegoats.
Infrastructure is still just as inadequate for the growing population. Despite government announcements, it is still impossible to say where the 1.6 billion euros of investment promised for the period 2019–2022 has gone. On the other hand, Mayotte now has more police and gendarmes than the Bouches-du-Rhône department in the city of Marseille. Systematic roundups by the PAF (Air and Border Police) mean that the island holds the record for expulsions (22,000 people per year on average).
In the spring of 2023, under the pretext of fighting insecurity, the state organized Operation Wuambushu, a veritable hunt for the poor. 1,800 police and gendarmes were sent in to destroy nearly 700 shantytown huts and evict thousands of poor people. This operation fostered the idea that the criminals were all foreigners, whereas in the gangs, the machete-wielding youths are both Mahorais and Comorian.
Some gangs are becoming unrestrained in their violence. They assault, cut off roads for public shakedowns, and burglarize houses. All workers suffer their exactions.
This violence is born of poverty. In Mayotte, nine percent of children suffer from malnutrition. Many burglaries start with whatever is in the fridge. Unemployment is also taking its toll. And while some boys join gangs, girls are forced into prostitution. This is the life offered by the seventh richest country in the world to thousands of teenagers.
Violence is also the result of anti-immigrant policies. Since 2018, France’s “droit du sol” has been tightened. To be able to apply for French nationality when they turn 18, children born to foreign parents will have to prove that at least one of their two parents arrived legally in Mayotte at least three months before their birth. This reform has stranded thousands of young people born in Mayotte to foreign parents, with no possibility of obtaining French papers. Because of the territorialized visa, if they obtain a residence permit, it does not allow them to travel to mainland France, or even to neighboring Reunion Island. The State deprives them of a future: no work, no school. They are also at the mercy of a roundup that could send them to the Comoros, where they have never set foot. 9,000 children are also deprived of schooling, as town halls demand ever more papers to enroll them. Over 10,000 children are left to fend for themselves, as their parents have been deported overnight to the Comoros. So a small fraction of all these desperate people join the gangs to survive.
This is the vicious circle in which the State’s policy traps the inhabitants of Mayotte. It sacrifices youth and creates war between the poor. By pointing the finger at immigrants, it provides a springboard for the most reactionary ideas.
The progression of reactionary ideas on the island can be seen in the evolution of the Rassemblement National vote. In the first round of the presidential election, it rose from 2.7% in 2012, to 27% in 2017 and 42% in 2022. In that year’s election, Marine Le Pen came out on top in the second round with 59% of the vote. No wonder she was triumphantly welcomed on her last visit in April. But the RN results reflect the evolution of only a fraction of the island’s population. With 23,000 votes (out of 310,000 inhabitants), the RN vote represents the reaction of the petty bourgeoisie disappointed by departmentalization. But the RN did not stop at voting: representatives of this social stratum took action, via anti-immigrant “citizens’ collectives.”
As early as 2016, CODIM (Mayotte Defense Committees) were violently attacking immigrants, conducting “clearance” operations: entire families were thrown out onto the streets with the complicity of the police and local elected officials. In 2018, CODIM was present at the blockades, which gave rise to an equally reactionary group: the Mayotte Citizens Collective 2018. Insecurity, denounced by the strikers, served them to fuel the amalgam between immigrant and delinquent. Comorian became synonymous with undesirable. Since then, they have carried out a number of hard-hitting actions, always under the benevolent eye of the police. Blocking access to the Prefecture’s foreigners’ department and health clinics for months on end, attacking migrant aid associations.... A few of them made life impossible for thousands of workers.
These activists and their leaders, Estelle Youssouffa for CODIM and Safina Soula for Mayotte Citizens Collective 2018, are part of the petty bourgeoisie that feels threatened. Speaking of Wuambushu, Safina Soula says: “The island needs an elite. [...] We need to reclaim our land, our fields. Today we want our due back.”
They criticize the state for not doing enough to defend their privileges.
In the face of the deepening crisis, and in the absence of any other proposed policy, these collectives are gaining the tacit support of some of the island’s French workers. Estelle Youssouffa of CODIM, a former LCI journalist, launched a political career on the terrain of anti-Comorian hatred and was elected deputy in 2022.
The feeling of abandonment by the State was reinforced in the summer of 2023 during the water crisis. For almost six months, the population suffered water cuts for up to four days out of five. The multi-billion-dollar Vinci group, whose subsidiary is in charge of water management, pocketed millions without ever ensuring the necessary production. Once restored, the water was undrinkable. In response, the collectives took the lead in the protest.
They gained credibility by denouncing the State and local elected representatives, accused of not doing enough to hunt down immigrants. And yet, they regularly make a name for themselves in this area. The vice-president of the departmental council, for example, said of delinquents, in an amalgam with young immigrants: “Maybe we need to kill some of them.”
Anger has also crystallized against new migrants arriving in Mayotte from East Africa. This region is devastated by imperialism, war is raging in Kivu in East Congo, and Sudan, and famine is decimating Somalia. Among all those fleeing this barbarism, some attempt the crossing to Mayotte. Estelle Youssouffa, so quick to denounce the “barbarians in short pants” in relation to young immigrants, says nothing against the more powerful barbarians sowing chaos in this part of the world, namely the imperialist rulers and capitalist trusts.
Some refugees are camping out in makeshift shelters on a sports field in Cavani, which has unleashed the anger of a section of the population, grouped together under the name Forces Vives. In reality, the same militants from the collectives are at the head of the mobilization. They are blocking the island with roadblocks. Transformed into a militia, they control papers, the entrance to housing estates and access to the boat between Petite-Terre and Grande-Terre. They enforce their order, attacking anyone who disregards the “dead island” slogan: high schools that are still open or workers trying to get to work. Fear reigns among Comorian and African immigrants. Many don’t dare leave their homes and don’t have enough to live on. And among French workers, those who don’t share these ideas don’t dare make themselves heard either.
Unlike previous mobilizations, there are no social demands, only anti-immigrant hatred. The government’s response is always the same: more repression ... against immigrants. The demagogic one-upmanship announced for the end of the right to land and the maritime iron curtain will do nothing to solve the island’s problems, but will turn the lives of tens of thousands of workers into a living hell.
This winter’s crisis has shown that some workers have mounted the barricades. If they’re caught up in these reactionary ideas, it’s because nobody is fighting against the nationalist politicians. On the contrary, left-wing organizations and trade unions lend credence to these xenophobic policies. They have contributed to clouding workers’ consciousness by joining the Forces Vives.
At the height of the mobilization, Haoussi Boinahedja, general secretary of the Mayotte CGT departmental union, while denouncing wage inequalities with metropolitan France and the responsibility of the French state for the poverty that reigns in Mayotte, denounced in the media “an immigration of appropriation, because the Comorian state is claiming our territory.” He repeats both the amalgam between immigrants and delinquents and the idea that the arrival of immigrants is manipulated by the Comorian government of Azali Assoumani. He is thus distilling xenophobic poison.
Because delinquency has nothing to do with identity cards.
By abandoning the class struggle for French-Mahorais nationalism, this trade unionist is lining up French workers behind their bourgeoisie and abandoning more than half of the working world. He also places himself on the same ground as CODIM, Youssouffa and all those who call for an end to the territorialized visa: not out of concern for the fate of migrants, trapped on the island, but to accuse them of being a burden on Mayotte workers. Conscious workers must not only attack this visa, but also fight for freedom of movement and settlement, for the abolition of borders. Because the only people who die trying to flee their country of origin are the poor. Those who have money, who know the right people, always manage to get around.
Yasmina Aouny, LFI candidate in the 2022 legislative elections, has become a spokesperson for Forces Vives. She has taken up the campaign against African migrants, speaking of “the demographic weapon that is imploding the territory.” In the end, her policies support a war between the poor. This is where the nationalism and attachment to the state that characterize LFI lead. When the crisis deepens, its representatives find themselves on the side of those who attack the poorest. And on Reunion Island, LFI deputy Ratenon has taken up the same line of reasoning, this time against the Mahorais. In the face of growing violence, he called for “an immediate halt to the uncontrolled arrival of children from Mayotte in families on our territory, who end up on the streets.” Poor Mahorais seeking a better future are treated on Reunion Island in the same way as Comorians are on Mayotte: as troublemakers and undesirables. All poor people who think they can get by by attacking those poorer than themselves are warned: it’s a trap that always turns against them.
By placing themselves on the ground of the Republic, and renouncing an independent policy for workers, these leaders lead them into a dead end. By scapegoating immigrants, they divert anger, play into the hands of exploiters and become accomplices of the capitalists.
This situation of war between the poor is a warning to us in metropolitan France too. When the crisis worsens, the disillusionment of the petty bourgeoisie can lead it to turn into a militia. And it may try to draw in a fraction of our own camp, victims of the effects of impoverishment, delinquency and violence. The only way to avoid being drawn in is to follow the compass of the class struggle. Workers must remain aware that the only border that counts is the one that separates us from our exploiters.
Pointing the finger at immigrants is tantamount to exonerating those truly responsible for the situation in Mayotte. On a visit to a roadblock, for example, the prefect replied to a worker who questioned him about the much too low minimum wage: “When security returns, prices will fall.” A big lie! If workers can’t feed their families, it’s because of low wages as much as of high living costs.
Who benefits from low wages? Employers, like Ida Nel, owner of the Port of Mayotte, who made her entire fortune in Mayotte. Where does the high cost of living come from? The Hayot and Sodifram groups, who share nearly 84% of the food market in Mayotte. It’s not the neighbors from Anjouan or the DRC who are picking the workers’ pockets, but Nel, Hayot and company!
Who deprived the workers of water for months? Again, not the immigrants, but the Vinci trust. For their part, the Bamana family, who own the land on which the third reservoir was to be built, have been obstructing the project since 2009! These are the people responsible.
To put an end to the violence that blights daily life, we need to tackle poverty and unemployment. This cannot be done without overturning capitalist domination of the entire economy. But workers could start by taking control: what happened to the funds for the desalination plant? Where are the funds promised for housing construction, for the new hospital, for public transport? Rather than turning into militias to control our Comorian or African neighbors, let’s control the people who are really responsible for our problems: the capitalists who accumulate fortunes and the various state and local authority services that do nothing to meet the needs of the population.
More broadly, workers need to understand that part of our problems stem from the rottenness of capitalism. The wars and famines ravaging the countries of East Africa are the product of the greed of Western corporations for the region’s minerals. And as long as there is this barbarism, there will be men and women trying to save their skins, no matter how many iron belts or barbed wire fences are put in their way.
And the xenophobic politicians who throw oil on the fire will be the first to take cover when the situation degenerates into a real war between the exploited. Workers will be on the front line. So, among them, those who refuse to become the future executioners of their neighbors must unmask these sorcerer’s apprentices right now.
Only workers will be able to bring down the capitalist system at the root of the wars, underdevelopment and misery ravaging the planet, some of the consequences of which are concentrated in Mayotte. To achieve this, they need to become aware throughout the region and beyond that they belong to the same camp.
For this to happen, there have to be men and women in the workers’ camp who defend these perspectives—in mainland France as well as there.