TRANSLATION FROM FRENCH BY CHANELLE ADAMS
The Mozambique Channel is the site of one of the deadliest borders. Separating French-occupied Mayotte from the rest of the Comoros archipelago, it militarized this part of the sea making it a dangerous area to cross for Comorians, and turning those who reach Mayotte into undocumented people in their own country. We asked Maëva Amir to describe the ways through which these colonial structures transform locals into foreigners and settlers into locals.
The four islands of Maore (Mayotte), Ndzouani (Anjouan), Ngazidja (Grand Comoros), and Moili (Mohéli) make up the archipelago in southern Africa between Mozambique and Madagascar collectively called the Comoros. An official border divides the archipelago between Mayotte and the three others. In Mayotte, you are technically in France, but in Anjouan, only seventy kilometers away, you are on Islamic Federal Republic of the Comoros soil. Mayotte is part of France’s five so-called “overseas departments” over which France continues to exercise rule. These “confetti of the French empire” are still treated as modern-day colonies.
Historically, the Comoros archipelago has been a space of open exchange and circulation, characterized by its inhabitants’ many comings and goings, many of whom share similar cultures, languages and the same religion of Islam. France fractured this existing balance: first, by making the Comoros a French colony in the 19th century, and then by tearing the island of Mayotte away from the rest of the archipelago during Comorian independence in 1975, when a referendum skilfully orchestrated by the metropolis and local elites brought about the dislocation of the archipelago and the creation of a “Mahoran identity” distinct from Comorian identity.
For several decades, Mayotte has been the focus of reactionary rhetoric in France of those who raise the specter and fantasy of a supposed “migratory peril.” Comorian migration to Mayotte is real and significant. Comoros’s disastrous economic, social and health situation makes it the poorest overseas department with 77% of the population living below the poverty line. Ever since the restriction of freedom of movement in the archipelago, more than 10,000 people have lost their lives aboard the kwassa-kwassa, makeshift boats on which people from neighboring islands risk their lives to reach Mayotte, a so-called “island of poverty in an ocean of misery.” Not only does France’s presence in the region fabricate foreigners within people’s own country, but it also orchestrates an underdevelopment of the Comoros through major political destabilization in the wake of independence, led by French mercenary Bob Denard. Despite the island’s poverty rate, Mayotte’s GDP remains 8.5 times greater than that of Comoros, driving many inhabitants to risk the crossing. In this sense, France produces what Saïd Bouamama calls “a structural migratory flow” (2018) to Mayotte, and with its repressive border and migration policies, turns the journey to a neighboring island into a deadly crossing.
For several years now, the French government has been implementing experimental and exceptional measures in Mayotte which have no equivalents on national territories: modification of land rights, mass expulsions, destruction of informal housing with no rehousing solution, confinement in detention centers (including for minors).
Mayotte is both a laboratory for exceptional migration policies and an example of the normalization of colonial persistence. More than just creating a monster of a migratory system, France has also succeeded in creating a deadly militarized political border, a maritime wall whose ideological consequence is to fuel absurd xenophobia of Mahore people towards their relatives on neighboring islands. And yet, this situation hardly detracts from the dramatic social situation of the Mahore themselves (and Comorians), who are also experiencing the borders of well-established social inequality on an island where the wealthiest 10% (often French civil servants or members of the Mahoran political class) have a standard of living 6.8 times higher than the rest of the population.
A deadly political border drawn through a space of trade and circulation
During the 1975 Comorian independence referendum, France read out the results island by island. This was done to justify keeping Mayotte within the French fold. This form of differentiated reading is illegal under international law. Resultantly, France dismembered an island from the Comoros, and created a new border made of both land and sea. At first, the creation of this political border had no impact on movement in the region, and Comorian natives from neighboring islands were able to come and go without restriction, to trade, visit their families or seek medical care.
However in 1995, a turning point upset all balance in the region. The introduction of the Balladur visa (named after Edouard Balladur, France’s Prime Minister of the time) required Comorian nationals to have a visa to travel to Mayotte, a place they had traveled to freely for centuries. The political border, previously abstract, became deadly in application. Entire families were separated and some found themselves in illegalized circumstances overnight.
Ever since the establishment of this visa, this area of the Indian Ocean has been transformed into a maritime graveyard. The materialization of this border intensified in 2005 under the policies of French Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy, who, with the approval of local elites, led a hunt on Comorians within Mayotte.
This marked the beginning of a race to militarize the border and to tighten administrative processes in order to invent a new category which comprises many of the island’s inhabitants: the Sans-Papiers.
Since then, we have witnessed an escalation in security measures and an increase in the precariousness of living conditions for “foreigners” in Mayotte since then. In 2018, after a vote, a new threshold was crossed: the adoption of an exception to birthright law in Mayotte. As a result, a child born in Mayotte must prove (when they come of age) that one of their parents had been legally on Mayotte soil for at least three months at the time of their birth – a period of time that current French Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin says he wants to increase. This exception to common law made the situation even more precarious for “foreigners” in Mayotte and led to a frantic rush of deportations. The year 2019 saw 23,158 deportations, or 10% of the population, a record that Emmanuel Macron’s French government sought to surpass with military operation Wuambushu in 2023. This policy is carried out with the complicity of the Comorian government, who in July 2019 signed an agreement which promised a few million euros for the country’s development in exchange for a commitment to halt migratory flows and so-called “illegal” crossings between Anjouan and Mayotte.
Efforts and measures by the French state to control movement structures the over-exploitation and death of hundreds of Comorians who have now been rendered undocumented within their own country. But these “foreigners” in Mayotte are essential to the island’s functioning, particularly in the informal economy, which makes up a large part of the island’s economic life. In some sectors, almost all the workers are non-Mahore Comorian, notably in the building and civil engineering sector, agriculture and household labor jobs. More and more, due to the conditions of their precarious administrative status, these familiar “foreigners” are becoming an increasingly exploited labor force.
This maritime wall has progressively built up this ideological construction of a mental border which gradually gave rise to xenophobia, largely fueled by local Mahore elites affiliated with French colonialism. So-called “foreigners” were held responsible for France’s abandonment of the island and the resulting precariousness, unemployment, insecurity, and lack of access to healthcare and water. Relying on historical rivalries between the islands, France succeeded in turning the muzungu (white, or more generally from the French “métropole”) occupier into a compatriot and the Comorian cousin into an undesirable foreigner. In Mayotte, it is unthinkable to claim a Comorian identity and instead it is replaced with the fantasy of a Mahore based on French nationality and proximity to the métropole. Yet this singular identity does not withstand scrutiny. The alleged foreigners are often cousins, brothers, sisters, husbands, or wives whom we distance ourselves from in an attempt to cast colonialism’s authority in a good light. The border between Mayotte and the rest of Comoros thus becomes a place where the Comorian identity is dispossessed in favor of a new identity dictated by the French assimilation doctrine.
From political borders to social boundaries
“The colonial world is a compartmentalized world” (Frantz Fanon, Wretched of the Earth, 1961)
This political border between Mayotte and the rest of the Comorian islands became an identity boundary with major impacts on the island’s social organization. French presence in the archipelago produces three distinct categories: mzungu, Mahore, and “foreigners” (often Comorian). The current water crisis in Mayotte makes no distinction between Mahore and Comorian people. But, it does make a material difference, drawing distinctions between those who can afford water packs priced at six euros and others who have to withstand the water cuts and consume unsafe water.
The class divide is particularly evident spatially. Since departmentalization in April 2011, the situation has largely accelerated. Indeed, one of the first effects was to bring local laws into accordance with capitalist property standards. Many Mahore were faced with a dilemma: buy back land that had belonged to their family for generations, or be evicted. Pressure from investors led to a ferocious land grab that left many Mahore on the streets. The island’s structural housing deficit is leading to the development of self-constructed housing. A significant number of people live in informal housing (around 40% according to INSEE in 2017), many of which are unsafe and not connected to water or electricity.
Class boundaries reflected in space: Shantytowns vs. affluent “mzunguland”
Next to the informal settlements developed in recent years for lack of other options are a few neighborhoods which stand out from the rest of the landscape: the “mzungulands.” Located in the heights, these neighborhoods were historically built to accommodate mzungu during their stays on the island. Today, a few well-off Mahore people also live in these neighborhoods. The compartmentalized colonial city in Mayotte is a reminder of a world divided by class and race relations, as Fanon writes, “the zone inhabited by the colonized is not complementary to the zone inhabited by the colonizers.”
On the edges of these neighborhoods, a number of Mahore and Comorian people make homes in the shantytowns. These self-built villages are regularly threatened by destruction at the hands of operations such as Wuambushu, as part of the so-called “fight against substandard housing.” This destruction is carried out thanks to exceptional measures in Mayotte, such as article 197 of the Elan law, which allows prefects of Mayotte to proceed without a judge’s opinion to destroy houses built without permits. This is the case, for example, of neighborhood Talus 2 in the commune of Koungou, where Mahore and Comorian informal workers from the construction industry and public administration live side by side. The destruction of these places is yet another form of violence against foreigners, but also against the poorest Mahore people. It is a reminder that the structuring of space is superimposed by the social and racial structure of the island which is set up in favor of the mzungus and against Mahore and Comorian people.
Facing the imperialist monster
“Mayotte is Comorian and will remain so forever” is written across a billboard in Moroni, the capital of Comoros, illustrating the historical claim of Comorians in the face of the archipelago’s dismantling. But in the face of these historic policies of French colonialism, which fuel massive poverty, militarized repression of Sans-Papiers, and ethnic divisions within the same population, what kind of politics could provide a way out for Comorian and Mahore people?
In Mayotte, through strong propaganda carried out by the local elites, the French state is operating a reactionary movement against potential resistance movements by directing social anger against Comorian immigration instead of towards French presence.
The propaganda blames migration as responsible for all of the island’s ills and calls for local political elites and the French state to take control of a potentially explosive social situation. Imperialism has succeeded in creating this illusion of a consensual colonization, which is evidenced by a significant portion of the Mahore population now demanding security measures, such as more military-police intervention by France to repress and expel the island’s Sans-Papiers. In the spring of 2023, Operation Wuambushu saw a resurgence of citizens’ collectives’ on the island who actively supported the operation and carried out violent actions such as blocking hospitals to prevent “foreigners” from accessing healthcare. Despite their isolation from the rest of the population, young people directly targeted by the Wuambushu operation clashed with the anti-riot police several evenings in a row. This resistance, albeit one isolated action, is by not by any means unrelated to the many difficulties encountered by the military police in carrying out the operation.
Recent mobilizations in Mayotte are taking place on a landscape marked by right-wing sentiments and anti-Comorian xenophobia – but it hasn’t always been this way. Indeed, one of the island’s last major social struggles took place in September and October of 2011, against high costs of living. Dubbed the mabawas revolt (chicken wing in Shimaore), this historic general strike movement of blockades and major demonstrations succeeded in bringing the island’s economy to a standstill for forty-three days. Only a few months after the island’s departmentalization in March of that same year was the strike viewed as an expression of disillusionment with the false hopes of better living conditions promised by departmentalization. After this historic strike, political debates increasingly focused on the so-called “problem” of Comorian migration. As witnessed by the 2018 movements against Comorian migration led by union leaders and Mayotte citizens’ collectives, social and economic aspects have been pushed to the background.
Today, the current situation of mass poverty, unemployment at 34%, the water crisis and the general rise in the cost of living could certainly give rise to future social outbursts which xenophobic propaganda would have trouble controlling. In the long term, repressive, security-focused, and xenophobic policies could be revealed for what they really are: a dead end that has no effect on the social situation other than to add more violence to violence.
However, the materialization of these such circumstances and expressions of progressive social resistance depends on more than just the island’s internal situation. We must not forget that Comoros, and therefore Mayotte, are fundamentally linked to the African continent. Today, we are witnessing France’s imperialist stronghold on the Continent being profoundly challenged from Mali to Senegal and Burkina-Faso to Niger. If these popular anti-imperialist movements are today partly channeled by military regimes, there is no doubt that they could influence the Comorian populations to demand an end to French colonization in the Comoros archipelago as well. Eventually, if future mobilizations on Mayotte begin to express themselves openly as anti-colonial and anti-imperialist, effective forms of solidarity from anti-imperialist movements in mainland France that seek to put an end to colonialism and neo-colonialism will have a decisive role to play. ■