"Sorry, Suzanne, but I can't drive you to the airport. I would be too afraid to drive back alone at night," my friend Marie-Chantal said.
I looked at her, doing a quick calculation in my head before realizing Marie-Chantal* wasn't making an excuse; she was truly scared. I had lived in Madagascar for three months in 2001, and, like many writers and artists before me, I left convinced that Madagascar was as close as one could come to Paradise. This was not only because the island's landscape was phenomenally beautiful, filled with unique plants and animals that made the world's fourth-largest island a biologist's fantasy land. It was Madagascar's culture that floored me.
Describing the Malagasy concept of fihavanana as similar to the Golden Rule doesn't do it justice. Wikipedia's definition isn't bad: "Fihavanana is a Malagasy word encompassing the Malagay concept of kinship, friendship, goodwill between beings, both physical and spiritual. The literal translation is difficult to capture, as the Malagasy culture applies the concept in unique ways. Its origin is havana, meaning kin." But what makes Malagasy culture truly unique in the world is perhaps best described by the proverb "Ny Fihavanana no talohan'ny vola" which, loosely translated, means "the relationship is more important than the money."
It's that sentiment, even rarer in the 21st century than endangered lemurs, that may be lost forever if Madagascar's current political turmoil proceeds unchecked. The island nation's not-so-slow dissolve began in March 2009, when the mayor of the capital city, a 34-year-old nightclub disc jockey and aristocrat named Andry Rajoelina, seized power in a coup after weeks of demonstrations that many observers believe were at least partially staged by factions within the country's military. Over the following year and a half, attempts to forge a power-sharing agreement between Rajoelina and the country's elected president, Marc Ravalomanana, repeatedly failed after Rajoelina reneged. As the stalemate continued, foreign aid, which accounts for 70 percent of Madagascar's budget, has withered, and economic growth begun during Ravalomanana's presidency has stalled. On Nov. 17, international news services reported that the Malagasy military, which had supported Rajoelina, was attempting a coup against him. A standoff between rival military factions lasted for nearly a week. Yesterday, the faction of the military that supports Rajoelina announced victory, ensuring that Rajoelina's dictatorship will continue, at least until the next coup.
Before you shake your head, thinking that this is yet another story of African instability -- all those acronyms, weird names, and a confusing plethora of dates -- let's get to the real story. That story is familiar, too, if you've seen Syriana or read a Frederick Forsyth novel, but it is more closely tied to the U.S., because it involves a chess game between the French and the Americans, who have been vying for influence in Madagascar for the past decade. The real losers, per usual, are the people in Madagascar, who have been plunged from their already painful poverty into suffering that is, for many of us, unimaginable.
Only a few years ago, things were quite different. The 34-year-old Rajoelina's immediate predecessor, a self-made millionaire named Marc Ravalomanana, barreled into the presidency in 2002 as a reform candidate who looked to America rather than France as a model for Madagascar's future. With the help of two African-American campaign managers, Ravalomanana waged a dynamic campaign against the country's aging "president for life" Didier Ratsiraka. Ratsiraka, a canny septuagenarian, had started his political life as a radical, anti-French, anti-colonialist Marxist in the 1950s. But with the fall of the Berlin Wall, aid from the Communist world dried up and Ratsiraka increasingly turned to France for support.
The results of the 2001 presidential contest between Ratsiraka and Marc Ravalomanana dragged on for months, resulting in thousands of deaths from starvation when road blockades halted the transport of food. Finally, the U.S. put pressure on the country's leadership, and Ratsiraka bowed out.
At the time, it seemed necessary, or perhaps easier, to cast aside Ratsiraka's calls for a runoff election, despite uncertainty about the integrity of the voting process. After decades of deepening poverty and escalating corruption, Marc Ravalomanana seemed to represent the country's best chance to save itself. Young and handsome, a dynamic businessman who was also a Christian, Ravalomanana, like many in his generation, viewed America as a desirable alternative to France. The Malagasy people tend to view America as a more egalitarian country, without France's entrenched racism, which is especially demeaning when directed at its former colonial subjects. On the advice of his American campaign managers, Ravalomanana encouraged his political supporters to call him "Marc" -- a decision that alone was enough to signify that Ravalomanana was an agent of change.
For several years, Ravalomanana seemed to be delivering. Signs appeared that Madagascar, one of the poorest countries in the world, and one of the most culturally isolated, was, for good or ill, joining the global economy. An enormous titanium mine run by RTZ, the world's largest mining conglomerate, opened in the southeastern part of the country, transforming the sleepy colonial city of Fort Dauphin. A Canadian mining company got approval for a $3.8 billion nickel and cobalt mine in the northeast. Brand-new Toyota sedans and SUVs began to appear on the streets of the capital city of Antananarivo.
Despite the damage to the environment caused by these two mining projects, Ravalomanana was popular among conservation organizations. In 2003, at a World Parks Congress in Durban held by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, South Africa, Ravalomanana wowed the crowd by promising to more than triple the amount of protected land in Madagascar, from three percent to ten percent of the country's land. In 2005, he began to make good on his pledge, adding more than 24,000 square acres to the national park system.
But people inside the country told a different story. Ravalomanana was becoming increasingly autocratic. Freedom of the press, never a hallmark of life in Madagascar, actually declined under Ravalomanana. In a minor but revealing move he insisted that the capital's taxis, mainly 1960s-era Peugeots that had been painted in cheerful colors of scarlet, candy pink, turquoise and green, be repainted a uniform beige. He ordered 100 houses torn down because they were too ugly. It was as if Doug Tompkins, the notorious control freak who built the Esprit clothing empire with his wife Susie, had suddenly taken over a country.
There were more serious manifestations of Ravalomanana's l'etat c'est moi stance. He refused to put his finances in a blind trust, and bought a $12 million Boeing 737 with public funds to be used as the presidential plane. In December 2008, Western donors cut back aid to the country, citing Ravalomanana's refusal to disclose financial information.
Ravalomanana's support within Madagascar eroded further when he agreed to lease nearly half the country's arable land to the South Korean company Daewoo to grow corn and palm oil. The 99-year contract was estimated to create 45,000 jobs. But in a country that has long been listed among the world's poorest, the idea that small farmers would lose the ability to produce their own crops was terrifying. Ravalomanana, like many African leaders faced with overwhelming poverty that threatens their popularity, seemed to be embracing an outmoded, neo-colonial approach of development at any price. When Ravalomanana threatened to cut funding for the military, another crucial constituency turned against him.
But according to a British journalist I spoke with in Antananarivo in January, as well as many other veteran observers of politics in the region, the real instigator of the coup was the French oil company Total. Madagascar is thought to contain 6 billion barrels of recoverable oil. In 2008, Total bought a 60 percent share in two of Madagascar's major oilfields that are controlled by Madagascar Oil, a Houston-based company started in 2004 by a Canadian named Sam Malin. A high-roller with a 13th-century castle in Scotland who is married to a former Bond girl, Malin describes himself as a geophysicist. He has invested in energy development, including coal, throughout the Indian Ocean region. Avana, another of his companies, also holds licenses for coal development in the Seychelles and uranium and natural gas fields in Madagascar. Malin has made a minor effort to portray himself as a green entrepreneur: Avana is planting jatropha to be used as biofuel and snapping up ecotourism properties in Madagascar, and a photo on his website shows a smiling Malin with a lemur on his shoulder. Yet the type of oil sands development Madagascar Oil will be operating with Total is particularly damaging to the environment, resulting in two to four times the greenhouse gas emissions of ordinary oil development and causing wide swathes of land surrounding the oilfields to become unsuitable for farming. Malin appears to be unfazed by the country's recent travails: on Nov. 8, Madagascar Oil, which has been reportedly been valued at $1 billion, announced its intention to field an initial public offering of its stock.
Another French company suspected of encouraging the coup is Areva, which promotes itself as a supplier of clean energy in the U.S. but is under fire from French human rights organizations for activities at its uranium mines in Niger. The company recently signed a deal to mine for uranium in the Congo, after its CEO accompanied French President Nicolas Sarkozy on a state visit to the DRC in 2009.
No smoking gun has been found linking Total or any other company to the military coup, but in the month that I spent both in the capital and in the provinces, Total's involvement in the coup was talked about as if it were common knowledge. After a brief hiatus of American influence, the country once again seemed to be falling under French rule -- colonialism in all but name, according to a Malagasy newspaper that reported the national airlines Boeing jets were going to be replaced by French-made Airbus jets.
Certainly France has been notoriously unwilling to let go of its former colonies, as a matter of both economics and amour propre. At times, French neo-colonialism has shaded into the absurd. Case in point: the French mercenary soldier Bob Denard's repeated invasion of the Comoros Islands, where as de facto ruler in the 1970s, he converted to Islam, married half a dozen nubile Comorans, and spent his days on the beach at the main island's luxury hotel. The Comoros are not far from Madagascar in the Indian Ocean, which the French have long regarded as their personal playground, the antidote to their rigid, stratified society. Gauguin aspired to travel to Madagascar, but settled for Tahiti, and Baudelaire's poem "A Former Life," which includes the well-known line, "luxe, calme et volupté," -- not to mention the poet's image of being tended by a "naked, perfumed slave" -- is based on his gap year travels around the region. French men show little compunction about taking advantage of the exchange rate, as it were, in a country where the sexual tourism industry dates back centuries. The capital also boasts excellent restaurants. When I visited in January, Marie-Chantal and I took an American couple we had met to one of the capital's best. It was called, wittily, Kudeta -- pronounced exactly the way you imagine.
While Madagascar's recent unrest may have been encouraged by the 21st century version of French imperialism, the anarchy took on a life of its own as military officers began reaping the rewards of despotism. Since the coup, impoverished villagers have been paid $2.50 a day to illegally cut tropical hardwoods worth $4,000 to $5,000 a ton in Masoala and Marojejy national parks, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and the Mananara Biosphere Reserve. Profits from the illegal logging, estimated at $100 million, were reportedly being funneled to the country's military leaders.
On March 16, the World Wildlife Fund called for a boycott of rosewood from Madagascar. "We have the potential for losing hundreds if not thousands of species. There are still new species being discovered: plants, birds, chameleons, lemurs, tortoises that we might not yet know about, that could be on the brink of extinction," said Niall O'Connor of the World Wildlife Fund.
O'Connor warned that Madagascar could become the next Haiti: a country mired in a downward spiral produced by the synergistic effects of dire poverty and environmental collapse. Clearly, this is not solely the fault of outside forces. In the hopeful days of 2002, Marc Ravalomanana's presidency seemed to promise a bright future for a country that, despite its poverty, prided itself on its unique culture. But Ravalomanana not only overreached; he was never in the club. If one digs below Madagascar's more recent colonial past, one is reminded that for centuries Madagascar was a kingdom with a powerful aristocracy.
It is no coincidence that Marc Ravalamonana was attracted to the American sphere of influence. He was an American-style success, a poor boy educated by Protestant missionaries who started a commercial empire by selling homemade yogurt off the back of his bicycle with the help of his wife. Even my friend Marie-Chantal, no fan of the current regime, complained that Marc spoke poor French and had crude manners.
But Marie-Chantal is equally unimpressed with Andry Rajoelina. She feels that his aristocratic background has given him a sense of entitlement far out of proportion to his abilities. Although grudgingly impressed with the canniness of veteran Didier Ratsiraka, now living quite well in France on the personal fortune he accumulated while president, Marie-Chantal has little respect for Madagascar's political class in general, and despairs that the country's educational system has not inculcated an understanding of democracy.
Yet Rajoelina's coup, the first in Madagascar's history, was immediately followed by counter-demonstrations attended by people who objected not so much to Rajoelina himself but to the method by which he took power. Despite this demonstration of commitment to the electoral process, Madagascar seems headed towards a free fall that will end either in anarchy or totalitarianism.
The worst-case scenario for Madagascar is that the military, which now seems to have turned on Andry Rajoelina, will run the country.
In her most recent email, Marie-Chantal wrote that the military now seem to have allegiance to no one but themselves.
"These guys are all billionnaires (sic) now with all the money they got from rosewood traffic," she wrote. "But you know, appetite comes with eating. Enough is never enough when you know that there are still a lot to be had and that your former friends continue to eat without you."
The night I left Madagascar, I had a conversation with Marie-Chantal that made me realize how much will be lost if Madagascar continues on its present course. It was around ten o'clock, and we had been watching a movie in her den, killing time before I had to leave for the airport. She was telling me about the children whose school fees she is paying. Suddenly we were talking politics again, speculating about the country's future. Marie-Chantal looked at me in the way that someone does when they need you to pay attention. Her gaze was focused, almost severe, yet her eyes seemed unutterably sad. She reminded me about fihavanana, treating others as you wish to be treated, as a whole human being.
"That is what I think we are losing, Suzanne," she told me. "That will never come back."
I left her house for the airport shortly before midnight. I had never been afraid in Madagascar before. But I called her on my cell phone for reassurance as I endured a tooth-gritting journey with two men, one a taxi driver known to Marie-Chantal and her staff, the other a "guard," whose diminutive stature and wooden nightstick failed to reassure as the rattletrap Peugeot taxi plied the deserted streets of the capital in the dark.
* To ensure Marie-Chantal's security, I am not using her real name.
I've long said that North Korea is what you would get if Tom Greene had a country.
“After decades of deepening poverty and escalating corruption..”
“Ravalomanana, like many African leaders faced with overwhelming poverty that threatens their popularity, seemed to be embracing an outmoded, neo-colonial approach of development at any price.”
“O'Connor warned that Madagascar could become the next Haiti: a country mired in a downward spiral produced by the synergistic effects of dire poverty and environmental collapse.”
Now, let’s not forget this very important tidbit:
“…foreign aid, which accounts for 70 percent of Madagascar's budget…”
The Haiti analogy is spot-on. The government of Haiti cannot provide its citizens with even one basic service. Every function of the government is taken over by international aid. The country is held hostage by the west and will never learn to stand on its own feet. The same thing is happening in Madagascar. We need to recognize the role international aid is playing in the equation.
Do some reading, educate yourselves. Here’s some places to start.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=17095866
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/4670744.stm
http://www.netnomad.com/might.html
The Road to Hell: The Ravaging Effects of Foreign Aid and International Charity by Michael Maren
Dead Aid: Why Aid Is Not Working and How There Is a Better Way for Africa by Dambisa Moyo and Niall Ferguson
It's refreshing to hear a Malagasy speak the truth with flinching.
I believe, and have plenty of evidence, that in your country, and your state, the same kind of degradation of life is coming, and sooner than you might think. While America shrugs at the problems of less fortunate societies, many of which are being ruined by American imperialism, the karma is building against it. I'm sad to see this happening, as I fought a war for this government believing it was patriotic and righteous, only to find later, the war was only for profit. I'm becoming less proud every year to be an American.
Don't you feel a little queasy for having written a pro-USA sheet, than exactly a well-investigated paper, a credible one? Why did you state military movements are caused by domestic consideration only? Why did you reduce events in Madagascar as just some USA vs France question? Too simplistic. At least China's role is meaningful and can't be put aside because you decided to focus on an improbable duel (what for?) between the USA and Madagascar's former colonial power. I had a better opinion of Huffington Post. I'm really disappointed, some HP's editors are questionable, deeply questionable about their credibility.
When Rajoelina was about to face arrest for his acts of early 2009, who did he run to, who gave him temporary asylum? The French embassy. And who's been his biggest critic since his accession? The U.S. embassy, who was threatened several times for that.
2) french diplomacy DOES KNOW how just some demonstrations of force or influence might TROUBLE any educated or not Madagascans. It's just among the UNRESOLVED sequels of french colonialism on WEAK minds, weak enough to never investigating about the reality of france's rank in the GLOBAL world, the BIG CONCERNS even french corporates executives DO HAVE about their future, about the MEANS - including by arms and intimidations and communications - sarkozy's ideology use to preserve french corporates' stakes all around the globe.
3)Let's get global:yesterday Irish Brian Lenihan finance minister said ironically speaking about the EU bailout:"We are a small country you know, we don't have any industry of arms like some EU members...". France has a HUGE PROBLEM: she's trying vainly to contain emerging powers, using her task force...but till when? She continues to have a contemptuous view over African countries, especially her former colonies. Have a look at Cameroon, Niger, Mauritania, Guinea. But she's NOT ALONE, CHINA IS THERE! AND THAT'S A FACT
Also the author is not "reducing" the Madagascar situation to a duel between US & France. She just says it involves that, among a lot other things that are described in a fairly informative way, albeit there are a few inaccuracies here and there, but ones that don't really affect the big picture.
Some statements made by US State Department about France's attitude about the attempts to broker an end-crisis deal are quite vitriolic.
Madagascar is (per this survey) the least generous country in the world but has a history of demanding foreign aid as its right since before 1830. In 2008 before the coup, aid supplied over 60% of the national governments budget. That aid was cut off by March 2009 when the DJ took over the country. Humanitarian aid for health and emergencies is still being sent to Madagascar but not to the government but rather to NGOs. The USA has a "Trade Not Aid" program called the Africa Growth and Opportunity Act or AGOA. Madagascar lost its AGOA privileges because AGOA requires a government to either be democratic or working towards being democratic but Madagascar is working on becoming a police state. No government in the world recognizes the coup government of Madagascar but they still insist that the international donors reopen the aid taps to their country. Why would that be a good idea?
You broke you bought it is a good policy in store and should work here too. If you have a kleptocratic government dont expect donors to bail you out after you have stolen and sold everything of value in your country.
The families in power here are truly getting rich and many are stashing it outside the country in preparation of the day when they have to move to France for their comfortable exile.
Since the new regime took the reins, the country has descended into dictatorship in the cities and criminal anarchy in the countryside. I don't see American warships refueling here anymore, that's for sure, and the military is too busy terrorizing political opponents to care about the eventual terrorists who might find the current anarchy to be an excellent place to hide themselves.
U.S. has plenty of military bases around Middle East.
Ironically enough the same people who are so concern about Madagascar will go bananas condemning American imperialism if U.S. gets involved.
I don't have any kind of beef against Americans exploiting our natural resources. If anything, it provides much needed jobs. What I have beef against are the corrupt officials back home who mismanage the part of the deal that's supposed to benefit the country. The worst part is that we can't even hold the slippery bastards accountable except by waging island-wide revolts that tend to wreck the economy and development even worse.
There may have been French involvement in the 2009 coup d' etat, it's unclear who all the players were. Rumor abound, but substantiation is scarce. What's not uncertain is that the Malagasy themselves are responsible for their nation's state of affairs, regardless of who might have been meddling. For 200 years foreigners have been here teaching the principles of civil society but the Malagasy have chosen to steer their own course.
I know of no country in the world that has a history without a dark bloodletting past. So before you start judging, check your own backyard.
I don't call "progress by the canon" progress. So your contention that the French brought in some civility within us disorganized bloodletting and devious people is kind of warped if you ask me. You sound like a bloodletter. "Not to excuse French colonialism", my gluts.
What I agree with, is that Malagasy are responsible for the state the country is in.
Slavery: The Sakalava of the west coast did razzias in the Comoros, and sold the kidnapped people as slaves to the Arabs. Was this right? No, was it common practice all over the world then? Yes.
Continual pogroms against foreigners and Christians, and Burnings at the stake, as well as throwing Christians down a cliff. That probably explains why most Malagasy are Christians, and most business owners are foreigners today, right? Only one of the Ranavalona queens was responsible for the above. Your argument that it was continual is total BS. The queen actually kept the French architect Jean Laborde around. He was supposedly her lover. Don't forget that king Ratsimilao of the Betsimisaraka on the East was the son of a British pirate. And the term sans-Malaga refers to mulattoes. So yeah we were hating on foreigners indeed huh?
Your view of Malagasy history and culture is rather Merina centric. That's the point of view of the history of Madagascar written by most foreigners.
Malagasy soldiers were burned at the stake for desertion in the face of the French forces even though they had little or no training to face a modern professional army; and after their cowardly officers had already turned and ran.
Under the Ratsirika regime in the 1970’s thousands of Comorons were killed in a rampage in the Mahajunga region.
This is not a single incident of brutality under one deviant ruler or one ethnic group. African and French slave traders didn’t come to Madagascar to burn villages and capture slaves, they came to find Malagasy trade partners. There are no hordes of Asians cutting their way through Marojejy and Masoala pillaging rosewood. Agents come to find Malagasy timber barons to do it.
To say that other countries have been brutal to their own people and foreign enemies is absolutely true but is hardly relevant to the crisis in Madagascar. Malagasy need to take responsibility for their history, their future, and their current state of affairs.
http://news.mongabay.com/2010/1105-rajoelina_eia_video.html
In addition to fihavanana Madagascar is also losing hope and the dream of a future better than the present. Students are not going to school due to parental poverty and the coup government paying the army but not paying teachers for over a year. When Madagascar loses yet another generation they will never be competitive with Asia and will fall further and further behind the rest of the world. Madagascar is the only country grouped in sub Sahara Africa with a negative growth rate in 2009.
French speaking, poor, illiterate, superstitious, deforested, sex tourism, frequent natural disasters, dysfunctional governance: sounds a lot like Haiti. The big difference is there is nowhere the Malagasy can sail to in a small boat.
http://alainrajaonarivony.over-blog.com/article-madagascar-demi-tour-general-48859363.html
7th paragraph
".
Dès septembre 2008, Andry Rajoelina me disait que des diplomates français venaient le voir en lui confiant qu’il était «leur seul espoir» face à un président francophobe et proche des Américains. .
"
translation: "back in september 2008, andry rajoelina confided to me that locally-based french diplomats went to see him, and revealed to him that he is 'their only' hope vis a vis a francophobe and pro american malagasy president"
"
Disclosure: Andry Rajoelina holds a french passport, which is a common situation among malagasy people, because of close tie between the two countries
Other french company who may have been part of this "project" is the Bolloré group, with activities in tobbaco industry, fuel distribution!!!, transportation, ...
What do you do under bad leadership?
It is my previous experience working in many companies that I have decided for myself that working under bad leadership was not worth it for me. Too frustrating. Useless. A lot of energy wasted for nothing. But what if you don’t have the choice? What if despite the fact that you don’t approve of your leaders, you have to stay on the boat?
I have always looked for good leadership.
And good leadership I find.
When it is missing I leave.
Why?
Because a boat without a good leader is bound to turn around in circles.
So, in an effort to get closer to destination, I switch boat.
But what about other people who have to stay on the boat?
Unless I am able to steer the boat as a part of the leading team, there is no way I would stay on a sinking boat.
But this boat has been sinking long enough, and there is still something to be saved.
Who would I be if I just watched this boat sink?
I cannot be part of the leading team, but maybe I can contribute to shaping the next group of leaders.
Two clarifications though, last week's standoff lasted merely 3 days and it was not an armed confrontation. Also, when Marie Chantal says "billionaires" she most probably means it in local currency. That still makes those people millionaires in dollars in a country that is digging its way deeper each day into abject impoverishment. International organizations state that Madagascar's GDP contracted this year, a unique case in Africa.