Painful memories of the revolt of 1947: Nationalism or survival?

By Philippe Leymarie, Le Monde diplomatique, March 1997

On 29 March the Malagasies will commemorate the 50th anniversary of an uprising marking some of the first nationalist demonstrations in the French empire. France has maintained a veil of silence over the repression in which nearly 100,000 lives were lost, one of the major post-war colonial massacres. It destroyed a whole generation of Madagascar's managerial class and intensified the country's problems. Madagascar, once proud and united, has been ruined by foreign interference and has been unable to recover its traditional equilibrium. With the return of Admiral Didier Ratsiraka as head of state on 9 February and the appointment of a new prime minister, Pascal Rakotomavo, on 21 February, the country is departing from its old nationalist ideals.

The large island of Madagascar lies in the south-west of the Indian Ocean in a strategic zone between the Cape and the Gulf. Although it is on the margins of Africa, it has links with Asia as the birthplace of part of its population. It has been in turn social democrat (First Republic); nationalist and revolutionary (Second Republic); liberal, populist and Christian (Third Republic). Its present humanist and ecological policies are aimed at saving what can be saved in the daily battle for survival.

Guy Razanamasy, ex-prime minister and now mayor of the capital, recalls that René Clément's film La Bataille du rail was showing on 29 March 1947. This was an unintentional irony which soon became tragic when insurgents began by cutting off railway lines. Some later died in railway carriages during the repression, which over the next three years developed into a full-scale colonial war.

I was eighteen. The uprising made us realise we were Malagasies. It was the whole country, not just the Merinas, says Razanamasy. One of his uncles, a lieutenant who joined the rebels, was executed. The Democratic Movement for Malagasy Reform (MDRM) had managed to get its members elected to parliament in the first elections in what had become the French Union and its political demands went far beyond the Merinas and Betsileos of the High Plateaux. Meanwhile, the armed insurrection started by secret societies was centred on the forests, strategic railway lines and colonial plantations of the east coast.

For the next few decades there were no more rebellions, as the French called them, or tabataba (events, as the Malagasies call them), at least not officially. For many people the uprising had been a cruel loss of life and an incomprehensible tragedy. It was not until 1967 that President Philibert Tsiranana, founder of the First Republic, first decreed a day of mourning on 29 March, uniting executioners and victims, anticolonialists and collaborators in silent grief, as if the uprising had been a mistake and a curse. It was only in the late 1970s that the anniversary began to be celebrated with pride and gratitude, as a revolution which admittedly failed, but which opened the way to future nationalist struggles (1).

When writing to Gisèle Rabesahala, the general secretary of AKFM-KDRSM and an indefatigable organiser of the Madagascar Solidarity Committee, people still sometimes address her as Madam Chairman of the Events of 1947 because of her plan, when she was minister of culture under the democratic Second Republic, to have the mass graves uncovered and monuments built all over the country with commemorative stones. Now that most of the people involved are old or have passed on, she hopes a more realistic view will be taken of the period, and Paris will open its archives and acknowledge this inglorious episode in Madagascar's history. I don't mean they should wear sackcloth and ashes, but they should just accept the facts. Proportionately it was equivalent to one million Frenchmen being killed. Why haven't French diplomats ever had the courage to take part in the anniversary ceremonies? she asks. They have been invited with everyone else since 1977.

Accepting the past

Admiral Didier Ratsiraka, recently re-elected head of state, also wants to see a gesture from the French and says he will be talking to President Chirac about it in Paris in mid-March. Speaking in his birthplace, Toamasina (formerly Tamatave), during a tour of the north-eastern regions partly devastated by a cyclone, he says that his role is to prepare the Malagasies and the French psychologically to accept the past. The French and the Germans have fought two world wars. That doesn't stop them walking side by side. After all, German troops have marched down the Champs Elysées in the last few years! Here we had acts of violence, shootings and repression of the nationalists who believed that theirs was a just cause. But the colonialists also believed they had a mission to civilise the country.

At his investiture on 9 February, President Ratsiraka announced that the 4,032 survivors who had fought or been disabled in that period would be paid a regular pension and the 50th anniversary of the 1947 uprising would be marked with a ceremony. He recognised that the grieving process had not ended with the Second Republic, which he founded and led from 1975-92. People were too sensitive about the past.

That is obvious from the familiar but bare silhouette of the old Queen's Palace with its four towers still visible from miles around on the highest hill in the capital. The buildings (mainly wooden) were razed to the ground on the night of 6 November 1995, leaving only massive square stone walls looking out over the void. Until the end of the last century the Merina monarchs (the dominant ethnic group in the High Plateaux of Madagascar), who eventually united the country and later became the main focus for nationalism, took an oath in front of the court, foreign diplomats, soldiers and subjects, that they would not hand over the smallest corner of land to foreigners, not even as much as would cover a grain of rice.

At the time there were suspicions that the fire had been started deliberately but the thing remains unexplained. It destroyed a sacred site, a relic of former splendours with its palaces, treasures and royal tombs. The mood in the capital was one of desperation and anguish. As one spectator puts it, It was our soul that was burning. Young people bravely snatched a few palanquins, pictures, clothes, books or royal trappings from the flames and passed them from hand to hand (2). The tragedy took the country back to its glorious, almost mythical, past, but also to its old demons, with its memories once again going up in smoke (3).

Rémy Ralibera, a Jesuit priest who edits the Catholic newspaper La Kroan'i Madagasikara, says, The aim was to start a civil war and get people out on the streets by attacking what people of all classes in Tananarive felt most strongly about. But people had had enough of riots. An ex-minister apparently urged the Merinas to respond. But, says Father Ralibera, this was losing sight of the fact that people from the coastal provinces usually lived perfectly amicably with the capital's other inhabitants in the neighbourhoods or churches, as was evident from the number of mixed marriages and the membership of parish or local councils. Driving out the coastal people from the capital would soon have brought reprisals against the families of civil servants or businessman from the High Plateaux, many of them working in the interior of the country.

Fated to live together

The historian Ignace Rakoto, who was for 13 years minister of higher education under the Second Republic, is in no doubt that the key to this unity is a single language, enabling the island's 18 tribes to use the same words for essential communication; as well as common institutional traditions based both on the kabary (addresses to the people followed by replies and dialogue) and on a system of monarchy, elected or hereditary according to the region. Rakoto sees this as evidence that the Malagasies are prisoners of their island, fated to live together, despite the diversity of the population after successive waves of immigration and difficulties of communication. He believes that these regional characteristics do not stand in the way of unity, but rather safeguard it. The different heritages need to be valued and preserved and this requires a decentralisation that none of the Republics has yet achieved.

What was the impact of the 1947 events? When you look at the state of the country after 37 years of independence, it's unbelievable, says General Ramakavelo, defence minister under the Third Republic. The people who fought at the time must be turning in their graves and wondering if it was worth it.

Ramakavelo, an experienced politician and a writer, prefers to look back to an earlier time. Madagascar had its place in the world in the last century. It had cohesion. We knew what we believed in. Nowadays, with all the embassies promoting our mining and human potential and tourists seeing Madagascar as a paradise, our vita gasy (made in Madagascar) has become a pejorative term and ramatoa (which meant a lady in the last century) refers to the maid.

There is no doubt that the country is in a state of collapse. The government is no longer playing its part in essential areas such as security, transport, education and health. Life expectancy is barely 50. According to a confidential FAO report, three-quarters of the population suffer from malnutrition. In 1996 Madagascar has fallen to 150th (out of 174) in the UN's long-term human development table. Less than half the children go to primary school, less than a tenth to secondary school. Military aircraft and ships are laid up. The economy, left to private initiative with practically no regulation, is overly reliant on zebu, vanilla, gold and sapphire trading, which has benefited from the country's archipelagisation (4).

Having failed to reach agreement with the International Monetary Fund, the government has turned to dubious alternative sources of finance, becoming a new target for the drug barons after the Comoros, Mauritius and the Seychelles. Most villages still have no roads, electricity or radio. The price of rice, the staple food, has rocketed. Jean-Hervé Fraslin, an agricultural credit expert, says that Madagascar is one of the only countries where rice production has not increased in the last thirty years.

Of its population of 14 million, 1.2 million live in the capital. Antananarivo is a microcosm of the island's problems: uncontrolled development, unhealthy living conditions, street children (20,000 homeless), traffic congestion, contaminated water, pollution 10-20 times higher than the WHO standard, underemployment (60% of the working population, including many graduates), rampant disorganisation, insecurity and malnutrition (5). And, of course, glaring inequalities, the shameless opulence of the shiny four-wheel drives imported from Asia contrasting with the patched up little two-CV, broken down relics of the old Franco-Malagasy neo-colonial prosperity.

Joshua Rakotonirainy, a minister and General Secretary of the Council of Christian Churches, says that, in these conditions, concepts like nationalism can have very little relevance to the man in the street. More worryingly, growing numbers are turning away from moral and cultural principles such as fihavanana (solidarity), which gave the country cohesion and dignity. The fat cats are setting the pace and going into politics. Evangelists from andafy (overseas) are attracting large sums by dubious means and religions are growing in number (6). The traditional churches, on the other hand, are losing ground, having burnt their fingers by getting involved in politics (7).

With the swift growth of globalisation and the agreement Madagascar signed with the IMF last November (after breaking off relations four years earlier), is there any hope of the country developing independently? General Ramakavelo thinks it unlikely, looking at a long list of adverse developments. There is the loss of sovereignty imposed by the IMF; public sector bodies privatised and taken over by foreigners; ministries once again forced to take on international or French experts; aid which increasingly is being channelled through NGOs of varying reliability (often paving the way for humanitarian intervention). To this, one may add the absence of checks on property ownership by non-nationals and the relaxation of visa conditions (at a time when Europe is closing its doors and humiliating the French-speaking elites) as well as the open skies policy, under which Air Madagascar is seeing its survival threatened by jumbos operated by the French company, Corsair, and is gradually having to give up its public service routes to the island's remoter regions. And, finally, the abolition of exchange and price controls. All these measures have been legalised by eight bills, hastily passed by parliament in August 1996. National pride and the 1947 uprising seem exceedingly remote.

Return to structural adjustment

President Ratsiraka, a survivor of the unhappy experience of revolutionary socialism, recalls his step by step negotiation of the first structural adjustment facilities with the IMF in 1983. He plans to continue on the lines of the economic policy framework document recently drawn up with the Bretton Woods institutions, but he will make a few changes. In particular, he will bring back discipline. People cannot be allowed to get rich on the backs of others, he says. He points out that during his Second Republic, racketeering was just a small sin, compared with the trafficking, pilfering and other scandals that went on in the Third Republic.

The singer Rossy would like to believe that too. Rossy, 35, voted artist of the year for the second time by the capital's biggest daily newspaper, was the person who actually brought down ex-president Albert Zafy with his hit Lera (It's time!). I was born at the time we became independent, I was a child of the socialist era, says Rossy, who is from the coast and a veteran of many international tours. Political demonstrations were part of his childhood. At school we learned about Camara Laye's L'Enfant noir, Emile Zola, liberation theology, Mandela. For us, 1947 was important. And we remembered that Prime Minister Rotsiraka said No to the vazahas (white people). We got that from him (8).

Rossy, who, like many of his own and the previous generation, is disillusioned by his experience of socialism in the 1980s, had started with an anti-corruption song, L'Afrique est malade. It was also a way of expressing his pride in being black, when the upper class Merinas look down on the andevo (descendants of slaves) of the plateaux and even more on the coastal maintys (blacks).

David André Silamo, General Secretary of the Christian Trade Union of Madagascar (Sekrima) believes that the French have stopped investing in Madagascar, leaving the Asians free rein. Locally, they are represented by the karana community, Indians and Pakistanis who have traditionally run the country's businesses, although from time to time they bear the brunt of public hostility and come under attack from the national bourgeoisie, partly on nationalistic grounds and partly from self-interest.

In the colonial period, it was the French that controlled everything. Under the First Republic, it was president Tsiranana. Under the Second, it was Arema and President Ratsiraka's Procoops cooperative. It was not until the 1990s that people were allowed to think for themselves. Buildings and companies are springing up everywhere and business is better than ever before. The idea of personal initiative has begun to catch on: the taste for risk, for working without the government and not being afraid of it. If the new head of state does not understand that, there's going to be trouble, says Silamo. He believes that the trade union movement is now evolving and becoming less hidebound and more entrepreneurial.

Some businessman have entered the political arena: Heri-Zo Razafimahaleo, head of a successful group, has set up the Leader Party. He admits that all he has to offer by way of a programme is his own success (Join me if you want to succeed), and that his methods are derived from marketing (I am selling a product). He won a surprising 15% of the votes in the first round of the presidential election before joining the Ratsiraka camp in the second round.

As to whether the country can develop and still retain its independence, Jean-Aimé Rakotoarisoa, Director of the Institute of Civilisations, says that the people of Madagascar are unusual. For instance it is the only place in the world where pork, which they produce in a year, is dearer than beef. They know nothing about the market. They just work when they need to, take care not to look as if they are getting too rich, have a mixture of religions and keep it all together with family or village solidarity. He says that the link between government and people was severed a long time ago. With this fresh start, we shall be back in business again, regain our balance and control inflation. But think how many casualties there have been in the meantime. When subsidies on essential goods were removed in 1986-1987, it was indirect genocide. Did anyone count the babies dying in the clinics or out in the countryside?

As she prepares to celebrate her comrades' achievements in the 1947 uprising on 29 March, Mrs Rabesahala takes comfort from the fact that Ratsiraka is a nationalist at heart, even now... We have to remember our traditions and culture when we are thinking about national recovery. She feels that it will not be easy for the public to understand the new head of state's plan for a humanist and ecological republic to save the country, which is bleeding—losing its land, its fauna and its forests (9). As to whether Madagascar can retain its identity, she says, It's true we might have to admit defeat, but the new president's main strength will be the ability not to let anything be imposed.


(1) See Pulgence Fanony and Noel Jacques Guennier Témoins de l'insurrection, Foi et Justice, Antananarivo, 1997.

(2) Three of them were killed in the fire.

(3) See Françoise Raison, La mémoire en cendres de Madagascar, Le Monde diplomatique, December 1995. In the past few years the town hall, legal and ministry of finance records and several politicians' homes have been destroyed by fire, in conditions that have never been explained. The demonstrators in rotaka (riots) have often set fire to property, especially the property of the karana (Indian and Pakistani) businessmen. The common (although prohibited) practice of lighting bush fires to revive grazing land or clear spaces for crop growing has always been a sign of discontent or popular resistance.

(4) See Philippe Leymarie, Longue patience à Madagascar, Le Monde diplomatique, October 1995.

(5) According to a survey carried out as part of the Madio project, 62% of people living in the capital had less than the 1,810 calories regarded as subsistence level. The weekly La Kroan'i Madagasikara asks Est-ce mieux en dehors de la capitale? (Is it better outside the capital?).

(6) 500 evangelical organisations have been set up officially (Midi-Madagascar, 26 August 1996). The Virgin Mary is supposed to have appeared to peasants about 100 km from the capital in November 1990 and several observers report a resurgence of traditional religions.

(7) See Sylvie Brieu, La Grande Île sous l'influence des Eglises, Le Monde diplomatique, October 1995.

(8) The military attaché in Paris, Commander Didier Ratsiraka, who was appointed foreign minister after the anti-French demonstrations in 1972 and 1973, strongly objected to the slavery agreements with France, and had the French military bases at Tananarive and Diego-Suarez under the command of General Marcel Bigeard evacuated. New, and more equally balanced cooperation agreements were negotiated, despite resistance from Michel Debré, then foreign minister.

(9) The expression was used by the first American astronauts when they saw the torrents of red mud flowing into the sea, but the island has been known as the red island since the last century.