WHILE IN MOROCCO EVENTS SEEM TO HAVE CALMED DOWN FOR NOW, THE SITUATION IN MADAGASCAR APPEARS CLEARLY REVOLUTIONARY ~ from Lundi Matin ~ During a trip to northern Morocco last week, I had the chance to meet two supporters of the GenZ212 movement that has been shaking the country for several weeks. I also met a participant in the Malagasy movement of the same name, except for the telephone code. I report their words here, adding a few comments (admittedly too hastily; the errors and inaccuracies are solely my own) in an attempt to take stock of the situation. Let’s quickly set the scene: I am writing here as a member of lundimatin, from the African diaspora, convinced that the struggles here need to connect with the global wave of uprisings that we are witnessing from afar. In saying this, I am well aware, on the one hand, that I am not inventing new ground and, on the other hand, that the question of the positioning and possibilities of the struggles within the Western powers is different and remains unresolved. A more in-depth study would have required also to situate the people who informed me—I thank them warmly (it is their words that will be read here when quotes are introduced)—but this is only an incomplete progress report and perhaps useless for those already informed of recent and current events. This is the question that every uprising raises: what is the basis for the transition from routine order to the fire of insurrection? Currently, the problem seems to me to be posed as follows: how does this fire spread from one country to another, even though the technologies of surveillance and repression have never been so effective? And what forms does it take? Regarding Morocco, it seems that we must first get rid of the idea that the uprisings came out of nowhere: they are part of what I has been described to me as a powder keg, a long history of anger and struggle that will continue and resurface, even if the current movement runs out of steam (which seems to be the case since last Wednesday). When we talk about the “Arab Spring,” we rarely refer to Morocco, even though the February 20 movement was powerful. We can also mention the Rif Hirak of 2016, which spread to other cities in the country. Since then, “the tree has continued to grow.” People are directly opposed to the logic of the “makhzen,” a term linked to a complex and ancient history and which refers to the police system. The movement we are talking about began at the end of September following the death in August of eight women in a hospital in the south of the country (Agadir), while they had come to give birth by caesarean section. It was there, therefore, that the first demonstrations took place, which subsequently spread to the rest of the country. – I ask how? – one element to take into account, among many others, is a reel that went viral, in which we see a high-ranking member of the government addressing the demonstrators disdainfully and telling them roughly: “let them go continue their shit in Rabat”. This gentleman was taken at his word. Sociologically speaking, the category of “Gen Z” seemed imprecise to me. I ask for clarification: it was first students who took to the streets—hence this designation borrowed from the Nepalese movement, hence the organisational means from the world of gamers: Discord forums for example, which allow in particular to confuse the police by creating multiple discussion channels so that they no longer know where to turn. The students were quickly joined by a large-scale popular wave. In particular, in the south, where the situation has become truly insurrectional (city of Lqliâa), there are many agricultural workers (people grow tomatoes and avocados there, on empty stomachs, for Europeans) and also a lot of unemployment. “They hit straight away”: the level of violence of the repression seems to have surprised, it was of a brutality above normal. Two people were murdered by the police, another was seriously injured. They were targeted while dancing on police cars, having worn uniforms recovered in the crush; the riot was attacking the gendarmerie. Subsequently, helicopters were dispatched as soon as someone was injured, so as not to add fuel to the fire; these are highly sophisticated drones that allow the repressive forces to circulate information. “The engineering of maintaining order,” my friend tells me, is overdeveloped. I think directly of Mathieu Rigouste’s latest book, The Global War Against the People, whose critical relevance to current events seems to me more necessary every day. It is indeed here that we must come to talk about Israel, which we will find again with Madagascar, and which – it is a well-known fact – trained the Moroccan state in maintaining order and provided it with new repressive technologies. It has been repeated often enough: Gaza serves as a laboratory for repression on a global scale. It is not a question of intentionality, but of effects, the interests of the military-industrial economic complex come to perpetuate themselves. In response to the protests, the government handed out heavy prison sentences: three years, four years, or even fifteen years for a protester… the repression is atrocious. One of the challenges is to restore order by the start of the African Cup of Nations, which is scheduled to take place in December, and which represents a major structural investment. Last Wednesday, the word spread about taking a break, no doubt first to heal the wounds of the repression, but also, it seems, in anticipation of a promised speech by King Mohammed VI. It is difficult to know what the rioters think of the royal institution, but it is certain that this refers to issues very different from those of the old European states. The king seemed to me to represent for some, among many other things, a sort of counter-power to oppose the government (he is reputed to be more progressive). This is very far, however, from having been able to stifle popular assertion, which does not appear to have fully awakened since last Wednesday. Is this the effect of the violence of the repression, or a temporary lull? “Everything will be decided now.” My third interviewee is talking about Madagascar, and the situation there really seems even more decisive than in Morocco: President Rajoelina, overwhelmed by the scale of the insurrection, has been extracted by France to Réunion Island. This is unheard of. Part of the army has turned, refusing to suppress the movement, sometimes joining it. The gendarmerie, which is a very strong institution in the state, is not doing the same, however. We also find “GenZ” there, Discord, the skull and straw hat flag from the manga One Piece. On September 25, two or three days before the Agadir demonstrations, students from the Ankatso Polytechnic School spontaneously took to the streets, quickly joined by other groups of students. Living conditions at the school were unbearable: no electricity, no water. The energy issue was a truly structuring one, both for the ongoing revolution and for the power that was in place (which is certainly not much in place any more). The year 1960 and Madagascar’s independence did not ensure energy autonomy for the country. Power plants, fuelled by oil—and also operating the pumps needed to circulate water—were at the centre of a set of corrupt practices, in a context of shortages. Frequent “load shedding” consisted of regularly shutting down power plants (and therefore, water supplies) in order to save money. In Madagascar, the coloniality of power is glaringly obvious. The French Empire, however senile it may be, still owns the so-called Scattered Islands territory off the coast of the country, which it is keen to hold onto (stakes: potential energy resources, strategic presence in the Indian Ocean, etc.). President Rajoelina, who has dual nationality, is close to Macron (perhaps he will succeed Lecornu?). France has managed to offload an EDF hydroelectric power plant to replace the depleted national company, Jirama. Jirama’s CEO is none other than Ron Weiss, former head of Israel Electric Group. The State of Israel has several partnerships with Madagascar. One suspects that the business of death, control, and repression is part of this, but there is also, besides the Predator spyware, the dystopia of “modern farms.” As in Morocco, the movement is part of a long history of popular revolts, which can be traced back at least to 1947. The big difference, however, with most previous movements (at least the most recent ones), is that this one was not hijacked by a political leader. In 2009, Rajoelina managed to exploit the uprising to rise to power. Today, the only protagonist is “GenZ Madagascar,” not a proper name, nor a party. While some are currently trying to impose a structure on the movement, nothing is yet set in stone. Just like in Morocco, GenZ is not limited to a group of students (I have the impression that the signifier is floating, and is added to a host of other sociological determinations – perhaps we can even hope that it goes so far as to reconfigure them). The movement has a great social amplitude. Very poor classes are participating in the riots and looting in Antananarivo. Obviously, the government has tried to instrumentalise the looting to discredit the movement (in the past, it has allowed looting to take place for this purpose, by paying people and retaining the police). But this time, there is nothing to be done. Within the first 24 hours of the mobilisation, the government was dismissed and an army general was appointed Prime Minister. Huge bonuses were paid to the police to compensate for the delays in sales, followed by calls for a sort of reverse boycott: shopkeepers were asked to systematically refuse to sell their products to police officers, gendarmes, and their families. Without presuming what will happen and without neglecting that the power vacuum risks “opening the door to all appetites” (fear of the arrival of yet another tyrant), a notable fact has been the collective and continued attack, since the beginning of the movement, on Ravatomanga, the richest man in the country, a filthy capitalist linked to the corruption of the oil and electricity business, introduced into the upper echelons of power for about fifteen years, possessing “a right of life and death over the Malagasy economy.” Remember that it was in a private plane of one of Ravatomanga’s companies that Carlos Ghosn was exfiltrated from Japan (!). “Voldemort of protest ,” Ravatomanga had not been targeted during the last movements: we knew that his name “was not pronounced with impunity.” But now, he has also packed his belongings and gone into hiding in Mauritius. Three main demands crystallised during the popular uprising that, at least temporarily, defeated a government closely supported by the greatest Western powers: the resignation of the government, the arrest of Ravatomanga so that he can be brought to justice, and the dismantling of the “independent” national electoral commission (because it is not). Would a positive response to these demands from the government—or, if it fails to return, from the African Union, which had already governed between 2014 and 2019—be enough to put an end to the movement? What is certain, it seems to me, is that if we want to hope that the various GenZ movements, whose current exploits are exemplary, will come to permanently worry the colonial and global roots of “modern” state powers, they will have to become even more transnational, even reaching the imperial centres of power: they are just waiting for us. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Machine translation The post GenZ revolts in Morocco and Madagascar appeared first on Freedom News.