On Saturday 21 December 2024 in Saint-Denis, a march in solidarity with the victims of the Chido disaster in Mayotte was organised. The remarks made by Emmanuel Macron, the French President, last Thursday in Mayotte have been the subject of comment. The French leader said that if the people of Mayotte didn’t have his nationality, they would be 10,000 times worse off than they are now. Interviewed by Réunion La 1ère, one of the participants in the solidarity march said: ‘We have all the advantages of being French on paper alone, with France’s influence around the world. But, in reality, we have all the disadvantages of being in France, because international aid would have intervened much more quickly if we weren’t French. You have to activate the aid’.

Has Paris asked for help from the African Union and the UN?

Indeed, as surprising as it may seem given the scale of the disaster in Mayotte, Paris did not immediately call for international aid to speed up the reconstruction of basic services. There is no doubt that international solidarity would have made it possible to restore the drinking water, electricity and telecommunications networks, and to rebuild schools using prefabricated elements sent by boat.
It is true that French aid has fallen far short of expectations. While the Comoros government sent 250 tonnes of bottled water, Paris sent barely half of that via a ‘sea bridge’ from La Réunion Island, nearly 1,500 kilometres away as the crow flies.
To deal with the emergency, Paris is organising health transfers from Mayotte to Réunion and an air and sea bridge from La Réunion to Mayotte to bring in human and material resources. But the distance between the two islands is vast, far greater than that between Mayotte and its African Union neighbours, which were spared by Chido except for Mozambique, which is mourning dozens of victims.
Cyclone Chido not only destroyed the homes of the poorest people. It also disrupted public services such as water and electricity, installed with public money sent by Paris.

No electricity and queues with jerry cans in front of fountains

Since the French administration was maintained in this part of the independent Comoros in 1975, Paris and French companies have invested heavily so that the inhabitants of Mayotte can enjoy services considered basic in the West: tarmac roads, an airport, a deep-water port, tap water, electricity, schools, a hospital up to European standards and a mobile telephone network. The aim was to meet the expectations of a population that had been told they were French. In return, this population expects to live as they do in France, with drinking water delivered directly to several rooms in a home, lights that come on every time you go home and 4G everywhere.
But Cyclone Chido swept all that away. The majority of the population no longer enjoy the comforts of French neo-colonialism. So, as in many countries around the world, some Mahorais have to queue up to fill water cans at a public fountain. Others have to relearn how to live without electricity and a permanent telephone. What’s more, the consumer society imported by French neo-colonialism is totally disorganised: the airport is closed and communications between the port and other parts of the island are disrupted.
There is also a serious health problem.

No more toilets and the difficult task of burying all the victims

First of all, many Mahorais have to defecate in the open air and have very little water to wash themselves. The inhabitants of the tens of thousands of destroyed houses no longer have toilets, showers or access to running water, and it is hard to believe that French aid will be able to solve this problem in just a few days.
After that, the number of victims will remain unknown. The day after the cyclone hit, the Prefect of Mayotte said that the death toll could be in the hundreds or even thousands. However, the official death toll is less than 50. That’s a huge difference. It cannot be ruled out that many remains may still be trapped in the rubble or in the wild.
All this is just reality, and it is a far cry from the dream sold by Paris, which wants people to believe that Mayotte is French and will remain so.

Does Paris have the money to rebuild?

It is clear that it is impossible for all the inhabitants of Mayotte to have access to the services that exist in a country like France. And given the state of France’s finances, it is equally difficult to believe that Paris will have the resources to rebuild Mayotte quickly. Requests from French nationals living in Mayotte to emigrate to La Réunion Island are revealing: many no longer believe in the dream sold by French neo-colonialism on this island in the Comoros archipelago.

M.M.