The maintenance of the French administration in Mayotte and the public transfers from Paris to the island have made this territory a showcase for the West in our region. In particular, Mayotte has a hospital with extensive facilities and human resources, where the cost of treatment is covered by the social security system. This has led to a large influx of migrants to Mayotte. This explains why there are large areas of precarious housing in Mayotte. Paris has not provided sufficient resources to build the social housing needed to accommodate all this population.
These fragile houses could not effectively protect their occupants from cyclonic winds. The scale of the disaster is so great that the Prefect of Mayotte has indicated that it will be impossible to draw up a death toll. According to him, several hundred, if not several thousand people, lost their lives following the passage of cyclone Chido.
This tragic event is not just the result of a natural disaster or global warming caused by capitalism. Above all, it is the result of political decisions taken by Paris.

1975: violence and deportations to maintain French administration

On 12 November 1975, the Comoros were admitted as a member state of the United Nations. This admission followed the declaration of independence on 6 July 1975, based on the result of the referendum organised by the French authorities on 22 December 1974: 99% in favour of a return to independence.
On 12 November 1975, Saïd Mohamed Djaffar El Macelie spoke at the UN General Assembly in New York. Here is an extract from his speech:
‘Since we declared ourselves independent, the former administering power has set up a direct administration over part of our territory. This escapes the legitimate authority of our government and ignores, firstly, our sovereignty and, secondly, the achievements of the Statute of Internal Autonomy. The talks initiated by the Comorian and French governments in the first half of last October on the transfer of powers for the whole of our country had to be suspended, due to a fundamental disagreement on the sacred and non-negotiable nature of our territorial integrity and on the principle of non-interference in the internal affairs of the two sovereign states.
Since then, we have witnessed an extremely serious political and human drama in our country. On the one hand, we see the leaders of the former administering power trying to break up our national unity through so-called institutional procedures, which are alien and inapplicable to our young sovereign state. On the other hand, bands of fanatics are systematically destroying entire villages and organising the mass deportation of a peaceful and unprotected population with the passive and active complicity of the French Gendarmerie, the Foreign Legion and the French marines’.

The massive influx of money from France has created a major migratory flow

Paris’ objective was to cleanse Mayotte of all its inhabitants openly in favour of a return to independence. The climate of terror silenced any dissent. This inaugurated a policy of division. Mayotte is part of southern Africa. It is one of the fastest-growing regions in the world. The public money that came to Mayotte from France led to the importation of a consumer society. To this has been added the immigration of overpaid civil servants. This massive influx of money has automatically attracted would-be emigrants to Mayotte.
French law in Mayotte considers anyone who is not a national of a European Union country to be an intruder. It has made Grand Comorians, Mohelians and Anjouanese foreigners in Mayotte. The requirement for residents of the other Comorian islands to have a visa to enter Mayotte has not curbed this immigration. It has forced these would-be immigrants to take considerable risks, by travelling by clandestine boat at night. This has led to numerous tragedies, with thousands of people drowning when their boats sank between Anjouan and Mayotte.

The result: tens of thousands of people unprotected in the event of a cyclone

Paris has maintained the deportation policy inaugurated in 1975, with an average of 20,000 expulsions per year. This did not prevent the population of Mayotte from growing from less than 50,000 to more than 320,000 in less than 50 years of French administration.
The French authorities did not set out to welcome immigrants in good conditions. On the contrary, they were subjected to popular vindictiveness, judged to be responsible for all the ills of society. This is why Paris has not implemented a massive plan to build cyclone-resistant housing.
The result was the creation of vast areas of informal housing known as shanty towns. Tens of thousands of people were left unprotected against the arrival of a cyclone.
The conditions were ripe for disaster. Cyclone Chido showed the world the results of maintaining the French administration in Mayotte: an unprecedented number of victims in our region following the passage of a natural phenomenon over a tropical island. Paris says it is even unable to draw up an assessment.

M.M.