In an interview with ROAPE, Micheline Ravololonarisoa discusses the history of Madagascar, French colonialism and the remarkable student movement in 1972 which she was one of the leaders as a member of the strike committee. Coming from a non-political family, Micheline became a student leader, and then a pan-African activist, based in Kenya, and forced into exile from the continent. She reflects on a life of activism, and Madagascar’s place in Africa.
Before we get started, can you give ROAPE readers a brief introduction to your political history and work?
Micheline Ravololonarisoa: Being from a petit bourgeois family, who did not think much about women in politics. I never joined a political party. Politics was a man’s preserve and, considered to be treacherous so all that was needed was to have a good education in French and on France preferably!
So much for alienation and a colonised mind!
Very few women joined political parties, but there were a burgeoning group of social movements in different spaces.
So, in the last year of my secondary school before university, having read some publications about the World Student Christian Federation, (WSCF) and heard about what they were doing and thinking, I joined the Student Christian Movement in Madagascar (SCM-MPIKRIMA), a progressive, left-leaning protestant student movement, part of the World Student Christian Federation (WSCF) and the World Council of Churches. It was a global community of Student Christian Movements committed to dialogue, ecumenism, social justice and peace.
It is through this organisation that I was exposed to the socialist ideology and was “politicised” on issues of justice, equality, women’s participation and rights.
I was part of a group that went to Tanzania on a training course on socialism organised by WSCF. Later on, after my university graduation, I left Madagascar and came to Nairobi (Kenya) to join the WSCF Regional Office for Africa, as a programme officer to lead a project called “Liberation ”. But this was after a period of activism at the height of the student movement in Madagascar itself.
Can you tell us a little about Madagascar’s anti-imperialist political history and political movements?
The people of Madagascar, the Malagasy, like all people from French former colonies, resisted colonialism and launched anti-colonial and anti-imperialist struggles to oppose French occupation and colonial policies and programmes to chase out the French colonisers from their land which they occupied since 1882.
So the central issue of Madagascar’s political history has always evolved around the liberation struggle, first from the yoke of colonial occupation and then from capitalist exploitation.
Both these two periods saw the emergence of organised popular movements.
As early as 1895, when Madagascar was still a French protectorate, and throughout the colonial period, up to the beginning of 1905, the Menalamba Movement [literally, the ones with red clothes mena(red)lamba is the shawl worn by the combatants in the resistance] was the key anti-colonial movement, organising and leading a revolt against French occupation throughout the island. Their actions were directed not only against the economic policies of the colonisers, in particular the taxation system, but also against capitalist accumulation of those close to the reigning monarch.
In 1913 the formation of the VVS (Vy, Vato, Sakelika – Iron, Stone, Ramification) movement, was established by a group of Malagasy intellectuals, mainly medical doctors. The main objective of this movement was the intellectual and spiritual preparation of the Malagasy people “to work relentlessly for Madagascar to free the Nation and recover its independence”. VVS’s ambition was to have a political party whose objective would have been to work for Madagascar’s total liberation. Organised in cells of no more than 10 people each, the movement rejected the policies set by the French occupying force to dominate Madagascar and called for solidarity to fight against the colonialists, for equal rights and dignity. VVS’s mobilisation and action were a death threat to the French to the extent that they used all the repressive tools in their power to crush the movement. Although several resistance movements emerged in different regions in the south, north and east of Madagascar, all VVS members after being accused of setting up an illegal association, were arrested, imprisoned and had to wait until the end of the First World War, to be freed in 1921, following interventions by the Protestant churches and French communists’ parliamentarians.
Since the demise of VVS and due to political events in the world, especially the second world war, work of militant political movements has been very limited as the coloniser banned Malagasy citizens from setting up associations. Only advocacy made by reformists who wanted all Malagasy people to have French citizenship and to benefit from the same status and privileges as the French were visible and “tolerated”.
VVS’s political aspirations left an ideological heritage which led to increased nationalist sentiments of many progressive Malagasy people, who wanted total independence.
At the end of the Second World War, and upon the return of Malagasy men who fought on the side of France, the ban on the freedom of association was lifted, and several associations and political parties were born, all advocating for Madagascar’s autonomy – though at this point not independence. The most notable of those was the communist study group, political parties such as PANAMA (Partie Nationaliste Malagasy) who stated clearly that independence can only be obtained through armed struggle. Their stand was to protect national unity, recover national sovereignty and regain independence by all means. A very well-organised party it had relations with several other parties and associations outside of Madagascar.
The MDRM (Mouvement démocratique pour le renouveau de Madagascar – Democratic Movement for Madagascar Renewal) was established in Paris and Madagascar in February 1946. MDRM became a political party in June 1946. On 29 March 1947, MDRM launched an armed offensive against the French occupation in all the regions of Madagascar from East to West, North to South, including Antananarivo, the capital city, while at the same time preparing to hold its first Congress scheduled for April 1947. Although defeated by the superiority of the French army, and the arrest, imprisonment and killing of most of its leadership, hope for Madagascar’s independence was kept alive.
France granted the paper for Madagascar’s independence in 1960.
Can you tell us about the peasant uprising in the South of Madagasikara in 1971?
Led by the political party MONIMA (Mouvement nationaliste et independant de Madagasacar), this movement was a revolt against the cost of food, and the peasants’ refusal to pay taxes. Violently repressed by the regime, who accused them of conniving with communists, MONIMA was dissolved by government order and several of its leaders were sent to detention in Nosy Lava, the prison island, mainly for political prisoners. Many died of thirst and hunger there. Those who survived detention were released in 1971.
As an activist in the student movement of May 1972, this movement led to the end of the first postcolonial government in Madagascar. Can you talk about this movement and your involvement?
The origin of the student movement in May 1972 and the subsequent popular movement that brought down the first postcolonial government in Madagascar, was the state of education. Madagascar’s education system was an expression of the continuation of French colonial presence and was the basis of social inequality in the country, the latter based on differences and division along ethnic and class lines.
The divisive policy in the content and quality of education was a hallmark of the French continuous policy of divide and rule to keep a firm grip on the training of the country’s elites and to make them the servile implementers of France’s neo-colonial ambitions.
Different progressive social forces, including socialist political parties such as AKFM (Congress Party for the Independence of Madagascar, pro-Soviet) and MONIMA, argued that the country’s political independence granted by France in 1960, is only the first stage on the long path to decolonisation. Independence was only nominal. We had independence (on paper) but we were not independent.
In March 1971, eleven years after France had granted Madagascar, formal independence, students at the College of Medicine in Antananarivo, went on strike to protest their material conditions, and the inequality in the content and outcome of their studies compared to the one provided at the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Madagascar. This protest marked the beginning of a period of intense political and economic struggles during which ideological tensions between liberals and socialists reached their peak.
On this intense period of struggle, can you please speak directly to your own involvement?
In 1972 I was in my third year as a student in Malagasy literature and language at the Faculte des lettres et Sciences humaines de Madagascar. On 24 April in solidarity with the medical school students’ demand for a revision of the colonial-era curriculum and the dismissal of French teachers at the school, students from all faculties at the university rose up and soon created a vast nationwide movement that also included secondary school students. Under the leadership of the Federation des Associations d’etudiants de Madagascar (FAEM), of which I was the general secretary, campaigns of information and conscientisation were undertaken, whose objectives were to provide the correct analysis and ideological framework to the demands formulated by the movement. Besides the tasks of conscientisation, serious and systematic efforts at alliance-building with different professional and grassroots organisations throughout Madagascar were undertaken.
For us, this path was two-fold – first, the total decolonisation of Madagascar in the form of the Malagasy people’s full ownership of the intellectual, social, economic and political means of production through the abolition of the 1960 Cooperation Agreement with France that epitomised the ongoing institutional and ideological domination of the former colonial power. Secondly, the creation of a pro-people, Malagasy-owned new social, economic and political framework, implemented and managed through the use of the Malagasy philosophy and language which is the tenet and objective of “Malgachisation” as later expressed in the “Charter of the Malagasy Socialist Revolution” (1975) written by the “Red Admiral” Didier Ratsiraka (1936-2021). [1]
So, assemblies during the strike were moments of intense political work, of education, and conscientisation that gave university and college students the opportunities to analyse, debate and propose and plan the way forward.
Although some of the leaders in the movement were members of political parties, the movement was independent from political parties. Its main objective was to analyse and understand the deeper structural reasons for the inequalities, not only in education but in the Malagasy society at large and search for the alternative that could transform the state of inequality, exclusion and injustice.
We planned for the organisation of the strike and put in place the various instances that will enable analysis, learning, and planning for social and political transformation by all.
As one of the two student representatives of the Faculte des Lettres et des Sciences Humaines, and Secretary of FAEM, I was at the frontline of planning and seeking clarity of the purpose of the movement, ensuring participation, and despite the severe repression by the ruling regime, and armed with the “unshakable determination to rid ourselves” of what Lenin criticised as the “prevailing amateurism in struggle,” we began to painstakingly “establish an organisation of revolutionaries capable of lending energy, stability, and continuity to the political struggle” and thus craft the socialist alternative for Madagascar.
We were inspired by experience of students elsewhere and people’s struggles in different parts of the world in particular in Latin America, which we debated during our meetings.
Leaflets were drafted by the Study Commission and distributed throughout the country, courtesy of the solidarity of bus companies who transported them free of charge to different provinces. Also, we members of the leadership committee led daily discussions in schools and during the general assemblies and it was often student representatives who provided direction to the movement.
Can you take us through what happened and what you achieved specifically?
One of the crucial gains of the movement is students acquired the freedom to speak and express themselves in an unconventional way and with new words, quite against the acquired and conventional Malagasy culture, so with no parental censorship. A true emancipation, if not total liberation.
Then, on the night 12 May 1972, as we were having the usual assembly meeting in the university main hall, taking stock of the day’s discussions in the seminars and debating how we were going to build alliances with various social groups, such as worker trade unions, teachers, professional people, parents, the jobless youth, peasants organisations and develop a common position on our response to the proposal made by the government asking us to resume classes and enter into discussion with the government – this was when we were severely repressed.
The strike committee of which I was a member, was meeting at the FAEM office to prepare for the demonstration planned the following morning and the usual meeting of the strike permanent committee (comite permanent) composed of two delegates per school was taking place in the university’s main hall. All the participants in the room were encircled by the FRS – Forces republicaines de securitè – minors of less 18 years old were separated and all the rest of us were arrested and taken to detention in Nosy Lava, the infamous prison island. I was sent to detention like all those who were rounded up .
It is in response to this arrest that protests erupted across the capital city of Antananarivo, while the FRS were using live ammunition to disperse the protesters. It was during this protest that the ZOAM (Unemployed Youth of Madagascar) – whose members were from the poor, “black” quarters of the capital – began to be recognised as a force to reckon with as they provided protection to the unarmed demonstrators. Following the popular protest, the regime started by proposing the establishment of a military junta to take the helm of power. This proposal was a seriously divisive one as some people agreed to it and others, including the student movement was staunchly opposed to it.
This recognition of the ZOAM as a political force who now as representative of the jobless urban, sub-proletariat, able to articulate their own issues and propose their own solution by being represented in decision-making in the movement is one of the defining changes resulting from the popular movement that changed the Malagasy political landscape.
Solid organisation and increased political awareness of the various social forces led to the emergence of a clear theoretical and ideological framework for a “second independence,” but the implementation of these proposals was hampered by the election, via referendum of a transitional military junta (1972-1975) after which President Tsiranana stepped down.
Nonetheless, the framework and the ways to implement continued to be discussed during the “Zaikabe”, the People’s Congress, held in early September 1972.
Prior to the Congress, a National Seminar was held in preparation of the Congress and proposals made by the different categories of actors were considered.
During the congress, proposals on social, economic and political systems to be built were made while peasant organisations representing approximately 15% of the participants demanded the return of their land confiscated by large French capitalist companies.
After the 1972 movement and the holding of the National Congress, implementation of the resolution was left to the government which was the military government. As the aim of the student and popular movement was not to take overpower, but to make proposals on the profile of governance, the military junta, having detected this weakness and played the same kind of politics as the first regime.
Following the movement in Madagascar can you tell us about what you did afterwards?
Following the dismembering of the movement and the military junta’s decision to hold a referendum on the future shape of Madagascar political governance, I saw that we had reached a point of no-return, and I left Madagascar.
Having learned about the role I played in the student movement in Madagascar, WSCF (World Student Christian Federation) gave me the task of leading a programme called the Liberation programme. This was a programme whose aim was to inform, sensitise and mobilise students in African universities to be in solidarity with people in the former Portuguese colonies, Zimbabwe and South Africa and still under apartheid. WSCF wanted to inform, sensitise and mobilise students in Africa under apartheid.
Having learned from my experience in Madagascar that information was key to understanding political dynamics and the search for solutions to address them, I developed an information bulletin simply called “Liberation” on each country with the questions to be discussed with the students during my meetings with students at the universities I was visiting. I also engaged with representatives of liberation movements in different parts of Africa mainly those based in Tanzania and Zambia.
I had the opportunity to meet and join study groups on socialism, class struggles and anti-imperialist struggles, organised by different African social movements and discussed with now well-known socialist thinkers, mainly from East Africa such as the late Babu, Issa Shivji, Mahmood Mamdani, and Yash Tandon, among others, each who greatly enhanced my knowledge but also have fortified my resolve to work for change, liberation, equality and justice as an African woman.
Finally, can you tell us what you read, and what conclusions you reached later in your life from your earlier activism in Madagascar?
As I was based in Nairobi, I had access to books in English, so I avidly read the classics on the theory of African people’s struggle as there was not much on Africa in Madagascar.
The book that most enlightened me, and continues to do so today, is Rodney’s How Europe Underdeveloped Africa (1972). So much so that as part of my programme together with other progressive organisations in Nairobi at the time, and the National Church Council of Kenya, we invited Walter Rodney to come to Kenya and address students at the University of Nairobi University as well as members of various social movements. This enabled us to deepen our understanding of capitalist exploitation and how we can get organised and contribute to dismantling it.
Later on, as I was one of the Commissioner of the Programme to Combat racism of the World Council of Churches, my understanding of Rodney’s arguments helped me to contribute to the movement demanding disinvestment from South Africa and to mobilise students for solidarity with the Australian aboriginal, and the Sri Lankan Tamil.
In 1975 family life brought me to Europe first, in Geneva. I came back to Nairobi in 1978 where I found people that I knew from the social movement had now gone underground in Kenya and were publishing the PAMBANA newsletter which was banned by the Moi Government and several of the comrades I knew then were in detention for that reason. My political work was to provide solidarity to their families to the best of my ability. Until my husband was arrested on a trump-up charge and following his release from detention we had to leave Kenya again for Canada.
In Canada, I enrolled for a postgraduate course on Women Study at the University of Waterloo while also teaching French language at both Waterloo and Wilfred Laurier University until 1991 when we came to the UK where my husband got a job.
I got a job at the Africa Centre first and eventually founded the Agency for Cooperation and Research for Development and was in charge of the West Africa portfolio which focused on Mali, Niger, Burkina Faso, Tchad, and Mauritania, and developed new programmes in Guinee, Liberia and Sierra Leone
In terms of lessons learned from engagement in politics as an African woman, I would say say, the debates, discussions, and learning during the student’s seminars in 1972 produced knowledge that was useful later in my life. The student movement itself created a radical mutation of consciousness of what was wrong, what needed to change, and how that change could happen and what role I could have in it.
Those debates also brought to the fore the notion of being independent, as opposed to having independence.
Our ambition as students wasn’t to take overpower, but to facilitate the emergence of a democratic state that can respond to the needs of Malagasy citizens and support the realisation of their aspiration.
Political practices today do not seem to allow for such a process to happen, so we come back to the perennial question. What needs to be done?
Micheline Ravololonarisoa has been an activist and socialist all of her life and has worked for years as a writer and development consultant. Micheline lives in London with her husband.
All the photographs in the interview have been provided by Micheline Ravolonarisoa. The feature photograph shows Micheline speaking as the government refused the students demand during the mass uprisings in 1972.
Notes
[1] Malgachisation is not only about the use of the Malagasy language, but also the principle that aimed to harmonise the content and method of education to be in line with the “revolutionary imperatives” of a socialist ideology, towards the “building of a socialist and truly Malagasy state, rooted in the Malagasy philosophy, values, process of thoughts and language.” (Charter of the Malagasy Socialist revolution).
