century, it had at least four actual or attempted coups. The name of that Tana restaurant, Ku-de-ta, is no joke.
“Parties keep changing their colors,” said Richard. “Today, a party is in opposition, but tomorrow it will rejoin the alliance of the party in power and in return has to be given a ministry.” Richard served in government positions under three presidents and criticizes a system that is “100 percent influenced” by politics. Ministers are, of course, political appointees, but party membership is also required for department heads who, in another country, would be career civil servants. Ministers and their staffs are constantly changing. Richard recalls a test question on the entrance examination for first-year sociology students: Who is the minister of public services? “No one knew. It changes so often.”
Richard credits his political activism to his father, Rasamoelina, who worked as a barber in Arivonimamo. Rasamoelina was a member of the Democratic Movement for Malagasy Renovation (MDRM), formed by French-educated nationalists after World War II to push for independence. The MDRM hoped for a peaceful transition, but the French government refused to consider any degree of political autonomy. The French colonial minister, Marius Moutet, cabled the high commission in Tana to “fight the MDRM by any means.” As tensions rose, Rasamoelina’s smoke-filled barber’s shop became a hotbed of political discussion. In 1947, a revolt broke out in eastern Madagascar, with rebels attacking French commercial interests, including plantations and mines. The revolt spread to other regions. In Arivonimamo, Rasamoelina, aged thirty-two, left his family and shop to join a rebel unit. He was lucky to survive.
The suppression of the 1947 rebellion is regarded by historians as one of the most brutal of the colonial period. There were few French casualties because most fighting was done by Senegalese—an example of one colonial people being used to suppress another. Psychological tactics were employed—rape, torture, and the burning or razing of villages. In one town in the southeast, prisoners were thrown from an aircraft on a so-called death flight. In Tana, prisoners were herded into railroad cars; at Moramanga, on the line to the east coast port of Tamatave (now Toamasina), the doors were opened, and the prisoners machine-gunned. French colonial reports put the death toll at eighty to ninety thousand, although later figures lowered it to eleven thousand. The discrepancy has never been satisfactorily explained. Perhaps no one will ever know how many died from hunger or disease after fleeing from their villages into the forest.
In Arivonimamo, Rasamoelina’s rebel unit was forced to flee to the hills ahead of advancing Senegalese troops. The group was captured, but Rasamoelina and a few others escaped from trucks while being transported back to Arivonimamo. A few months later, after the fighting was over, he returned to the town. Family connections enabled him to stay out of prison.
Richard was born seven years later, but the struggle against the French shaped his politics and passions. “My father always talked about how hard it was to achieve independence. We paid with many deaths, with torture, with forced labor.” Men were sent to build roads, and women and children conscripted into the civilian labor corps.
Richard criticizes the French for fomenting ethnic divisions in Madagascar. “My father talked about how the colonizers lit the fire between the coastal peoples [the côtiers] and those of the high plateau. It was the kings of the high plateau [the Merina] who united the island, after conquering the small coastal kingdoms. But when the French came to colonize, they told the coastal peoples, ‘We’re liberating you from subjugation.’ It was a policy of divide and rule.”
Too Many Coups
The nationalist leader Philibert Tsiranana, a côtier, became the country’s first president in 1960, but postindependence euphoria soon evaporated as the country struggled with debt and a poor economy. In 1972, popular protests forced Tsiranana to hand over power to the army commander, General Gabriel Ramanantsoa. Political turmoil continued, and in 1975, after surviving several coup attempts, Ramanantsoa stepped down. His successor was assassinated within a week of taking office, and another coup brought Admiral Didier Ratsiraka to power. He weakened relations with France and aligned Madagascar with the Soviet Union.
Although paying lip service to socialist principles, Ratsiraka sought to impose a revolution from above. Madagascar even had its own “Red Book” (Boky Mena) to guide the actions of the five pillars of the revolution: the Supreme Revolutionary Council, peasants and workers, young intellectuals, women, and the Popular Armed Forces. The Red Book advocated a foreign policy of nonalignment, with domestic policies focused on economic development through rigorous planning. Political parties were suppressed, and strict censorship enforced. Because of its situation on the Mozambique Channel—a major shipping route for oil and other commodities—Madagascar became a key proxy in Cold War geopolitics. Although the government had nationalized some French companies, France maintained a large embassy and a major aid program. When Malcolm McBain arrived as UK ambassador in 1984, he found a “considerable diplomatic presence.”
It was also important to the Russians. [They] had a large embassy. There were about forty diplomatic missions, resident missions in Madagascar, plus numerous non-resident missions and a large European delegation. . . . The Communist Chinese were running an aid programme, and rebuilt the key road linking the capital with the main port. The Japanese were there, with some valuable aid. Also represented by embassies were the North Koreans, the Libyans, the Indians, the Indonesians, the Cubans and the Vietnamese. The African National Congress had a representative there, the Egyptians, the Yugoslavs, the East Germans, of course.8
The Soviet Union deployed thousands of technical staff and advisers—on everything from aviation and the military to sports. Russian was introduced to the secondary school curriculum; the best students went on to study in Moscow and Leningrad. North Korea built Ratsiraka a new concrete presidential palace, modeled on the rova, outside the city. However, life for most Malagasy did not improve.
“The state controlled everything, all the wealth,” said Richard. “The only jobs were with the government, and you needed connections.” The French colonists had been replaced by a new group of homegrown oppressors. When Ratsiraka came to power, Richard was studying at UA, working at night in a gargotte (a roadside restaurant) to support himself. He joined the Proletarian Party and took part in student antigovernment protests. “We were reading Che Guevara, and running around at night, plastering posters on walls,” he recalled. “We were always running away, and in danger of being shot by the security forces. It was a great adventure.”
With Ratsiraka in power, most French faculty left the university, to be replaced by Soviet professors. “They brought with them lots of books on scientific communism,” said Richard. “They were serious about their mission and taught all subjects using Marxist-Leninist principles, but the students didn’t read most of the books. Fortunately, the students were exposed to two perspectives because the Malagasy professors stayed.”
Strikes and student protests continued as economic conditions worsened. In 1979, when Richard’s first child was born, almost everything—food, milk, medicines, soap—was in short supply. “You needed to belong to the cooperative of the revolutionary party to have coupons for supplies,” he said. “There were always shortages, but we were told we needed to make sacrifices to reach the socialist paradise.”
In 1989, Ratsiraka was returned for a third seven-year term in what many regarded as a rigged election. For the next four years, the country was paralyzed by general strikes and riots. In 1993, opposition candidate Albert Zafy defeated Ratsiraka, ending his seventeen years in power and sending him into exile in France. Three years later, Zafy was impeached by the parliament. To the surprise of the international community, and many Malagasy, Ratsiraka returned to win the 1996 election.
With the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union, Ratsiraka abandoned the socialist experiment, imposed neoliberal reforms, and restored diplomatic and economic ties with France. The economy improved, with a boom in tourism and textile exports to the United States; from 1997 to 2001, foreign direct investment grew tenfold, and in 2001, the economy grew by 6.7 percent, one of the best performers in Africa.
Two Presidents, Two Capitals
Ratsiraka’s opponent in the December 2001 election represented a radically