In an article we wrote at the beginning of October, discussing the youth uprisings in two African countries (Madagascar and Morocco), we emphasised that these countries are both Françafrique countries. What does this French term mean? It is the name given to the entire set of economic, political, cultural and ideological methods used by France, one of the two main perpetrators of Africa's colonial history that began in the 19th century, to maintain control over its former colonies since the end of the colonial era, i.e. since the 1960s. It is a term derived from combining the French equivalent of the words "France" and "Africa", in indissoluble unity.
In terms of Madagascar, which will be the topic of this article, what we meant was the following: Madagascar, an island located off the southeast coast of Africa with a population of 32 million, rich in minerals and of high geostrategic value, still lives under French rule. This claim was corroborated just fifteen days later. The struggle, which spread from the youth to the trade unions and thus took on the character of a broad social uprising, drew army units to its side, forcing the country's president, Rajoelina, to flee the country. "I am still in charge," Rajoelina says, but no one believes him. It is almost certain that he has fled.
But whether he has actually fled or not, the whole world and France and Madagascar are talking about France having assisted him to escape. Everyone turns to ask Macron, "Did you let the bird fly?" Macron remains silent. He doesn't come up and say, "What's the connection?" So, whether the news of Rajoelina’s escape is true or not, it confirms that Madagascar is a semi-colony living in France's shadow. Everyone knows this. The rest is irrelevant!
Towards a pre-revolutionary situation
When a people or a section of the people powerful enough to challenge the government (e.g. the working class or the peasantry or the youth) rises up against years of exploitation and/or destitution and oppression, if this struggle (in terms of objective and/or subjective conditions) does not or cannot directly target political power, it should be called a "rebellion" rather than a "revolution". At the end of September, the movement that called itself Gen Z (Generation Z) in Madagascar, inspired by Nepal and Indonesia in Asia, was such a youth rebellion. Although pretentious high-brow postmodern theorists are doing everything they can to hide it, even the uninitiated younger generation of Madagascar, knowing that the proletariat is the most powerful contending force in present-day society, quite maturely called on the unions to go on a general strike at one stage of the struggle. Objective conditions were ripe for this, as the working classes, driven to the brink by the recent near-constant power and tap-water cuts exacerbating their misery, were ready for strike and resistance. The unions, too, sprang into action. When these two forces united—when the most vibrant element of all social movements, youth, joined hands with the proletariat—the entire society followed suit. Ultimately, the Gen Z movement transcended being merely a youth movement, evolving into a general popular uprising that included the economic organisations of the working class. The photograph below illustrates this.
We need to make an important side remark here concerning our native Turkey, for we are faced here with a beautiful political lesson. The 2013 Gezi rebellion was not able to do what the uneducated and politically inexperienced youth of Madagascar managed to do! Within the Gezi uprising, our Revolutionary Workers' Party (DIP) was the only force that systematically endeavoured to bring the struggle to the working class. The majority of the left, having become ideologically and politically captive to Gezi's youth, a social force freshly initiated to politics, could not understand the importance of this orientation.
The army takes the stage
Closing this aside, we return to Madagascar. Faced with this great social movement, this popular uprising, the army first split. Capsat, characterised as an "elite unit" by the international media, whose remit is staff orientation as well as administrative and technical tasks and which, therefore, has a certain strategic weight within the army, held a press conference and declared that they would not "shoot at our brothers and sisters". We immediately wrote https://x.com/Sungur_Savran/status/1977384264774631537">on social media that the situation in Madagascar was "developing towards a revolution or civil war." At this stage, if the general staff and senior officers had remained on the side of the political power, even though some factions of the army had joined the popular movement, the rebellious faction would have joined the popular movement and, possibly, emerged stronger, seized power and carried out a political revolution, or a civil war would have been set off if the two sides were not able to defeat each other. Nevertheless, the fact that the statement about the army seizing power was made by a colonel from Capsat could also be an indication that the army is divided.
According to international media reports, the situation seems to be the following: the army as a whole has lined up against the president and declared that it has taken power (with a somewhat timid attitude, according to the media). President Rajoelina's attempt to keep the army on his side by dismissing the old government in the early stages of the rebellion and appointing a high-ranking army general as prime minister did not save the day, as the latter also sided with the rebellious armed forces, saying, "I am first and foremost a soldier and I will fulfil my patriotic duty alongside my comrades-in-arms," even though he was the one implementing the repressive policy that resulted in two dozen deaths in 15 days (a figure cited by the United Nations)!
We cannot yet call the situation that has arisen a "revolution". The army's general staff and top brass should be seen as agents raised in the lap of French colonialism. A general staff coup can only break away from neo-colonialism exceptionally even in the poorest of countries. For example, the military coups that took place in the early 2020s in the Sahel countries of West Africa (primarily Burkina Faso, Mali and Guinea) are significant instances because they were political regimes dominated by lower-ranking officers and today they form a crucial front against imperialism. These countries were also France's former colonies. The Françafrique model had thus already suffered a major blow in Africa. Madagascar is another link in that chain.
But not every military coup follows the same path. After all, the current deposed president, Rajoelina, also came to power through a military coup in 2009! How can he forget this now, while manufacturing excuses for his imperialist masters that "the laws are being violated"! But the people do not forget and when the people take action, everything changes.
Madagascar is a poor country dependent on foreign aid, driven into financial bondage by its own weak ruling class. For a government to survive without begging at the doors of the imperialist system, it must make serious changes to its socio-economic system. Alongside the imperialists, Africa's ruling classes also take an unwavering conservative stance against such uprisings. The despicable organisation known as the African Union has already issued an unequivocal statement against Rajoelina's overthrow. France, and probably America too, will certainly not prop up a regime that does not readily turn to them for help. (When, with the army getting involved, we mentioned the possibility of a revolution, the liberal New York Times immediately raised the spectre of a "coup"! As if there were a democratically elected government to speak of a coup!)
Such political regimes actually fit a model well known in Africa. Since the period of decolonisation, Africa has been a continent of coups. The question of which direction this type of coup (i.e., the type born out of mass uprisings) will take cannot be answered in advance, independently of the subjective orientation of the classes and political leaderships in social and political struggles. Unlike a simple coup, here the mass movement has gained great strength through a sense of victory. It is impossible for the army to treat this mass as it might have before the movement, as a subjugated people with bowed heads. Therefore, the interaction between the evolution of the popular movement and the polarisation within the army will shape the development. This is why we say that military coups arising from such mass uprisings sometimes create a situation that can be described as pre-revolutionary. A pre-revolutionary situation does not necessarily mean that a revolution will necessarily occur. It means a situation that creates the potentiality of a revolution.
The most important example of this kind of coup in African history is the Egyptian revolution of 1952-54. A major uprising in Cairo resulted in a military coup, and when Nasser emerged victorious from the struggle within the Naguib-Nasser junta, Egypt embarked on an anti-imperialist bourgeois revolution, which became a source of revolutionary transformations throughout the Arab world.
However, Egypt is a country with a very rich historical heritage and a tradition of great revolutionary struggles (the Arabi Pasha uprising, the revolution in the early 1920s etc.). Moreover, that period was one in which the decolonisation movement drew great strength from the existence of the Soviet Union. Madagascar is a much more backward and isolated country and the period is one of imperialist domination and the rise of fascism worldwide. Of course, the special relationship established by the Sahel countries with Russia could also serve as an example for Madagascar. Everything will be determined by the mass movement and the struggle within the military ranks. We are not saying that Russia can play the same role as the Soviet Union. What we are saying is that, through an alliance with the popular movement, the military regime could gain a degree of autonomy against imperialism.
But in any case, the wave that began in Sri Lanka in 2022 and has been fuelled by uprisings this year in Madagascar, Bangladesh, Kenya, Nepal, Indonesia and Morocco continues to shake and rattle the world of the wretched of the earth.