The December 1976 elections' saw the emergence of the Movement Militant
Militant
Mauricien (MMM-Mauritian Movement) as the main party in Mauritius, on the one hand, and the formation of a right-wing coalition between the Parti Travailliste (PT-Labour Party) and the Parti Mauricien Social-Démocrate (PMSD-Mauritian Social Democratie Party), to hold onto a governmental majority, on the other.
Following the 1976 elections, the left opposition, represented by the MMM, held thirty-four seats. The right held a total of thirty-six seats, divided between the PT and the PMSD. Having barely escaped electoral defeat, the bourgeoisie set up a coalition government of the PT and PMSD, based on this narrow majority in the legislature. Seewoosagur Ramgoolam, leader of the PT and waning star of the past independence struggle, continued as premier.?
Fore the postele on gently testable for the balance of rumors to begin circulating inside the MMM and PT about the possibility of a new coalition between them. But the ranks of the MMM and part of its parliamentary bloc immediately objected to such a compromise. Since this threatened the unity of the MMM, those elements favoring a policy of this kind were forced to backpedal.
Now, a year and a half after the elections, political life in Mauritius is again going through a grave crisis. There is general agreement that the upcoming elections will give the MMM a large majority. The PT is being shaken by a major crisis. Ramgoolam has been shown to be a wornout politician, incapable of governing.
The economic crisis has been exacerbated. The government, whose resources are quite meager in a country ruled by the "ideal of private enterprise," has just decided to raise taxes, particularly on gasoline, where the tax jumped from 70 percent to 100 percent. The minister of planning recently said: "In order for Mauritius to get out of its rut, people have to work hard. Production must increase. At the same time, the number of paid holidays must be drastically cut. We also need a wage freeze."3 These are the words of a bourgeois politician on an island in the Indian Ocean, who was well trained by his imperialist masters.
The sugar industry is still permanently threatened by the fluctuations of the world market. The Lomé accords between the Common Market countries and some coun tries of Africa, the Caribbean, and the Pacific* do not rule out an even more discriminatory policy in the future with respect to European beet growers and countries that grow sugar cane.
The Free Industrial Zone has proved to be a giant hoax. Supported by tax loopholes and bargains on imports and energy supplies, the French, German, and Japanese capitalists have a field day. Then, after two years or so of relentless exploitation of the work force, they simply move on to better opportunities.
This situation is compounded by the breakdown of administration, the crisis in public transportation, and unemployment. According to government figures, the best estimate of the unemployment rate in the next period is 17%, which does not count 75% of the women who are "housewives."
Keeping up with the times, Mauritius has recently had its own Watergate. Someone named Hossen told Le Militant, newspaper of the MMM, that he was an agent of the Special Branch (the political police), and that the police had put him on the editorial staff of the newspaper Le Cernéen. These revelations show how the media have been infiltrated by informers and indicate the extent of police surveillance of Mauritian politics. This scandal was a frontal blow to a government that was already floundering.
A Workers Majority
The Mauritian ruling class can be divided into two groups, which have a kind of gentlemen's agreement on a division of labor. One section of the bourgeoisie, in its majority Hindu, derives its wealth from administering the state apparatus and is organized according to family cliques. The other section consists of the white, Franco- Mauritian bourgeoisie that controls most of the sugar industry, the shipping, and banking.
These two sectors do not always agree on everything. The Hindu bourgeoisie that looks to the PT has not relinquished hopes of broadening its social base through measures that favor the petty-bourgeois layers, such as a regressive tax structure and improvements in the commercial licensing system. Moreover, this sector is very much attached to the British political and continually tries to follow system London's lead.
The sugar-growing bourgeoisie supports the PMSD, led by the infamous Gaétan Duval, a corporation lawyer with close ties to French and South African interests and an advocate of a tough stance toward the workers movement.
At the other end of the scale, Mauritius has a surprisingly large working class. Nearly 60 percent of the population are workers, including a large share of proletarians in the strict sense of the word. What caused this situation?
Mauritius was first exploited by groups of Franco-Mauritians who relied on the forced labor of thousands of Indian and African slaves. As the system of exploitation developed further, these workers became proletarians.
The development of petty capitalism among the sugar growers, and the emergence of a well-to-do petty bourgeoisie took place through an inverse process: it was proletarians-mainly Hindus-who, through kickbacks, family connections, and maneuvers by the Hindu community were able to rise to a petty-bourgeois status. Moreover, the PT has a policy of aiding small capitalists. But the objective workings of the system, the hostility of the PMSD, and the constriction of the market, clearly limit such ambitions.
The mass of workers fall into four categories:
1. Agricultural laborers. On the sugar plantations, these workers are almost exclusively Hindu. They work under the most abominable conditions. The fact that they are paid on a piecework basis, that they must work under the watchful eye of sirdars, and that they always face the
threat of unemployment-these have all contributed to the search for individual solutions, which is exactly what the bosses want. These workers try to accumulate enough to get their own small herds of livestock or grow a few food crops.
They may be agricultural workers, but they are also the electoral base of the Hindu community and the PT.
2. Skilled workers. These are the "mill" (sugar factory) workers. There are twentyone mills in the country that divide up the largest cane-growing areas. Laborers and skilled workers have the same bosses; they are two interdependent links in the sugar chain. But the skilled workers are mainly Creole, a factor that does not lend itself to unity in action between them and the Hindu laborers.
Sugar workers as a whole-both field laborers and skilled workers-are the real workhorses of the Mauritian economy. From 1890 to 1976, they have remained at the same number-60,000-although the area under cultivation and productivity have increased steadily. The bourgeoisie now plans to reduce the number of mills by four, thereby contributing to the concentration of capital. In 1976 the boss of the Médine mill laid off 1,200 workers at one stroke. The development of a measure of automation in the fields will lead to further unemployment, while making the piecework payment system even more complicated and unfair.?
3. Seaport and Dockworkers. They have always been under the thumb of a boss class tied to the sugar interests—a boss class interested in reducing expenses as much as possible and keeping investments down to what is absolutely necessary to keep the port open. These dockworkers were in the vanguard of the big strikes of 1971.
4. Workers of the Free Industrial Zone. The overwhelming majority of these 22,000 workers are underpaid female workers, completely at the mercy of the foreign capitalists who have come to "make a rupee."
To these four major categories of workers, other, smaller groups could be added, like tea plantation workers, whose fate is in the hands of South African buyers, and transportation workers.
Between these two hostile classes, Mauritian society has left a little room for the petty bourgeoisie. But the latter, more than any other class, is divided in accordance with racial communities and their objective social situation.
In agriculture, the backward development of capitalism has produced a class of small individual landholders.
They number around 30,000, but 70 percent of them are obliged to sell their labor power on a temporary basis or to find other means of subsistence. The PT, which has
KENYA
BEY LEA
• TANZANIA Indian Quean
AGALEGA •
MOZAMBIQU
CARLATAIS CARAJOS
MALAGASY REPUBLIC
RODRIGUNZ
REUNION*
Mauritius
400 Miles
Financial Times consistently favored this social stratum, has in some places taken on the character of a real kulak party. The shopkeepers consist mainly of Chinese, generally tied to the PMSD, and Muslims, generally tied to the PT. The two live in a state of bitter rivalry.
The huge size of the state apparatus, and an educational system largely based on private schools, have also led to the development of an urban petty bourgeoisie, made up of civil servants, members of the liberal professions, cops, schoolteachers, and so forth.
In this social context, class conflicts very quickly become open confrontations. But the proletarian masses have not yet gotten the upper hand because of their isolation on this Indian Ocean island, and because of the deep racial divisions that exist.
Divide and Rule
The colonial masters made good use of the fact that members of different racial groups live side by side. Today the ruling classes and imperialists continue to rule through what has come to be known as "communalism." The various racial communities are cleverly manipulated by notables and bourgeois politicians. The reactionary press never misses a chance to honary prese never itieses recence to nighlight the istrators versus Hindu administrators, Chinese shopkeepers versus Muslim shopkeepers, Hindu laborers versus Creole factory workers, and so forth—not to mention the community soccer teams.
Nevertheless, this divide-and-rule strategy is slowly starting to lose its effectiveness. Many young people have given up speaking exclusively in their maternal tongue (Hindi, Chinese, etc.) and speak only in Creole, which is considered the "Mauritian language" and part of its cultural heritage.
The bourgeoisie is therefore strengthening its safety devices by multiplying the causes of division within the working class.
One of these is the check-off system, that is, the worker's right to ask the employer to withhold trade-union dues automatically from his or her wages. This commonplace institution actually conceals a powerful weapon in the hands of the bosses. Labor laws generally dictate that only one trade union per plant can be recognized. A new trade union can be recognized only after a referendum among the workers in that plant, in which the new union gets a clear majority.
But in the meantime, the established trade union derives a huge advantage from the dues checkoff, which automatically guarantees it financial stability without having to give proof of much activity in the workplace. Thus, in a significant number of industries, legal trade unions have been able to withstand challenges from other, nonrecognized unions which in order to win recognition would have to fight an uphill battle, weakened by their lack of resources.
The Development Work Corporation organizes temporary public service jobs for some of the unemployed, who do odd jobs like maintenance and road repair. They are poorly paid, but the workers who benefit from this program are nevertheless resented, both by full-time wageworkers and by the unemployed who are left to rot, since there is no unemployment compensa. tion in Mauritius. Although they are exploited, the "unemployed" of the DWC paradoxically seem privileged to their comrades in the working class.
The Industrial Relations Act and the Public Order Act are vicious laws that in effect make it impossible to exercise the right to strike. In order to satisfy a demand, workers are required to go through a maze of consultations, judicial hearings, and other intricacies of the bourgeois state before they are allowed to strike. This in fact makes any work stoppage illegal. The prospect of a general strike can only be visualized as an immediate and prolonged test of strength with the government, because planning it "legally" would mean that the administrative clampdown "allowed" by the government would be applied to all negotiations, industry by industry, at the same time.
Women are an immense reserve army of labor who have begun to be integrated into the labor market owing to the development of the Free Industrial Zone. The majority of workers in the Free Industrial Zone are women who are repeatedly thrown onto the unemployment rolls by the foreign bosses. Mauritian women are also totally oppressed by the communal system and its ideology of the family. The caste system among the Hindus, arranged marriages, and constant pressure to marry within one's own community make them into domestic slaves.
Knowing that the working class learns through struggle, we are compelled to recognize that it will take a special effort to enable the different sectors of Mauritian society to put forward their demands in a united way and join together in common struggle. For this, it is not enough simply to put forward demands that affect all workers; in addition it is necessary to put forward a strategy of workers unity that can also bring in the trade-union organizations that are still controlled by those in power. A broad working-class front organized against the government and the employers will also have to fight for repeal of the constitution; abolition of the antiworker Industrial Relations Act and Public Order Act; unemployment benefits and social security protection for all workers; and equality for women on the job and at home.
The Left at the Crossroads
By far the largest organization in the trade-union movement is the General Workers Federation, controlled by the MMM. This obviously gives the MMM itself characteristics of a workers party, in which the leadership and the parliamentary delegation are in part made up of rank-and-file workers. This explains why the bourgeoisie is very cautious in its dealings with the MMM.
In fact, Paul Béranger's party has a unique history. Born out of the Militant Student Movement in 1969, the MMM within a few years became the dominant organization within the workers movement by capturing a large part of the popular base of the PT.
But the MMM is a heterogeneous party where all sorts of political tendencies coexist. The leadership started out with anticapitalist phraseology but has tended to slip into "anti-imperialist" rhetoric. The demand for nationalizing only four sugar factories out of the twenty-one that exist; the obscure discussions about "selfmanagement," factory committees, and the "role of the private sector"; the concessions to communalism that some members have criticized; the desire to project the appearance of a governmental party-all of these now make the MMM a reformist party.
In Mauritius the port stays in operation only because of a tacit agreement between the General Workers Federation leadership and the bosses to honor-in the name of national interest-Mauritius's commitments concerning sugar shipments to the Common Market countries.
Béranger recently made the following statement to a journalist who asked him about the danger of confrontations: "l think I detect in your question your fear that instead of being resolved in the elections, the deterioration of the situation will lead to confrontations and social explosions. This is a serious concern, which every Mauritian who loves his country must share. This gives me an opportunity to expand upon an idea I have raised before.
"I said that we wished to see general elections, as scheduled, but that we weren't going to bring any pressure to bear for this. Some people have misinterpreted what I was trying to say. What I meant was that the MMM is not going to use job actions, strikes, or social tensions to force elections. We aren't going to force the government's hand. We are playing strictly according to the rules."* He could not have said it more clearly.
The MMM now controls three of the five municipal governments, including the capital. Its orderly administration makes the headlines only when spiteful politicians attack it in print. In fact, a section of the bourgeoisie can find nothing to complain about, especially since all the plans for "neighborhood committees" were left in the file drawer. And yet, is the MMM the kind of government party the bourgeoisie is prepared to call on?
The fact is that the MMM does not have a stable leadership. The minor bureaucrats and petty-bourgeois elements on the Central Committee and in the parliamentary delegation do not yet constitute an entrenched bureaucracy with control over the GWF and over the party. At the drop of a hat, the ranks protest, fume, and make threats. MMM leaders to the left of the general line refuse to make compromises with those they denounce as the right wing.
Béranger knows that going into the government would leave him little room for maneuver, and that the slightest mistake would mean the rapid loss of part of his social base. He knows, as does the bourgeoisie, that he would be incapable of preventing social explosions.
Having apparently given up the idea of a coalition with the PT, the MMM has finally proposed to the bourgeoisie an all- MMM government.º But the ruling class and imperialists, who have no objections to flirting with Béranger, will think twice before taking the big step of putting the MMM in power.
Besides the MMM, a 1973 split under the leadership of Dev Virahswmy led to the formation of the Movement Militant Mauricien Socialiste Progressiste (MMMSP- Progressive Socialist Mauritian Militant Movement). In the beginning this little group experimented with different ideologies, but eventually found its political identity in Maoism. The MMMSP now shamelessly puts forward the most grotesque positions of the Chinese leadership. In the name of "the national liberation struggle" it is trying to build a Democratic Popular Front that would include bourgeois and petty-bourgeois grouplets like the Democratic Union of Mauritius (led by a former PMSD deputy), and the Independence Forward Bloc.
Convinced that the best way of getting recognized as "the party of the proletariat" is by having its own trade union, the MMMSP has organized a special federation of the trade unions under its influence, refusing to join the General Workers Federation. A strategy based on division and class collaboration has made the MMMSP a crisis-ridden sect. This of course does not its "well informed leadership" prevent from periodically ranting against Trotskyism, which simply means against everyone who does not think that the "theory of three worlds" is going to provide the solution to Mauritius's problems.
Two years ago an independent Marxist review called Lalit de Klas (Class Struggle) began to be published. This publication has unquestionably contributed to an analysis of Mauritian society, and its editors have often been in the vanguard of militant struggles like the Women's Liberation Movement, the demonstrations against apartheid, and the campaign for the use of Creole. Some of these small organizations like the Women's Liberation Movement and the Dikasion Pu Travayer are beginning to attract people in the periphery of the MMM and the MMMSP.10
The discussions in the Mauritian left are taking on a new urgency because of the governmental crisis. What strategy should be followed, and what is the alternative to the MMM?
A recent struggle showed what this discussion can mean in real life. When the owners of the transport companies threatened to raise fares by 100 percent, people mobilized in protest. Workers from the GWF, the MMM, the MMMSP, and from the women's liberation and Creole movements, came together to form the Fro
Kome Transpor (Transportation Common Front). This organization built a mass protest around radical demands. The central slogans of the campaign were nationalization, civil disobedience to combat fare increases, and solidarity between transport workers and passengers.
The campaign was a big success, in spite of a rather shady maneuver by the MMMSP, which tried to put its Democratic Front forward as the central organization. Now discussions are beginning about organizing a similar campaign to deal with the problem of housing.
The Elections
Building an alternative to the MMM is not an easy task in a country where even the most conscious workers have not had much experience with its reformist line.
The development of campaigns around winning important common demands will undoubtedly show in practice what different sides have to offer. Within the MMM and the MMMSP there are certainly good activists who lack any real organizational alternative.
In a country like Mauritius, imperialist domination, the complexity of relations between classes and communities, and the contrast between strong class consciousness and the absence of any tradition of struggle mean that there is no way of getting around the need for the greatest programmatic clarity. It is necessary to create a vanguard organization of a different stripe than the MMM, which is a hodgepodge.
The best way for revolutionists to raise their ideas and win over a large number of workers is by working within the GWF while at the same time orienting to the MMM and MMMSP.
By struggling against divide-and-rule tactics and for a united-front strategy, trade-union unity, demanding the return of the island of Diego Garcia to Mauritius, helping to build the women's movement, and insisting on the total independence of the working class and its allies from the bourgeois parties, revolutionists will be working to permanently change the balance of social forces. They will also be taking the first step in the construction of a genuine revolutionary workers party.
Rather than going ahead with the scheduled elections, the bourgeoisie may again opt for a show of force. In either case, the MMM will be put to a severe test and will openly expose its inadequacies.
The governmental crisis has taken a new turn with the development of an opposition tendency called the Boodhoo group within the PT, reducing Ramgoolam's chances of retiring gracefully from politics.
The PMSD is using the weapon of confusion. Its leader, Duval, is spreading false reports and criticisms of the government. The PMSD ministers are gradually taking their distance from the premier.
After the electoral defeat of 1976, the workers recovered and again put forward their demands. Under present conditions, Mauritius might well explode. This would provide an opportunity to challenge imperialist power in the southern Indian Ocean-where Madagascar has turned to traditional military reformism, while
Réunion is more than ever under the heel of French colonialism. This is why the Mauritian vanguard must seek links with other revolutionists in the region in order to be able to struggle together against imperialism. It is also why the international workers movement should follow closely what happens in this area between Sri Lanka and South Africa.
Notes
1. See Inprecor, January 13, 1977.
2. As a result of one expulsion and one defection to the PT, the MMM's parliamentary bloc was reduced to thirty-two deputies.
3. Le Mauricien, April 4, 1978.
4. Forty-four countries were included in the Lomé accords.
5. The recent abolition of government fertilizer subsidies mainly cuts into the incomes of small and medium-sized owners, undermining the PT's efforts to build its social base among them.
6. A type of foreman.
7. The cutters have to cut 2.5 tons of cane a day. The machines now in use lose a lot of cane while loading it into the trucks. The laborers wind up being penalized for this; the loss is subtracted from their output when production is tallied up at the end of the day.
8. Week-end, April 2, 1978.
9. The MMM is going through a crisis. Béranger has not written an editorial for two months. The leadership is navigating without a compass. The organization appears to be drifting aimlessly, torn between its refusal of a test of strength and blind ambitions for administrative posts. Its newspaper is concentrating more and more on factual reporting without offering a critical analysis, demands, or a political perspective.
10. The MMM's daily Le Militant has a circulation of 5,000. The MMMSP's daily Soley Ruz sells 1,000 copies. Lalit de Klas comes out every two months and 500 copies of each issue are sold. Le Mauricien, the newspaper of the "enlightened" liberal bourgeoisie, has a circulation of 24,000.