Crisis of the sugar industry brings political upheavals and communal tensions sugar, and thus to the renegotiation of preferential agreements that they had made with certain countries in this field.
The agreement between the EEC and Mauritius is under discussion. The European beet growers would like very much to cut the cord, but for the moment France is playing a moderating role insofar as it can, given that it has to defend its
'One generation has to suffer for the next.' These were the terms in the Mauritian finance minister presented his recent proposals to reduce the country's foreign debts. (1) Like his counterparts throughout the world, the Mauritian minister is trying to present the international crisis as a very simple question of the almost supernatural effect of monetary mechanisms and, for the time being, is proposing only the 'stepping up of the national effort.
The function of this sort of bland speechifying is to obscure the real social and political factors that contribute to the present economic crisis.
Mauritius is a good example of these interlocking problems.
last ten years it has been the scene of big structural upheavals, caused by internal as well as external factors.
The mechanisms of dependence affecting the crisis of the sugar industry and the development of a 'free zone' have produced a strong acceleration in political and social changes. The Mauritian case, despite its specificities, thus makes it possible, in many regards, to understand the scope of the damage that the imperialist crisis and the chaos caused by the old ruling classes can do to a neo-colonial country.
The Mauritian economy is first and of the foreign currency earnt by Mauritius comes from its export. Of an annual production of 616,000 tons of sugar in the last six years, 527,000 could be sold at a preferential price.
guaranteed the sale of 500,000 tons to the European Economic Community
(EEC), and the United States bought
27,000 tons at a price above that of the
These arrangements have, after a certain fashion, 'protected' the Mauritian economy, or at least guaranteed political stability there for more than ten years.
But this protection was a dangerous gift.
It also made it possible for the big sugarproducing bourgeoisie to largely keep up its profits, without having to make big investments, thus encouraging substantial transfers of capital out of the sugar in-
This price guarantee is in fact glossy wrapping to hide a peculiar system of forced dependence. One of the primary of this system is the fact that the multinational Tate and Lyle has a monopoly on the purchase and refining, in Britain, of the 500,000 tons sold to the
This firm, one of the giants of international commerce, manipulates the sugar market, and in so doing hides the essentials of the affair. (3)
Unlike the Mauritius government, it does not decide its policy for the four or five years to come, but for the next quarter-century.
looking for a substitute for sugar cane and beet based on saccharine, and also, primarily, on new products such as Thau-
18 matin, extract of a plant growing in West Africa that is said to be between 6,000 and 100,000 times sweeter than natural sugar. At the same time as Tate and Lyle is offering its services to Mauritius, its laboratories are preparing a veritable sabotage of the country's economy, and of several others at the same time that are also based on cane sugar exports. (4) that weighs on the Mauritian economy is to the world sugar prices. July 1984, sugar dropped to its lowest price for thirteen years on the free mar-
This obviously has an effect on the export income that Mauritius can expect to earn from the approximately 100,000 remaining tons of sugar that it sells on the free market. But the essential point is the consequences that this drop will have in the medium term on the sugar agreement with the EEC, and the sales agreement with the USA.
The drop in world price is not only a result of international trading
The speculators never have an interest in maintaining a downward trend towards prices for too long a time. (5) The length of this depression in world prices is linked to the chronic production of sugar in the world, that is increasing from year to year. World sugar reserves presently stand at 37 tonnes, 40 per cent of annual world consumption. Thus, the market is saturated.
In this context, cane and beet sugar are in strong competition. and 1980, the EEC increased sugar beet production by 50 per cent, through an increase in the area cultivated and a rise in productivity. The cost of production has thus dropped sharply. At first, this development just exerted pressure tobig beet producers and, at least partially, protect cane sugar production in its colonies (Antilles and Reunion) because this is a factor of stability in the colonial The sugar tyranny
Thus, Mauritius is at a crossroads in sugar production. That is to say, in other terms, that Mauritian society as a whole is now coming under pressure from the big contradictions related to the crisis bilises the labour force of thousands of workers on the plantations and in the factories, which in general belong to a few families of 'big whites'. Sugar cane provides the income for thousands of families of small and medium planters who own their own land. It guarantees work for the dockers, and justifies thousands of jobs in industry and the service sector.
Thus, in the last analysis, the majority of the population in Mauritius depend on the export of cane sugar. this production thus provokes an increase in social tensions. Antagonistic social groups who live on the sugar economy have an increasing tendency to propose contradictory solutions to this crisis.
The big independent planters, organised in the Mauritian Planters Association, and the big white bourgeoisie from the plantations do not have the same resources, and do not make the same proposals for overcoming the crisis. small planters, subject to the aspirations big within the MPA, and the agricultural proletariat could well, in the future, put forward their own demands.
Week End, Port-Louis, July 5, 1984. Viewpoint, No 51, April 23, 1984
For more information see Tate and Lyle Economica, Paris 1984. le Mauricien, Port-Louis, July 19, 1984.
In accordance with a well-known mechanism of capitalism, a long-term depression in
A reduction in supply then establishing a reequilibrium with brings about an improvement in The trading establishments that speculate on this evolution in prices sometimes have an interest in stimulating these rises, in order to maintain productive capacity as far as possible, other reasons to do with the manipula 'natural' cycles. This is particularly the case for given the permanent structural
International Viewpoint 12 November 1984
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MAURITIUS
A major cause of the political crisis is rooted in these contradictions. ficial commission of enquiry sugar industry was set up in 1983, the Avramovic commission. Its work cost two million rupees but produced only a banal report and contradictory concluwithout any serious about work conditions, the organisation of investments or nationalisation. (6)
In reality, the Mauritian government and all the main traditional political parties are trying to hide the direct link that exists between political conflicts and the sugar crisis. If this were publicly discussed, it would show that the interests of the property-owning classes, and the solutions put forward, are along racial and communalist lines. (7)
For example, the MPA of the big and medium planters is one of the main bastions of Hindu communalism, while the retain their white colonialist character. It is undoubtedly the case that the big Hindu haulage contractors do not envisage the same solutions as the big Muslim traders, insofar as each group is capable of defend-
The big political parties, which are all up to their necks in communalist alliances, have every reason to try to conceal the material and economic base of communalism by attributing it to subreligious and moral reasons. They have every reason to try to get the workers to play the role of a pawn in these inter-bourgeois struggles.
The situation can only keep on getting
The international economic crisis will, in any case, force a reshaping of this type of single-crop farming. bourgeois government will be able to resolve these problems in a lasting way without facing social explosions, at least not unless it resorts to the most extreme violence. Only a real agrarian reform organised by a government supported by all the toiling classes could introduce a longterm reform at the cost of the propertyowning classes, starting with the big sugar capitalists. Only a solution of this type, as the product of a revolutionary victory, could loosen the tyrannical grip
As well as these structural difficulties in increasing export income, there is the question of foreign debts. other dominated countries, the Mauritian debts are the result of a combina-
The cost of oil, proportionally very high for a country that produces practically no energy and has, moreover, followed a policy of industrialisation whose financial results have not covered the cost of the new energy needs thereby
The rise of the dollar, which is now the main factor of increase in the debt. Although 51 per cent of imports have to be paid for in dollars, only 21 per cent of exports are billed in this currency. At least 60 per cent of debt repayments are made in dollars, and the major part of the inputs for the main International Viewpoint 12 November 1984 sectors (fertilisers, cement, raw materials for the free zone) are imported and paid for in dollars. (8) One US dollar was worth 5.19 rupees at the beginning of 1979. In July 1984 it cost over 14 rupees!
The rise in interest rates on the international financial market, combined with the rise in the dollar. other countries, Mauritius finds more and more difficulty in getting loans from public institutions. Thus it has to apply to the banks for loans in eurodollars, usually under stricter conditions.
The amount owed by Mauritius is obviously quite modest in comparison to the debts of the big Latin American countries for example. But the impact of servicing this debt is far from being negligible on the Mauritian economy. tween the 1981-82 budget and that for 1983-84, debt servicing rose from an equivalent of 14.7 per cent of export income to 23.6 per cent. According to the finance minister, in 1984 more than two-thirds of sugar income will go on debt
However, confronted with this arrogant squeeze by the imperialists, the Mauritian leaders have responded only by glorifying their dependence: 'We are', declared the finance minister, 'in an exceptional sitation, where we find ourselves one of the few countries of the third world who pay their debts with a regularity and seriousness that fascinates international institutions.' (9) sion, see l'Express, Port-Louis, July 25, 1983.
conclusions see 'Reports industry and Report of. Manrakhan and Sith nee be on com 2, lim describes group forms of mutual aid political clientelism based on the directly inspired by the Indian example, insofar approximately and Telegus), 16.53% Mus-
Loading up sugar before mechanisation (DR)
Faced with these difficulties and this propaganda, the mass of the people are quite simply invited to remain spectators. The press reports the debates between the government and the opposition, but the latter places itself on exactly the same terrain as the present government. and Paul Berenger, leader of the opposition and of the Militant Mauritian Movement (MMM), is over the best option for rescheduling the debt, or how to appeal to the eurodollar market. Such a discussion, deliberately kept in a purely technical framework, consciously leaves aside all the political and social aspects of the problem. (10)
The World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) have thus not had, up till now, any difficulty in getting their policies accepted. All the major parties, whether in power or in the opposition, have, during the last three years, tried to outbid each other to offer the most accommodating agreement with these two imperialist institutions.
reduction of social spending, pushing down imports by increasing customs tariffs, inviting foreign investment in the export-oriented branches, ete -these, in Mauritius as elsewhere, are major aspects of the policy recommended by the World Bank and the IMF in return for opening up access to credit for the debtor countries. Zealously applied by the Mauritius government, this course has led to a severe drop in the standard
Chinese, and 28.66% general population', a category including the white whites out of a general popula tion of 236,867 people. The statistics are from combined with rivalry between differL'Express, Port-Louis, July 26, 1984 Le Mauricten, July 28, 1984.
As Paul Berenger of the MMM declared, it has to be shown to be 'competent' so that Mauritius will "merit' having its debt rescheduled by the IMF. (Week End, July 15, 1984).
of living for the Mauritian masses. time when a new round of negotiations government reduced the subsidies for decided to raise prices by 20 per cent for the principal medicaments and 21 per cent for cement. In 1984, the health was reduced by 8.2 percent, the housing budget by 49 per cent, and the education budget by 11.2 percent. There is more and more talk of putting into question the notion of free educa-
The budget for unemployment insurance, already very small, has been reduced by 40 per cent, but, at the same time, the government has injected almost million rupees into investment aid for the private sector. While the rate of been reduced by one per cent, the amount of credit given has risen by 15 per cent in one year.
Price rises such as those for cement offer a good opportunity for the big merchant speculators to overvalue their stocks, but that does not stop the government turning a deaf ear to the workers' demands for wage raises. insult to injury, they have just eut taxes for those who employ house servants. But to 'help the small people' they are content to simply create a fund of several thousand rupees for...Mauritian cen-
To help the masses swallow this, the regime claims to be intending to create the conditions for an increase in jobs. Officially, there are 72,000 unemployed, real figure is probably over 100,000. In a country of 950,000 inhabitants this is obviously considerable.
Even more than inflation, unemployment is a national curse that affects all families of the mass of the people, particularly young people. However, this does not stop the representatives of the World Bank and the IMF, the inspiration behind these policies, from putting about the most stupid optimism.
The real guides for Mauritius, alongside the representatives of French and interests, these imperialist officials act shamelessly as the real masters of the country, passing out good and bad marks to the government's policies, to the workers and to the emproposed by imperialist bodies and applied by successive governments, done nothing to resolve the structural crisis of the Mauritian economy. IMF and the World Bank are in fact content to simply propose actions after the event, incapable of resolving the deepgoing causes of the crisis.
One sees the same bluff applied on the famous industrial 'free zone' of Port
Created ten years ago, this zone should, in principle, reduce unemployment and encourage technological advances. Although several thousand jobs have in fact been created, this has not at all resolved the problems of the labour market, even if only because of the pressure of the growing population.
Moreover, this form of industrialisation has begun to be criticised at an international level, and a recent study by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) has begun to make a critical balance sheet of the installation of these free zones.
Having stated that the balance sheet of industrial development from these zones is disappointing, the report concludes that developing countries should take care not to give their free zones for export manufacture too important a place in their manufacturing industry. The free zones should be considered as a complement to other forms of industrial and export growth.' (11)
Unfortunately, this is quite contrary to the practice of the Mauritius government! The free zone has become a veritable philospher's stone for transforming the country, eliminating unemployment, reducing dependence on sugar sales, etc. Thus, the government is planning on a considerable increase in the free and intends to attract, by any means possible, all the foreign who want to come and set up Crisis provokes social upheavals
The workers there, a majority of whom are women, are already terribly
But the employers have been systematically putting on pressure of all sorts to ensure that the conditions get even worse. The labour code is, in effect, different by definition in the free zone from the rest of the country.
Attracting mainly industries edged out of the imperialist centres because of their outdatedness, this free zone guarantees such concerns a maximum rate of profit through the use of a semi-servile labour force as well as the preferential tax concessions, subsidies and free export of profits allowed to them. The Mauritius government therefore will have to attack the workers in this sector more and more if it wishes to compete with zones in the Asian countries. Its problem is that the Mauritius working class remains very far from tame. Even in the free zone, there is presently one strike a
Finally, the other measure proposed by the government to reduce unemployment is encouraging immigration and negotiating with other countries on the export of Mauritian labour. This scheme was nothing more than a makeshift solution, and has proved a dud. Since France and Britain have closed their borders to immigrants, the government has had to turn to countries like Zimbabwe, Saudi Arabia and, now, Gabon.
In fact, it has been possible to send only a few dozen people abroad. ever, the promoter of this policy, Gaetan
Duval of the Mauritian Social Democratic Party (PMSD), did not hesitate a few months ago to promise an end to unemployment through this means. What a
There has been a continual political crisis in Mauritius for three years. In the legislative elections in June 1982, the left crushed the reactionary parties in government by a score of sixty to nil elected
However, a few weeks later, the new government was wracked by a crisis that divided it into two blocs.
In August 1983, special legislative elections put the country's affairs back into the hands of the old reactionaries who were defeated the previous year. Hardly had they taken up the reins of power, but this bloc split once more, and the Labour Party (PT), a bourgeois Hindu communalist formation, left the government, although not avoiding a
Thus, there has been total political instability for three years, affecting the institutions as well as parties.
from independence in 1968 to 1982, Mauritius has enjoyed a relative political stability, if only by the retention of power all through those years of a majority around the Labour Party.
Another indicator of the new situation is that while the last rise of communalism was in 1973, now there is a sharp new rise in racial tension, even if it has not achieved the degree of confrontation that exists in India or Sri Lanka. On this terrain of communalist politics, everything has been completely turned upside down in a few years, an additional proof of the major upheavals in Mauritian society.
The Labour Party, traditional representative of Hindu communalism, had already experienced a split, which gave
Mauritian Socialist Party (PSM) a few years ago. And the latter has recently itself undergone a new split. The party that symbolises Muslim communalism, the Mauritian Islamic Party (PIM) has disappeared from the political scene, now it is the Mauritian Militant (MMM) that portrays itself as the great defender of Muslims. PMSD of Gaetan Duval, which claims to be the traditional party of Creoles, has lost a good part of its base, etc.
There is no way to explain such an upheaval of the political-communalist scene by mere subjective factors or the vicissitudes of the political game. It is the economic crisis and what is at stake there that has speeded up the confrontation between the different cliques of the bourgeoisie. Because, when the piece of the cake left to them by the imperialists gets smaller, then the fight over the remaining crumbs becomes a pitched battle between the different factions of the bourgeoisie. -The quasi-unanimity on a national scale represented by the electoral landslide in June 1982 was the result of special circumstances. It very gave way to a pitched battle between former allies. 11. UNCTAD bulletin, No 200, March 1984.
International Viewpoint 12 November 1984
LATER
In the present period, it is divisions within the bourgeoisie, a crisis of the state and neo-colonial institutions, and governmental instability that constitute the continuing elements in the situation.
During the legislative elections of August 1983, the two sides confronted each other on the question of the sugar industry. Moreover, it was during this period that the Avramovic commission was working. The coalition between the Mauritian Socialist Movement (MSM) the PT and the PMSD proposed some nationalisations in the big sugar industry traditionally controlled by the French Mauritians - big white families descended from colonialists and slave owners - and the constitution of a type of state-private comanagement body called the Sugar Authority.
The MMM wanted to keep the credit that Berenger had won with the big sugar firms when he was finance minister a few months previously, and only proposed a body for dialogue and big financial support from the state for the private sector to carry out modernisation. Of athina Parotion in all this. "realism' and
The Hindu polemic. toiling masses, all the political parties have been able, up till now, to get the International Viewpoint 12 November 1984
French-speaking phone culture.
Dockers at Port Louis (DR)
people to judge their conflicts on the basis of their racial group. (12) For this reason, if the working class cannot retake the offensive and rediscover the strength that it had in 1979-82, this economic and social crisis could accelerto their pupils.
ate the process of social decomposition to the point where it would take years to recreate elementary class consciousdependence.
In the period ness in the toiling classes.
to come, governments of 'national unity' could certainly see the light of day, but, anachronistic intermediaries, could only give rise once more to new communalist divisions and tensions.
Imperialist hegemony the most general,
France in the sales of sugar or less dominant.
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13.
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21
mercial relations with the racist regime, the government has been able to use the recent South Africa-Mozambique agreement to back up its position. A journalist summarised this approach with this candid explanation: 'At the time when Samora Machel and Kenneth Kaunda have resigned themselves to shaking hands with the South African prime minister; at the moment when Pieter Botha has been able to get invitations and receptions in six European capitals; at the time when he has asked for and got an audience with Pope John Paul II, you could say that it is not the end of the world if there is [Mauritian] commercial representation in
South Africa.' (15)
The Mauritian prime minister in the family photo of Franco-African summit (DR) After its electoral defeat in 1983, the of its inability to stabilise its implantaThe record of the MMM MMM could not retain its friendship with the big sugar bourgeoisie. Once the latter had won from the new government
The MMM represented all the hopes of a renunciation of nationalisations and a commitment that the Sugar Authority of the people, at certain periods it even project would be stripped of its content, expressed the unity of the toiling classes it found it more worthwhile to reestaband ordinary people. This was particular- lish relations with the parties in power ly the case in June 1982, when the elec- than to support the MMM in opposition. toral victory was deeply felt by the work- Thus the MMM has to carry out a twoers as 'their victory. But this unity of fold policy: on the one hand, it has to the masses was never really achieved in present itself as the most 'expert' and practice in organisation and daily strug- competent of parties, while waiting for a gles. new governmental crisis, and to then
For the last ten years, the MMM appear as the bourgeoisie's last hope; on leadership has been evolving continuously the other hand, it has to appear as the towards the right. The first important party that defends the workers, so as to turn was made in 1976, when the MMM be able to rebuild its electoral base in was able to create a considerable parliamentary group The pressure of the in- The workers' vanguard has thus a lot of stitutions, and the new role thus given to difficulty in grasping the present reality this opposition speeded up the crisis in of the MMM. Placing any hopes in it is the party, and its social-democratisation. particularly illusory as it does not, in But it is mainly in the last few years the end, offer any real alternative to the that the changes in the MMM have been government's policy, neither on the confirmed question of the foreign debt, on which it
Unprepared to provide a materialist would like to be the most respectful of analysis of communalism and Mauritian the imperialists' wishes, nor on the sugar society, despite its claims to Marxism, industry, for which it has not changed the obsessed by the search for a respectable technocratic positions that distinguished and technocratic image, the MMM lead- On the question of unemership brought about, in 1982, a break ployment, the MMM claims that when it with the militant traditions of the party's was in government it was the best propast. moter of the free zone, and it glories in
The MMM leadership, reduced to an having sent more Mauritians to work apparatus that manipulates an unorgani- abroad than the present government. ised base, first adopted the role of prosel- All reference to anti-imperialist strugytiser for the ideas of the French govern- gles has been abandoned, and the MMM's ment minister, Michel Rocard; and then time in power allowed it to place a numended up by aping in words and in prac- ber of its agents in the administrations tice the Mitterrandist policy being applied and big enterprises. This happened in the in France at that time. port administration, where the position
Paul Berenger's MMM is once again in these MMM-backed officials led the opposition. Its leadership has, there- increasingly to confliet with the party's fore, for its present needs, adopted a traditional base among the dockers. rather populist language. But this is far Advanced workers have thus found it from being a return to the 1970s, when it difficult to maintain their faith in this exonerated imperialism and capitalism. It is this crisis of confidence in The present course of the MMM in the the leadership of the workers' movement opposition proves that the policy of de- the primary cause of the clear fence of bourgeois interests that it prac- decline in workers' combativity over the tised when in power was neither a passing last year and the demoralisation which tactic, nor an orientation imposed on it. Its present attitude, marked by political The trade-union movement, manoeuvres and communalist alliances, flection of the political parties, is even confirms that the last few years have set more divided and weakened, as much bethe seal on its final degeneration. cause of corporatist divisions as because 22 tion in the workplaces. failed in its task of unifying the Mauritian
By proving incapable of maintaining a real influence in certain rural zones, the party showed that it was not really capable of overcoming the communal divisions that exist in the working class. (16)
The MMM, in order to make up the gap, has just entered into another political manoeuvre. It is now preparing to form a bloc with the PT, which is just out of the government. At first, the MMM leadership took care to camouflage what it was doing by trying to place this operation in the context of a broad unitary discussion open to all the parties of the opposition, including the far left. However, this convinced nobody, particularly as there has been an increasing number of articles in Nouveau Militant, the apologias for the PT. There is no longer any doubt that the agreement has already
Berenger behind the scenes, even though the MMM central committee was opposed to it. For many rank-and-file militants, this will be hard the PT is quite rightly perceived as the symbol of the country's neo-colonial and repressive history'. (17)
The left wing in the workers' movement still capable of taking initiatives to alter the course of affairs is, at the moment, reduced to very small organised forces. There is a combative fringe which remains sympathetic to the MMM, although more and more critical of Beren-
This layer of militants would not break definitively with the MMM unless it found a real alternative leadership. Outside the MMM there are only two small far left organisations, both of which came out of the MMM, Lalit (The Strug15. Mauritius Today, Port-Louis, July 13-19, 1984. 16. The MMM controls one of the trade-union federations on the island, the General Workers Federation (GWF). This federation has two unions in the sugar industry, the SILU for cane cutters, and the UASI for factory workers, both of them very much minority unions. In Mauritius the cutters are mainly Hindus while the workers are mainly Creole. The task of workers' unionism in this sector is to unify the working class against the communalist unions.
Open letter to the MMM from the OMT, published in le Nouveau Militant, July 20, 1984.
International Viewpoint 12 November 1984 of po pa pr po pe Th do cla str be th pla tre SU als thi th fig ing gal vic Th str sio ne th of pe. ec th gra in 18 Th CU wh Th fro tion Int 1190 Int
gle, in Creole) and the Militant Organisation of Workers (OMT), which leads the
National Front Against Poverty (FNAS).