On December 14, cyclone Chido struck Mayotte, an Indian Ocean archipelago which lies between Mozambique and Madagascar and also happens to be a departement of France. Spiralling winds killed at least 39 people, destroyed huge amounts of the island’s infrastructure and much of its shanty town housing. But now Mayotte finds itself at the centre of another storm: the ongoing battle between Emmanuel Macron and Marine Le Pen.
The president’s visit to survey the damage on December 20 turned into a PR nightmare. Heckled about a failure to restore drinkable water, Macron shot back: “If it wasn’t for France, you would be in way deeper shit, 10,000 times more, there is no place in the Indian Ocean where people receive more help.” His new PM, François Bayrou, had to return at the end of December on a plane carrying 2.5 tonnes of aid, touting an ambitious plan for reconstruction.
Bayrou urged that the shanty towns should not be rebuilt, but this seems unlikely on an archipelago with an official population of 320,000, but with up to 200,000 more undocumented inhabitants, illegal immigrants from nearby Comoros and elsewhere.
Enter Le Pen, leader of the far right Rassemblement National party, who visited the island last weekend, dismissed Bayrou’s plan as not going far enough and said that the people of Mayotte, “suffering like mad, must not be forgotten”. In an attempt to head off his rival and stop migrant landings, Macron has already proposed to remove the automatic right of French citizenship to any child born on Mayotte. He and Le Pen will keep fighting. Meanwhile all the locals want is shelter, water and power.
