Rezistans ek Alternativ: From the trenches to the benches of Parliament
Introduction
It is a hot day and I am sitting at home watching the news feeds from Mauritius. I want to know how Rezistans ek Alternativ (Rezistans or ReA) performed in the November 10 2024 elections. Although there has been a lot of anger in Mauritius following leaks about a “wiretaps scandal” (which I revisit below) I do not have my hopes up. Every recent election (USA, Georgia, Poland, France…) has been won by right-leaning parties. Can a democratic socialist party in Mauritius really buck the trend?
Resistanz is part of the Alliance for Change coalition that includes the Labour Party of Navin Ramgoolam, son of the founding Prime Minister Sir Seewoosagur Ramgoolam, former Prime Minister Paul Bérenger of the Mauritian Militant Movement (MMM) and the centre right Nouveaux Démocrates. Resistanz is a fairly young party by Mauritian standards. They first participated in General Election in 2005. However, their challenge of the electoral system that forces ethnic-based classification of candidates led to their disqualifications in several general elections after that. They rebranded and relaunched again around 2015. Maybe their youth shows in the fact that they are presenting only three candidates in three different wards (Ashok Subron, Dr Babita Thanoo and Kuvalayen Kugan Parapen). Ashok Subron is running in Constituency 4 (Port Louis North and Montagne Longue), Babita is running in Constituency 8 (incumbent Prime Minister Pravid Jugnauth’s district and Kugan is in Port Louis Constituency 1.
A number of prominent Resistanz members, activists and trade unionists got together and founded the Centre for Alternative Studies and Research (CARES) in 2010. CARES’ main objectives are to provide emancipatory education to Mauritians and Southern Africans, promote post-growth alternatives to hegemonic market capitalism, lead anti-war and anti-extractivist campaigns, provide a deep-democracy counter power from below and build a strong rising South West Indian Ocean People’s Movement. Every year they organise a series of schools and seminars, and at the end of the year, the do an annual school of ecology (SOE). The idea is to educate people to actively deconstruct colonial experiences and replace them with new pluriversal imaginaries that are rooted in sharing and caring. People who attend the SOE leave better equipped to defend human and nature rights. The Rosa Luxemburg has been supporting CARES and its School of Education for over a decade. Former RLS Southern Africa director Jan Leidecker was a guest at Resistanz’ relaunch and subsequent directors Sigi Schroeder and Janine Walter have had a special place for it in their hearts because it espouses the same ideals as Die Linke party.
Landslide victory for the Alliance for Change
The results start coming in and my heart is beating faster. The Alliance for Change has defeated incumbent Prime Minister Pravind Jugnauth’s Militant Socialist Movement and Lepep Alliance by a landslide, no, a blowout, taking 60 of 62 available seats in parliament. The remaining two seats went to Rodrigue’s Organisation du Peuple de Rodrigues (OPR). It is only the third time in Mauritian politics that the opposition has defeated incumbent candidates everywhere.
It is a wipeout. Still, I am trying desperately to get specific details about Constituencies 1, 4 and 8. I try to make some calls but no one is answering their phone. The next day, I learn that all three Resistanz candidates have been elected into office and a day later, I finally get a call. It is Ashok and he has even better news: “It has happened, comrade. Look, they have asked to give us a ministerial position and we are busy discussing it internally in the party right now. I don’t know yet what will happen, but that is the situation”. Simultaneously, my colleague Ibrahima Thiam is calling to share the results of the interview that he has just done with Dr. Babita Thanoo. My other colleague Fredson Guilengue, who initiated the relationship between CARES and RLS Southern Africa, is super excited. “This is big, you need to go and cover this story,” he keeps telling me. In my head, it was clear already that I have to go and see this seismic event for myself. A week later, after COP29, I am on the South African Airways flight to Mauritius.
A victorious feeling at the School of Ecology
It is the evening of the first day of the annual CARES 2024 Indian Ocean Summer School of Ecology and the Senlis-sur-Mer open-air auditorium is bouncing. Dany-Marie welcomes me with a broad smile on her face. There are delegates from Réunion, Rodrigues, Madagascar, Comoros and Seychelles. Delegates have also come from mainland Africa, from South Africa, Zimbabwe, Tanzania, Kenya, Mozambique, Republic of Congo, Democratic Republic of Congo, Nigeria and Senegal. There is even a delegation from Denmark.
News has spread that the leader of the Rezistans ek Alternativ Party Ashok Subron is going to stop by to say hello to the delegates. Maybe we should call him by his new title: the Honourable Ashok Kumar Subron! He has been appointed Mauritius’ Minister of Social Integration, Social Security and National Solidarity, a portfolio that manages the social contributions and payouts of over 70% of Mauritians. His Junior Minister, Kugan Parapen, is also a founding member of Rezistans.
Then he arrives. The room spontaneously erupts in songs of freedom. Chants of “Amandla! Awethu!” can also be heard around the room. Ashok takes it all in as he waits for the amphitheatre to settle down again. He gives a short speech.
“Fellow comrades, this is our moment!” The delegates cheer. “This victory is a victory for workers”. Ashok talks a bit about Resistanz’s journey to power as well as the last elections. Then he adds: “Before I went for the swearing-in ceremony, all of Mauritius was wondering: “is Ashok going to wear a suit and proper shoes to parliament?”” General laughter. “I made a little compromise.” More laughter. “However, what we are not going to compromise on is our promise to the people. Everywhere I go now, I carry with me a copy of our manifesto as both a reminder and a promise that we are never going to betray the people. If we betray them, we are introducing laws so that they are able to kick us out.” Another standing ovation.
Ashok greets the room again and then takes leave. He has to get back to his office. His in-tray is already very full. Kugan and also Dr. Babita Thanoo are not present at the school. They will only make it on the weekend. Dr. Thanoo has a new nickname, “le tombeur du premier ministre”, literally the Prime Minister’s slayer, because she defeated incumbent Pravind Jugnauth in Constituency 8.
How they did it: Reziztans ek Alternativ’s journey to Parliament
When we chat briefly at the Pomponette beach a few days later, Mauritian social activist Amira, tells me: “If you had told anyone that by 2024, Rezistans would be in government, they would have flat-out laughed in your face. Rezistans are known as the party that confronts social issues head-on, sometimes organising protest actions and things like that, and they do not compromise on their policy positions. Voters love them because they are seen to fight for the people. But voters have often been a bit scared of casting their ballot for them”.
This is a paradox, right, people voting against their interests? There is a familiar ring to Ameerah’s words. In many countries, democratic socialist parties that helped secure important victories around worker-controlled means of production, equal pay, mental health, protection of the environment, ending wars, gender parity, and LGBTQ+ rights have often been tarred with a negative brush and labelled too ‘woke’, too dangerous to be elected into political office. Such smear campaigns are often very successful. They always tend to nudge voters towards demagogues.
True, Reziztans ek Alternativ has been about living their principles, come what may. Since the party was founded, they have always rooted their struggle in improving the Mauritian people’s material conditions. Their tagline for 2015 municipal election was ansam nous transform nous lavil – let’s change our towns together. This can be applied to a broader vision that they have for the country. To actualise this vision, Rezistans has been at the forefront of fights against all forms of injustice. Their first mass campaign focused on promoting Morisianism. What is Morisianism? It is the right of Mauritians to seek employment or run for elected office without having to declare their ethnic origins. Ashok explains it this way: “We describe ourselves as an ecosocialist movement which articulates the ecological issue with working class issues with social issues and democratic issues. Our first action was to challenge the ethnic-based political system, which we inherited through our long colonial history where there were lots of ethnic-based tensions during political times, tensions used to oppose the working class consciousness and so on. We launched a legal battle all the way to the Supreme Court, the United Nations’ Human Rights Council, alongside a political battle. Ultimately that struggle gave birth to Morisianism, which is our verison of humanism, our version of our multiple and indivisible identities, we are a product of colonialism we are a product of our struggle, you know we didn’t have an indigenous population, people came from all over the world to work here, slaves, indentured labourers, others, coming with many cultures and ways of life.”
Morisianism is Mauritian humanism, a new ontology for Mauritius: equal rights for all, strong protections for the environment, improvement of workers’ conditions, ending beach grabbing by hotel chains and property developers, protecting digital rights of all citizens, joining the international solidarity call to end all wars, calling for a revisiting of treaties for the Chagos Islands and Agalega.
When hospitality-sector workers were furloughed during the Covid-19 pandemic, Resistanz successfully campaigned with other movements for the government to safeguard employment in every sector through wage assistance and a redundancy board that withheld dismissal until the pandemic was defeated.
When a Japanese oil tanker ran aground off the coast of Mahebourg on 25 July 2020, Rezistans mobilised people to erect booms made with dry sugarcane leaves around the accident area. This artisanal solution minimised the impact of the accident long enough for the government and foreign entities that offered to help to come in a scoop out oil from the biggest areas. Almost all of Mauritius acknowledges that ReA’s action mobilised hundreds of thousands of volunteers to secure the coast of Mahebourg. A few days later they helped mobilise over a hundred thousand people to criticise the Mauritian government’s slow response as well as demand reparations for the country and its environment.
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For many years, they fought against beach grabbing in Palmarin Rivière Noire and Pomponette where on May 1 2018 they successfully tore down barriers around an area demarcated for the construction of a five-star hotel. Resistanz wants the beach to be designated a Blue Flag beach with ‘clean water, clean coastline, and free access for everybody’. Multiple members of Resistanz were arrested during the Pomponette protests, including National Committee members David Sauvage and Ashok. The ReA slogan Aret Kokin Nu Laplaz (stop stealing our beaches) has become a rallying cry for all those who fight to ensure that ordinary Mauritians get to enjoy their country’s beaches.
Amilcar Cabral once said: “Always bear in mind that people are not fighting for ideas, for the things in anyone's head. They are fighting to win material benefits, to live better and in peace, to see their lives go forward, to guarantee the future of their children”. True to this credo, Resistanz do not just resist; they also provide alternatives for a better world.
A tough pre-election context.
The build-up to the 2024 elections revealed a fairly toxic underbelly in Mauritian politics. There was already the cost-of-living crisis, a major problem for a country that imports most of its foodstuff and even some of the molasses used in the many sugarcane and rum factories, as well as high fuel costs, which sparked a number of protests. However, the biggest issues were corruption and the wiretapping scandal.
Since 2020, there were serious allegations of corruption against the Jugnauth government, with claims that some of his cabinet ministers were involved in the assassination of a main political actor that held enough evidence to get them out of power. There were scandals around plundering of large sums of taxpayer money when emergency procurements of personal protective equipment for COVID19 were made. There were serious allegations that involved senior ministers facilitating land acquisition for renowned drug trafficker. There were allegations of collusion by sections of the police to ‘pre-emptively eliminate’ political opponents by what has become popularly known as drug planting, similar to what the Russians call Kompromat. There were even allegations by former national telephony company workers of tampering on the SAFE cable system that goes through Mauritius to probably spy on foreign communication.
In the build-up to the 2024 elections, a social media activist known as “Missie Moustass” started releasing recordings of conversations of activists, police officers and members of the opposition. After the government was accused of wiretapping, PM Jugnauth suggested that the recordings were done with AI. Then it got worse. Recordings soon emerged that gave the impression that the entire government was being run by Kobita Jugnauth, the PM’s wife. In one tape, she was heard making disparaging remarks about the Indian ambassador, a strong partner of Mauritius. In another tape, she worked to cut off media access for opposition figure Navin Ramgoolam. Elsewhere, she is dictating who should get jobs in governments, complaining about Tamils and even plotting to run a smear campaign against former PM Collendavelloo. In yet another damning recording, Police Chief Anil Kumar Dip browbeat a forensic doctor to change the autopsy report of a man who died after being beaten in a police cell.
Kobita became the Marie Antoinette of Mauritian politics, the lighting rod that drew the entire island’s anger. Pravind Jugnauth tried to get ahead of the leaks by banning all social media on the island from November 4 – 11. This was all too much for Mauritians who used VPNs and word of mouth to continue plotting the downfall of the incumbent relationship.
Back to the school of ecology
It is weekend and Ashok is back at the School of Ecology. So are other global icons of the left, including the French political scientist Françoise Vergès, Zo Randriamaro from CRAAD-OI Madagascaar, Oil Watch board member and founder of the Health of Mother Earth Foundation (HOMEF), Nnimmo Bassey, AIDC Senior Researcher Charlize Tomaselli and former Director Brian Ashley. There are Global Aktion comrades from Denmark. They have come, not only to offer radical emancipatory education to eager minds, young and old, but also to break bread with fellow comrades who are starting a new stage of activism within government structures. Resistanz regulars are also around: Dany Marie, David Sauvage, CARES President Stefan Gua, Devianand Narrain, Michel Chiffone, Veena Dholah, Dany Montille, Ashvin Gudday, Blackwell Louis, Anne-Gaelle Carré, Ian Jacob and many others.
Amid the hustle and bustle, Ashok finds time to chat with me about the significance of the elections. We both agree that there is a general sense of joy in the country.
“Walk around the streets. People are happy! They feel liberated, a sense of joy and also…I’m proud, very proud! It is the third time in the country’s history where the opposition won all the seats. The priority was to get rid of this government with its authoritarian neo-fascist tendencies that we have seen in the last ten, and especially five years. And the people are also saying, we elected you, but if you don’t deliver, we are going to vote against you.”
Although the victory seems a bit sudden, Ashok makes sure to highlight the work that has been done in the background for ages:
“We have been fighting for Mauritian values, family values, preservation of beaches, controlled tourism, wetlands, workers’ rights, precarious workers rights and others for a long time. I for example have been in the trade union movement for over thirty years. We have also been active in the organisation of small energy cooperatives and training small farmers’ organisations. We were foresighted when we started campaigning for digital rights and privacy rules many years ago. Now with the sniffing (wiretapping) scandal, people can see that we were right all along”.
We talk about the changes that Reziztans wants to make at national level:
“We agreed to a number of key policies to be included in the Alliance for Chance manifesto as a precondition for joining the coalition. These include the generalisation of the five-day forty hour week in order to ensure the work-life balance of Mauritians and reorganise how much time we spend with our children; an end to the requirement for political candidates to declare their ethnic background on pain of seeing their candidature disqualified; changes in how the law relates to workers in times of climate disaster; for the first time we have a democratic mandate for nature rights to be recognised in the constitution of Mauritius; we also have included two judicial principles. Firstly, public interest litigation that will apply both to socioecological issues as well as socioeconomic issues and class action lawsuits. In a region when there is an ecological disaster, all the citizens are immediately able to sue for reparations; and we have introduced the right of recall. What we are thinking is that after two years of an elections, people should have the right to revoke the mandate of their MP if they are not satisfied with them. This is a major shift since universal suffrage in 1948, since independence in 1968 and since the consolidation of the right to vote in the constitution in 1982”.
Ashok agrees with Amilcar Cabral that ultimately, the people have to win power in order to effect real improvements to their material conditions. He explains that this is what convinced Resistanz to run for office: “Ecological issues cannot be separated and confined into NGO’s frameworks. It cannot work. It is important to keep coal in the hole and oil in the soil, but these slogans are meaningless without articulation of power in the hands of the people, the people taking over power of the country to change things in a meaningful way. This [not conquering real political power] would be fatal!”
We discuss what lies ahead for Resistanz and Mauritius for about an hour before someone comes looking for him. General Workers Federation leader Clency Bibi and others are trying to get hold of him.
A day of celebration and victory songs
The final day of the School of Ecology is a celebration picnic at Pomponette beach. We are celebrating the last day of the School of Ecology, Resistanz’s entry into government, the fact that Pomponette beach is a public space, the success of the left and just life in general. Over two thousand people have descended on the beach to celebrate, reminisce on past battles and discuss the future.
Things heat up around one o’clock in the afternoon when music bands start warming up the audience. All the musicians on show are also activists in their own right: Ragalayam, Emlyn/Langaz Ravann, Son of the Waves, Latanier, Racinetatane - late Kaya Band…Some of them were part of the Pomponette struggle. Others showed up to support the crowds when they were making sugarcane leaf booms at the peak of the Wakashio crisis. They are here again today, family, basically. Vahantsaina, from Madagascar who is a participant in the 2024 summer School of Ecology and a winner of a prestigious jazz competition, is also performs some of his greatest hits.
Ashok has arrived around this time with a number of Resistanz and Alliance for Change politicians in tow: Rajesh Bhagwan of the Mouvement Militant Mauricien, Dany-Marie, Babita, Kugan, the Pomponette parliamentarian and a few others. Sandwiched between the musicians, a roster of speakers take turns to give short speeches about what comes next for Mauritius. Clency Bibi congratulates Resistans on their big win and says that workers have a lot of expectations from this government. “The working class is in power now. Resistanz is a partner of the General Workers Federation and what we see going forward is enthusiasm, hope and promise”.
Lall Dewnath, the president of the Independent Unions Federation, gives a rousing speech about the role that workers have played in changing Mauritius and the battles that remain ahead. There is electricity in the air. As I watch Lall’s effect on the crowd, I wonder why he too did not run for office.
The indefatigable Rajesh Bhagwan takes to the stage. He is eager to remind everybody that he has always engaged with Ashok on matters relating to workers’ rights, the environment and climate. The MC asked him to speak for five minutes, but then, it is Rajesh Bhagwan, they call him bulldozer, Ameerah tells me, a senior citizen to boot, so he’ll do what he wants to do. But the crowd love him and his oratory skills are top notch, so all is good.
While he is talking, people are mobbing Ashok, Babita and Kugan for selfies. The smiles cannot be disguised. There is genuine happiness everywhere. The MP for Pomponette is up after Rajesh. He congratulates Resistanz but insists that he is not going to tolerate any ideas that are too radical for his liking. He does not say what these radical ideas are, but the people are not really insisting that he elaborate further. It is a day for celebration.
There is more music, before Ashok, Babita and Kugan get to speak.
“This is a transformative moment for our society, and women were at the forefront of that struggle,” roars Babita. The crowd goes wild.
“I will tell you why we chose the butterfly?” Kugan tells the audience. “Our logo used to be sort of a square, but one day a friend came to my place and we were bouncing ideas and the idea of a butterfly came up. To signify transformation. Complete change. And this is what we want to achieve!” Loud applause.
As the sun sets and the crowd starts belting out Krapo Kryé and other sega and seggae tunes, and as I look at all the proud and happy faces around me, I am convinced that this is a big moment for the left in Mauritius. Resistanz has always been about transformation. Their transformative, deep democracy approach to politics and society, not just preaching but practising what they preach, from the trade unions, through Pomponette and Wakashio, has endeared them to the people. This is an opportunity to spread those transformative ideas within wider society and I am certain that they will do all they can to translate all those visions to reality.
Perhaps this is the biggest lesson from Resistanz’s victory: having the courage of one’s convictions and living them daily in one’s own community so that the people who see your efforts and your philosophy can choose you to effect even greater change within the wider polity. I am excited to see how far this experiment in ecosocialism will go.
I leave Mauritius confident that Resistanz ek Alternativ’s story is only just beginning. With the wins that they are securing for the Mauritian people, Resistanz will be alright.
Story by Roland Ngam. Dr. Babitha Thanoo was interviewed by Roland Ngam and Ibrahima Thiam.
