“The rearview mirror is a little foggy”

While the unrest in New Caledonia made headlines in mid-May, Guyanese MP Jean-Victor Castor stood up as a defender of the Kanak separatists in the National Assembly.

France, he warns, must resist the temptation to “go by force” to maintain its control over the archipelago in the Pacific Ocean and take note of the fact that the young people who demonstrate represent much more than a social movement “ to watch.”

The Minister of the Interior, Gérald Darmanin, in the front row, turns his head to show his irritation while many elected representatives of the opposition applaud the speaker, linked to a Guyanese independence party.

A few weeks later, a semblance of calm has returned to the capital of New Caledonia, Nouméa, even if altercations between demonstrators and police continue, sometimes with deadly consequences.

The divergence of views between, on the one hand, the Kanak separatists and, on the other hand, the “caldoches”, descendants of French settlers, and the “metropolitans” who arrived more recently, remains no less obvious.

Frédéric, a French national established for 14 years in the archipelago, assures in an interview with The Press that the young demonstrators are “manipulated” by a restricted core of die-hard separatists influenced from abroad.

The Kanaks, he said, are the “spoiled children” of the French Republic and do not fully appreciate the services provided to them.

“These are not very sophisticated people who have gone from the box [logement rudimentaire] at the pick-up. I don’t want to be too mean by saying that,” says the French national, who is at the same time offended by the insults launched by the demonstrators towards the white population.

“We are told: ‘White bastard! White motherfucker, go home!” If they want independence, let them take it, but I will not stay here,” underlines the French national.

A Canadian living in Nouméa notes that it is not uncommon to hear caldoches or metropolitans speak with contempt of the indigenous population and their demands or that Kanaks give a cold welcome to white people and completely change their attitude. attitude upon learning that they are not of French origin.

“It’s a dialogue of the deaf,” says the woman, who requested anonymity to be able to speak more freely.

She is concerned about the government’s moves to reform the electoral system to expand the number of citizens who can vote without having obtained the agreement of indigenous communities, who fear seeing their political influence crumble.

French President Emmanuel Macron, grappling with another political crisis linked to the victory of the far right in the European elections and the launch of early elections, announced on Wednesday that he was “suspending” reform in New Caledonia to promote the progress of the dialogue between the different parties, but the impasse remains.

Self-determination referendums

Nicolas Bancel, a specialist in French colonial and postcolonial history at the University of Lausanne, Switzerland, notes that French authorities “fail to realize the long-term effects of colonial violence.”

The history of New Caledonia is “tragic”, he says. In particular, indigenous people were subjected for nearly 60 years to the “native code” which allowed local authorities to impose forced labor on them while limiting their movements.

It was only after decades of unrest punctuated by several episodes of violence that France agreed to engage in a formal “decolonization” process involving the holding of a series of self-determination referendums.

Opponents of independence won the first two with 57% and 53% of the vote. The third, boycotted by many Kanaks because it was held during the COVID-19 pandemic, during a period of mourning, ended in a third rejection with 96% of the votes.

President Emmanuel Macron considered it legitimate last year to declare on this basis that New Caledonia “is French” and subsequently proposed to review the measures put in place to protect the electoral weight of the natives, prompting the lifting of current shields.

Fabrice Riceputi, another French historian specializing in decolonization, notes that the situation in New Caledonia testifies to the fact that France is “caught up cyclically by its colonial repression” and still struggles today to measure the impact of his past actions.

Mr. Bancel notes that a “vitrification” of French colonial history linked to a desire for denial occurred in the 1960s after the Algerian War and the independence of many former colonies.

Mr. Riceputi notes that the French public has long been deprived of appropriate tools to understand the Algerian war and its abuses due to the “omerta” surrounding the conflict.

“Until independence in 1962, we praised to the public the civilizing work of the country in Algeria and then suddenly, bam, nothing. Decolonization has been made unintelligible,” he notes.

The fact that the French government continued to maintain close ties with several former colonies added to the complexity of any reflective exercise on the colonial past within the political class.

While posing as champions of the right to self-determination of peoples, French presidents – from the left and the right – have maintained links with potentates to protect the geostrategic and economic interests of their country, not hesitating to intervene militarily. as needed, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa, in what is often called “Françafrique”.

The contrast with the United Kingdom

The United Kingdom maintained much looser ties with its former colonies after independence through the Commonwealth, Bancel notes.

A Cameroonian sociologist, Francis Akindès, indicated a few years ago to the daily The world that the British had “left without leaving an address” while the French left saying “We are still here”.

Marielle Debos, who is a lecturer in political science at Paris-Nanterre University, notes that France’s interventions in its former colonies take place in the absence of real supervision from the National Assembly since foreign policy is a matter for Of the president.

The importance of these interventions is evident in particular in Chad, which has seen the greatest number of French military operations since independence, she said.

Emmanuel Macron did not hesitate, notes the researcher, to endorse the seizure of power of Idriss Déby’s son in 2021 after the death of the dictator even if this family transition had nothing democratic about it.

“There is the official position of France and at the same time there are ambivalent policies and decisions,” notes M^me Debos.

The contradictions fuel the resentment of a new generation “who no longer want to play that game” and are demanding true decolonization.

This anger has been taken advantage of in recent years by putschists, notably in Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger, who demanded and obtained upon their coming to power the departure of French troops present in the country, sometimes to room for reinforcements from Russia.

Mr. Bancel notes that the “universalist” pretensions of France, which “self-represents itself as a tolerant and egalitarian nation”, complicate reflection in the country in relation to the colonial period since it was built on the idea of inequalities between settlers and indigenous people.

These claims are not unrelated to the fact that several elected officials, particularly on the right on the political spectrum, today convey the idea that colonization was positive for the affected populations and are reluctant to accept any mea culpa.

A Republican senator, Bruno Retailleau, declared in October that such questions were likely to fuel “self-hatred and contempt for others” and could contribute to the movements of anger observed in several African countries.

The absence of in-depth collective reflection encourages misunderstandings in French society itself, where many groups maintain diametrically opposed visions of the same events, notes Mr. Bancel, who pleads in particular for the creation of a “decolonization museum” .

In a recent column, he noted with a colleague that several former colonial powers have launched initiatives of this type which make it possible to “put antagonistic memories into perspective” and “to avoid the deadly polarization between nostalgic fanatics and radical decolonials” .

“We could put everything aside and move forward,” he said.