A Reply to Democracy Watch Mauritius by a Branch Member
29.03.2012
A LALIT branch member replies to Democracy Watch Mauritius, thus deepending the debate that was started at the LALIT Conference on Strategy on 12 March 2012.
Basically Democracy Watch Mauritius is taking the dubious position of pretending that there is no economic crisis, no rise in poverty and disempowerment of people and especially that all this does not reach our shores with ‘[u]ne telle situation n'existe heureusement pas à Maurice.’ And society is not hierarchised and that those at the top always remain at the top by only throwing the more bread crumbs down as providing each Mauritian with a car or simply absorbing everyone in the education system that only creates daily intolerable traffic jams the DWM find manageable. Problems have to be resolved urgently and not delayed by ‘corrections d'inégalités sociales’ in their own good time like they suggest. Their ‘intolérable situation d'inégalités sociales’ that is supposed not to exist anymore in Mauritius is only pushing us to just bear everything, forcefully make it tolerable and turn a blind eye to what is really going on.
Their sly attempt is to drive our attention away by using some banal definition of class struggle that alludes to bloody revolutions to instil inexistent fears. This being their weak attempt to dismiss the reality of class difference, hierarchies and discriminations. People may be offered equal chances but have the burden of their actual situation and past that does not enable them to take advantage of equal chances. DWM should explain for example why so many fail or give a low performance at the different levels of primary and secondary education. They should explain why certain educational institutions have fought for affirmative action with regards to a particular community if there were no real discriminations? And the favouring of only one community with regards to positive discrimination would that still be called by DWM, ‘corrections d'inégalités sociales, nous parvenons à une situation de méritocratie et de justice sociale, se déroulant d'une manière harmonieuse, à la limite fraternelle’ ? Now if we consider the number doing so poorly at both primary and secondary education it is quite obvious the educational institution contains invisible barriers that filter people along a pyramid with an elite at the top and massive low performances and failures at the bottom . This DWM wants clearly to cover up, what is undemocratic, and then blame large groups of Mauritians for being lazy ‘parasites’. They want to trivialise important inequalities and social calamities by attributing these to Mauritian parasites. All the different struggles that people have made and carry out daily are ignored and we are put in the hands of some abstract destiny of ‘donnant, à tous, le temps de se préparer à d'indispensables corrections d'inégalités sociales.’
The interpretation of class struggle as bloodshed between groups attempts to blind us to the actual dominations sustained by a social system of hierarchies. The persistent hierarchies inbuilt in the community system for example have become such a normality that the very people fighting it like Block 104 come to approve it in the affidavit they have sworn for. It is like when coming face to face with reality they show their true colours by hiding behind the same ‘democratic’ facade of DWM to clamour about fraternity and solidarity. And the height of the irony is when they claim ‘ qu'il existe une part de communalisme dans l'esprit malade de certains de nos frères et soeurs mauriciens.’
This approach of treating communalism as a disease of some only supports the logic that the communalism at the basis of our constitution concerning all is sane. The government subventions to communalo-cultural associations only enhance the arbitrary divisions of communities based on the confusedly hotchpotch criteria of religion, ethnicity and the ‘undefinable’ of the general population. By politico-legal sustenance of the community system and its caste hierarchies people are hampered in forming other horizontal solidarity groups which prove clearly to be the agenda of DWM.
The intellectuals of DWM want us to assume without any real statistical support that many are doing business in Mauritius and are success stories. Their unrealistic claims seem closer to the glitter of lottery winners or scratch card excitement in order to abstract the majority who work daily for a basic salary, small businesses with serious difficulties and those that have had to close down. DWM is playing more of the fair weather friend and trying to spread this illusion.
The pseudo intellectuals of DWM are trying to ignore even basic sociology when inventing a category of people called parasites who are poor and destitute because of their own ‘carences personnelles, pour ne rien dire des fléaux (drogue, alcool, jeux, prostitution, hédonisme, égoïsme, mentalité d’assisté) ’ as though these people are only too happy in those afflictions. It seems the DWM are living on a different planet to exonerate the ruthless business of multinational distilleries, the pressure of cultural drinking, and ignore the fact that prostitution is also a profession that we cannot afford to insult with institutional breakdowns happening at all levels and left unsolvable. This invention of a group of parasites is simply a strategy of deviation to bypass the people who are actually working hard for a livelihood and asking daily for better conditions and remuneration, who are no other than the 700,000 Mauritians the DWM talk about.
TR
