Rallying behind a pirate flag from the Japanese anime “One Piece”, youth-led demonstrators in Madagascar say they are inspired by Nepal’s “wind of change” and demand their country’s “system must fall”.Left without electricity or running water for up to 12 hours a day, thousands of protesters in the Indian Ocean nation have erupted in fury.After days of mass protests forced the government’s dismissal, the demonstrators now want the resignation of President Andry Rajoelina.Since Thursday, the unrest has claimed at least 22 lives and left dozens injured, according to the United Nations, which condemned Madagascar’s “violent response” to the protests.AFP has gathered firsthand accounts from those on the front line, all speaking under condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals in a country ranked 113th out of 180 for press freedom by Reporters Without Borders.- ‘Divide us’-Meva, a 30-year-old agricultural engineer who asked to use a pseudonym, had long watched the country’s decline from the sidelines until the weight of misgovernance stung her to action.”We were terrorised by fear for many years and still are. As a millennial, I’m somewhat angry with myself because for years I saw what was happening and did nothing,” she told AFP. Now, she says, the president’s latest overtures of dismissing ministers and calling for fresh faces, following the protests, feels more like a distraction and an attempt “to divide us”.”They’re trying to make us believe that the government is the problem, that it was the ministers who were the source of corruption and all that,” she said. But “it’s the system itself that ensures that even if you’re a good minister, if you’re not corrupt, you can’t do anything. Because there are really powerful lobbyists behind the president,” she said.- ‘Wanted change’ -That system was designed to resist change, said a 28-year-old protester, who asked not to be named. Like many in the Gen Z movement, she draws inspiration from Nepal’s uprising, which she calls a “wind of change”.”We wanted change at home too. So we decided to rise up against this oppressive government, which acts like untouchable celestial dragons,” she said.She described the current government as oppressive and unaccountable, and said the time for dialogue had passed.”We want him to leave,” she said in reference to Rajoelina, a 51-year-old leader who first came to power on the back of a coup following a popular uprising.”We tried to reason with him. We tried to negotiate. But they refused to listen, refused to give us freedom. So now, the entire system must fall,” she said. Rajoelina has given no indication that he would step down.- What next? -For Luffy, a 28-year-old entrepreneur and civil society worker, the awakening came after years of resignation. “We gave ourselves excuses for years. We told ourselves, ‘It’s okay, we’re poor, maybe it’s not that important.’ But now we see, it is important,” he told AFP.Madagascar ranks among the world’s poorest countries but is the leading producer of vanilla, one of the most expensive spices after saffron, and has natural resources in farming, forestry, fishing and minerals.Beyond demands for human rights, he said, the protests are a reckoning with corruption, which he described as “the disease eating away at this country”.Rajoelina’s televised apology and dismissal of his government, he believes, were little more than political theatre.What sets this moment apart, he said, is the scale of civic mobilisation, visible not just in the capital, but in cities like Diego, Toamasina and Antsirabe.”I saw a spark of change in people,” he added. But removing Rajoelina is only the beginning, he warned. “We also need to think about who will lead, what structure will be put in place, are we going to refer to the constitution… there is a whole host of questions that arise.”
