cannabisnews.com: Life on Mauritius is No Holiday if You're Poor!





Life on Mauritius is No Holiday if You're Poor!
Posted by FoM on March 08, 1999 at 06:26:08 PT

 JAMAICAN reggae superstar Bob Marley had one of his biggest hits with I Shot the Sheriff. This tale of standing up to police brutality took reggae from the fringes of political protest to the mainstream. In a grim replay of the song last week in Mauritius, the roles were reversed - it seems the sheriff killed the singer. 
Joseph Reginald Topize, aka Kaya, was the king of "seggae" - reggae Mauritius-style. Arrested for smoking cannabis at a concert campaigning for the legalisation of marijuana, Kaya was found dead in his cell in the grim Alcatraz Prison at 5am the next morning.A police press officer, a Mr Gungadin, quoted "an independent person" who claimed that "this man's behaviour prior to his collapse almost certainly led to his own death". The initial autopsy was inconclusive and an independent doctor was flown in from the island of Reunion to perform another. The results will be released next week.Kaya has a huge following among the Creole population of Mauritius, which comprises the poorest 30 percent of its 1,1 million inhabitants. Descendants of slaves brought in by the French from Madagascar and East Africa to work on the sugar plantations, they did not agree with Gungadin's interpretation of events and took to the streets in the worst rioting in Mauritius since 1943. Three people were shot dead by police as gangs of rioters torched supermarkets and attacked police stations.Of course, the biggest casualty was the perception of Mauritius as a peaceful tropical island paradise - all important for selling the island to overseas tour operators.Whether Kaya was beaten to death by police or bashed his head against the cell wall is not clear. However, what is crystal clear is that arresting Kaya for smoking ganja, the holy herb, in public was ill-advised to say the least. First off, the arrest took place after a concert which doubled as a political meeting organised by the Mouvement Republicain, headed by lawyer Rama Valayden.With elections due next year, there has been a power vacuum in Creole politics since the death of the charismatic Sir Gaetan Duval a few years ago. Valayden, seeing an opportunity to make political hay among the poorest section of the electorate, embraces both the seggae singers and their pro-marijuana campaign - a potent attraction for the island's disaffected youth. Besides, a free seggae concert ensures a good turnout for a political meeting.Seggae is a modern interpretation of sega, ancient African songs sung by slaves to ease their pain and suffering. Proudly held up as the prime example of Mauritian culture, sega is only half the story - ganja smoking being a more physical escape from the back-breaking toil of the fields.Life on Mauritius is no holiday if you're poor. The sugar industry is depressed and fishing is being squeezed out by the headlong rush to build hotels. The government and parastatals have adopted a policy of zero recruitment into the civil service and jobs are scarce.In 1510, when the island was discovered by Portuguese mariners en route to India, it was uninhabited. Mauritius was named and settled by the Dutch and the slaves they brought with them from the Cape in 1598. The Dutch lasted a little more than a century before giving up - the cyclones, slave rebellions and pirate attacks were too much. Their sojourn was not good for the environment - the dodo and magnificent ebony forests were destroyed.Nature abhors a vacuum, and the colonial frame of mind does too - in 1715 the French moved in. More slaves were imported from West and East Africa, as well as Madagascar, to work in the sugar cane fields.Britain captured Mauritius in 1810 and, with the abolition of slavery in 1835, brought in large numbers of Indians - the liberated slaves having refused to carry on working in the sugar plantations. Descendants of these labourers now make up more than half the population of Mauritius and constitute the ruling political elite of the island.Here's the whole article:http://www.suntimes.co.za/1999/03/07/insight/in07.htm#top
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