President Emmanuel Macron left Paris for New Caledonia late on Tuesday, hoping to ease the crisis in France’s Pacific Ocean archipelago where unrest over his government’s move to reform the electoral register, regarded by many among the indigenous Kanak people as a return to the colonial policies of old, erupted in deadly rioting last week, notably in and around the capital Nouméa.

The crisis was prompted by legislation pushed through parliament last week by Macron’s government which overturns specific conditions for voting in New Caledonia’s local elections. Up until now, and since 2007, the electoral register was frozen and limited to those who were listed on it in 1998, and their children. That was in order to maintain the level of political participation and representation of the indigenous Kanak people, whose numbers have been overtaken by European, mostly French settlers among the archipelago’s total population of 271,000.

The move emerged from negotiations that followed years of violence in the 1980s, when revolts by Kanak pro-independence groups threatened civil war and reached a climax, in 1988, with the Ouvéa Island cave massacre in which 19 Kanak militants and two gendarmes were killed. That same year, 1988, negotiations for peace were held in Paris, where the French government brought together representatives of the Kanak pro-independence and so-called “loyalist” camps, the latter essentially made up of European settlers on the archipelago that has been under French rule since 1853.

The resulting “Matignon accords” (named after the French prime minister’s office) were followed, in 1998, by the “Nouméa accord”, negotiated by the same parties and which led to devolved powers for the local government, and set a roadmap both for a referendum on independence and for improving the economic and social conditions of the Kanak people, largely disadvantaged in comparison to the European settlers, or “Caldoches”.

Since the 1988 Matignon accords, the archipelago saw several decades of a slow and peaceful but incomplete decolonization. However, tensions were revived in recent years, notably worsening after the French government refused a request by pro-independence Kanak parties for the postponement of a 2021 referendum on independence, which was to allow for a traditional Kanak mourning period following the Covid epidemic.

But it was the approval last week by the French parliament’s lower house, the National Assembly, of the reform of the electoral register that ignited the current violence, during which at least six people have died and business premises, shops, and vehicles have been torched. Because it is a constitutional reform, it must now be approved by both houses in a meeting of parliament’s “Congress”, which Macron has vowed to hold before the end of June. His trip to New Caledonia follows on the refusal of Kanak political parties to send representatives to Paris for talks, and there have been mounting calls for the French president to withdraw his reform, or at least to put it on hold.

Young Kanaks, disproportionately affected by unemployment in comparison to other sections of the population, have been at the forefront of the recent protests and disturbances, despite being a generation which has grown up in the years that followed the Matignon and Nouméa accords. They will have a key part to play both in the short-term efforts to defuse what local officials have described as an “insurrectional” atmosphere, and thereafter in shaping the archipelago’s uncertain future.

Mediapart turned to anthropologist Benoît Trépied, a researcher and specialist on New Caledonia, a member of France’s National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) and the Centre for Research and Documentation on Oceania (CREDO), for his insight into what is driving the anger among young Kanaks. In the interview below with Lucie Delaporte, he argues that Macron and his interior and overseas territories minister, Gérald Darmanin, will “fall flat on their faces if they think they can deal with the case of New Caledonia using force and repression”.

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Mediapart: Young Kanaks were on the front line of the riots that broke out since the vote in parliament to enlarge the electoral register in New Caledonia. Why is that?

Benoît Trépied: As the referendums on self-determination approached, and after years of decline in political militancy, many young Kanaks mobilised. When the CCAT [editor’s note, anagram in French for “coordination group for action in the field”] – created by the pro-independence parties to oppose Macron’s forcing through [of the electoral register legislation] via collective mobilisations – organised demonstrations, they came en masse.

Last April, during the largest demonstration, what struck all observers was the militant fervour of the gathering, joyful and festive, but also the young age of the demonstrators. The authorities shut down the public transport network and despite that we saw young Kanaks from the outskirts of the town walking kilometres. It can be noted that these youngsters are mobilised much more behind independence than behind the pro-independence politicians themselves.

When there are provincial elections, they don’t vote a great deal, but on the other hand, when there’s cause to mobilise because the state is resuming colonial policies, the young generations stand up as one man.

Mediapart: How do young Kanaks regard politics? One hears some of them say very critical things, sometimes disillusionment, over the political players.

B.T.: There can be anti-politician talk, against elected individuals and political leaders, which is finally quite ordinary and which, moreover, targets the pro-independence camp as much as the loyalists. Those youngsters who are the most disadvantaged say that politicians of all sides forgot them with the [1988] Matignon and [1998] Nouméa accords [which established a roadmap for independence referenda, devolution and improved economic conditions for the Kanak people], because at the end of all that they are still in as much hardship.

But that rejection didn’t stop them from strongly joining in the first two referenda on self-determination in 2018 and 2020, when the state was still impartial. Evidence of that are the record turnout figures, eighty percent then eighty-five percent, much higher than for the provincial elections, when it’s about electing pro-independence candidates.

In the same way, when the pro-independence camp called on them not to vote during the third referendum in 2021 [editor’s note: because the government refused a request by Kanak parties to postpone the poll due to the mourning period for the Covid victims], there was an abstention rate of fifty-six percent. These figures demonstrate a very strong electoral discipline on the part of people who, the rest of the time, have a rather distanced relationship with political actors.

Delphine Mayeur (AFP)

Mediapart: Would it be right to say that for this disadvantaged young Kanak population, who were born after the Matignon and Nouméa accords, the promises of rebalancing economic and social policies in favour of Kanaks, as featured in the accords, have not been kept?

B.T.: Let’s say that the issue, as put in that way, concerns above all the South province, there where the loyalists are in the majority [editor’s note: this refers to the southern part of the archipelago’s largest and principal island, Grande Terre, which is divided into two provinces]. Nouméa is the place where social inequalities and racial discrimination is crystalized and visible. Still today you find a pocket of wealthy whites in the southern neighbourhoods of the town. The vast majority of those arriving in New Caledonia from mainland France, and who are at the heart of the issue of the unfreezing of the electoral register, set up home in these neighbourhoods where the atmosphere is worthy of the French Riviera.

In parallel, many Kanaks have moved into the Nouméa urban area since the 1990s. Today, fifty percent of the Kanak population lives there. Among them are employees, technicians, engineers, but also people who are at the very bottom of the social ladder and who – due to a lack of affordable housing – live in what are called ‘squats’ there. Situated close to mangroves or on wasteland, these are neighbourhoods of spontaneous habitat, with a sometimes very dense community organisation.

So in the same district, there are Kanaks in squats or social housing, who sometimes live with their families in conditions of great poverty, and at a distance of hardly a few minutes by car is the neighbourhood of the bays, from l’Anse Vata to the Baie des Citrons, where Europeans go from bars to nightclubs, in a completely different atmosphere. According to the information that I receive, in these zones now protected by the loyalist self-defence militias, people continue today to swim in the sea and drink cocktails despite the clashes just a short distance away.

In short, in Nouméa, young Kanaks are faced with situations of discrimination that stick out. There is no airlock separating great social insecurity and the display of wealth. From that comes the sentiment of a dispossession that is indissociably social and colonial.

‘Caldoche’ inhabitants from the Magenta district of Nouméa mount their own road block to protect their neighbourhood, May 16^th 2024. Photo : Théo Rouby (AFP)

Mediapart: Have the young Kanaks been left behind in what is finally an all-too slow rebalancing of economic and social conditions?

B.T.: Since the 1990s, the efforts to rebalance [the situation] have been very much centred on infrastructures – water, electricity, the internet, and it has been largely fruitful. But concerning levels of schooling, professional levels, entrepreneurship, the divides between Kanaks and Europeans remains very strong.

The level of schooling of Kanaks and other South Sea Islanders, such as Tahitians and those from Wallis and Futuna, have risen continuously, but the gap in qualifications between them and the Europeans has globally remained the same, and the more one climbs in the academic hierarchy, the wider the gaps are.

Concerning economic inequalities, it is more or less the same thing. The New Caledonian economy was built up like a trading post economy, on the colonial model, with a few trading houses which exercised a grip on the economic tissue. These remain the foundation of the grand bourgeois families of Nouméa.

While the efforts of the pro-independence camp to develop an economic basin in the north [province of Grande Terre], centred on a large nickel producing plant called the Usine du Nord, have allowed real improvements, they have hardly succeeded, for the moment, in eliminating the rural exodus to Nouméa. That’s without mentioning the fact that the loyalist political powers have at the same time elaborated an explicitly competing industrial project, called the Usine du Sud, and which was set up in contempt of the local Kanak population.

One must not be surprised that the experiences of social distress and daily racism, perceived as being the manifestations of a colonial alienation which persists despite the accords [of Matignon and Nouméa], caused the pressure cooker that is Nouméa to explode. All the warning lights were flashing red since long ago.

Mediapart: Despite the majority “no” vote in the three independence referenda, you underline that the desire for independence appears to be making progress within the young non-Kanak population of New Caledonia.

B.T.: Fine electoral analyses have indeed observed that among the non-Kanak young adults of New Caledonia, the vote for independence is slowly progressing, and today represents ten or fifteen percent of this group of the population, while it used to be close to zero percent for the older generations.

But one should also note the transformations of the very notion of independence such as it is seen in New Caledonia today. The challenge laid down in the Nouméa accord is that of a decolonization reached through the construction of a country and a common destiny of all New Caledonian citizens, whether they be Kanak or non-Kanak. What’s at stake consists of building a future New Caledonian people which brings together the Kanak people and the other communities implanted in the archipelago since long ago.

At an institutional level, the pro-independence camp no longer speak of brutally cutting all links with France, but, rather, to first regain the full sovereignty of the country, in order to then knot new, balanced and equal relations with France.

Schematically, that corresponds with the political project of independence-association, or independence with partnership, a form of decolonization recognised by the United Nations, and which is beginning to appeal to the non-Kanak young, even if this still remains very much in the minority.

Mediapart: How do you believe the current crisis can be ended?

B.T.: In my opinion, the government has no other way out in the short-term than to withdraw or suspend the draft legislation to enlarge the electoral register. It is that which ignited the trouble, despite the numerous warnings that were made beforehand, and which the executive refused to listen to. It must also propose other interlocutors than [interior minister] Gérald Darmanin, who is today completely discredited in the eyes of the pro-independence camp. He and the French president will fall flat on their faces if they think they can deal with the case of New Caledonia using force and repression.

On the Rock [“le Caillou”, a French nickname for New Caledonia] they are not facing a labour dispute or ‘youngsters’ from the high-rise suburbs. They are facing a people that have been colonised for 170 years and who are engaged in a struggle for emancipation. Because the Kanaks will never give up on seeking independence, it would be best to reach, through dialogue, a compromise that is acceptable to everyone.

Lucie Delaporte

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