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The Mauritian Truth and Justice Commission: Legitimacy, Political Negotiation and the Consequences of Slavery

Document Cited in Related
Vincent
AuthorRichard Croucher,Didier Michel,Mark Houssart
Date01 August 2017
Published date01 August 2017
DOI10.3366/ajicl.2017.0198
Pages326-346

We fought very hard for the establishment of the TJC. And yet we have to fight for the implementation of its recommendations.

 (Elie Michel speaking at a public meeting shortly before his death)

INTRODUCTION

We examine the origins, processes and outcomes of the Mauritian Truth and Justice Commission (MTJC) focusing on its treatment of slavery, asking how illuminating ideas from ‘transitional justice’ theory are.1 Ours is apparently the first academic account produced by scholars who have not worked for the MTJC.2 The MTJC was the first ‘Truth Commission’ to examine slavery and indentured labour's history and consequences. Previous Royal Commissions in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries had passed slavery by, focusing on bonded labour and the sugar industry. These forms of labour were internationally widespread for centuries and their effects on millions have since generated considerable debate. We focus here on the MTJC's work in relation to those most affected by slavery because of the wide international incidence of slavery itself. We are concerned with the MTJC's workings, but only in so far as these impact our central focus.

The potential for transitional justice mechanisms to address historical grievances and either further social and economic progress or alternatively to do harm has been examined in numerous different contexts.3 The idea of transitional justice as a way of helping societies transcend social conflict, thereby achieving greater mutual understanding and moving closer to reconciliation, has acquired widespread currency. The initial influential example of a ‘Truth Commission’ was the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC). The TRC followed a major transition from the Apartheid era, following lengthy armed conflict with significant national and international resonance.4 Many other bodies, variously named ‘truth and reconciliation’, ‘truth and justice’ or simply ‘truth’ commissions, some with less immediately obvious rationales, were subsequently established. The sophisticated literature which has developed discussing their foundation, operation and results potentially assist analysis in our context.

Slavery is increasingly salient in public discussion and looms ever larger within popular historical imagination. In the USA, the UK and France, countries whose histories are tightly intertwined with slavery, museums, monuments, books and films have translated it from the realm of specialist history into public debate.5 The critical and commercial success of several high-profile films – Stephen Spielberg's Lincoln (2012), Quentin Tarantino's Django Unchained (2012) and Steve McQueen's 12 Years a Slave (2013) – generated much discussion.6 These referred to a potentially safely banished past but, symptomatically, they served to bring home the brutal and de-humanising nature of slavery, drawing attention to the psychic effects both on those subjected to it and on their descendants. They have intensified prior debate about slavery's enduring impact on slaves' descendants and how they sought to understand the past and assert their own dignity, values, cultures and identities as autonomous people in view of the extreme ways their predecessors were oppressed.7 Earlier exchanges had already provoked powerful emotions but also concrete responses. Companies whose predecessor entities were involved have defended their reputations, some making apologies and redress.8 In certain American states, this was stimulated by a legal requirement that companies state the role they played in slavery.9 Internationally, contemporary slavery and forced labour has also gradually moved up political agendas, accelerated by the 2001 World Conference Against Racism's Declaration asserting a strong link between slavery and racism. The realities of contemporary slavery continue to be brought to public attention by well-known organisations such as Slavery International and the International Labour Organisation.10

Mauritian history involves three ex-imperial countries. Mauritius was ruled by the Netherlands' East India Company in the seventeenth century; France then colonised the island (1721–1810), to be displaced by Britain (1810–1968) who allowed the land and slave-owning Franco-Mauritian elite to retain their leading position in the island's economy and polity.11 The extent and limits of the colonial powers' responsibilities for presiding over, legitimating and facilitating slavery and indentured labour have been extensively documented.12 After the British abolished slavery in their empire, both it and the slave trade continued for decades in its French counterpart. As Mauritian ex-slaves and their ex-owners were mutually alienated post-abolition, the British imperial authorities helped the Franco-Mauritians to import Indian labourers, instituting what some Victorians felt was a ‘new system of slavery’.13 Foreign relations, especially with these two ex-colonial countries, remain important and have helped maintain Mauritius's essential international trade links.14

The local elite's responsibility is less well documented and understood internationally. Although diminished in power by the rise of other ethnic groups, the numerically tiny Franco-Mauritian elite remains central. French (including the Code Napoléon) and English law currently apply, structuring, along with Mauritian law, the terms of employment; French is widely used together with English in legal and public discussion but the vernacular idiom is Mauritian Kreol. This internally cohesive and culturally distinct ex-slave-owning group continues to play a significant role in local investment.15 Mauritius depended and continues to draw on local capital.16 The elite which owns this capital is ethnically and culturally distinct from the rest of the population; as in the United States, slavery had a strong ethnic dimension. Their sense of identity is based on their self-conception as the original Mauritians, their use of French and cultural identification with France. The Francophone elite, it has been suggested, learned to exercise ‘defensive power’ over political affairs on the island after independence.17

Beyond the Francophone elite, social identities have been represented in competing ways. Both pre- and post-independence, ethnic blocs have been presented as important by governments. The descendants of slaves were estimated by the TJC to amount to 25 per cent of a population of 1,275,000.18 The great majority of them are known as ‘Creoles’, a problematic term because of ethnic miscegenation; the island has a claim to be the most ethnically diverse on the planet.19 The Creoles' economic, social and psychic states are comparatively poor. According to the social anthropologist Rosabelle Boswell, who later conducted research for the MTJC, their feeling of malaise (‘le malaise créole’) earlier posited by local intellectuals derived from more than slavery's legacy. It was also a consequence of their own difficulties in forging a collective identity in the face of public portrayals of them as homogenous, given their varied backgrounds and experiences. The slavery issue, as Boswell acknowledges, nevertheless remains highly significant to their identity as the experience affected them more than any other ethnic group; perceptions of their ancestors' treatment melded with their own sense of exclusion and feelings of being undervalued. They developed an enclosed defensive culture with strong oral historical and musical dimensions, using the Kreol language which they played a major part in forging. Their poor living conditions, low levels of literacy and marginal engagement with public affairs have been widely recognised and collectively made them a hard-to-reach audience for the MTJC. Despite the island's economic diversification into manufacturing, tourism and financial services over recent decades, authorities agree that poor educational outcomes and negative perceptions of their employability (they are often perceived as ‘lazy’) have meant that they have derived little benefit.

The impact of bonded labour on those of Indian descent (often the descendants of bonded labourers although some also have enslaved ancestors) who constitute the majority of the population was quite different. Despite their everyday use of Kreol, they define themselves against the Creoles; they identify strongly, as Patrick Eisenlohr demonstrates, with their Hindu religion, the Hindi language and their community associative institutions. Their respect for and emphasis on the value of education and thrift are both noted by Eisenlohr and others. They have dealt comparatively well with the legacy of their ancestor's oppression and currently play a key role in large companies and public service. They also dominate politics.20

Collective memories of slavery have long impacted contemporary events; the major Mauritian labour revolts of the late 1930s were presaged by meetings in 1935 commemorating slavery's abolition.21 It has been suggested that slavery still influences relations between managers and employees on the island.22 Thus, partly because of this multi-racial society's ethnic issues, the legacy of previous forms of labour continue to loom especially large.23 So, too, do questions of land ownership as members of all ethnic communities purchased land in the nineteenth century, often losing it subsequently to powerful landowners – including the sugar companies – through having poor or non-existent legal title and financial inability to pursue legal cases.24

The Mauritian use of a ‘Truth Commission’ to confront slavery- and indentured labour-related issues was unique internationally. These Commissions have been defined as ‘truth-seeking bodies set up to investigate past records of human rights violations’ in the hope they will create a shared understanding and a degree of reconciliation.25,26 To this extent, the MTJC may be seen as an attempt to effect transitional...

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