The Island of Pirates: Raharimanana on Madagascar’s Revolutions, Past and Present

Translated by Allison M. Charette

2002: Books were burning in front of my father’s house. There was the military. And the militias. Who, by ousting the dictator, were already setting up a new system of corruption and oppression. It’s no accident. To start by burning books, silencing thinkers. It happened to my father. It happened to the library of my childhood; only a few works survived the flames. Have you ever seen letters crumbling to ash? A or B, the blood type of ink, black ink, boiling to the point of igniting. C or Z, they have no wings, plummeting down onto darkened pages, dirtied by the toes of your shoes. And the fire, everywhere. Between the lines. In the margins. In the spaces between. Cracking. Breaking lines. Tomb of the light. Flames even into the fire of meaning, and fired over your skin. Heat turned up.

And that is how books are burned. When words are forbidden. Woman. Gender. Climate. Freedom. These words hide themselves in the coals, they feign having been charred. These words pretend, like beetles in a wildfire pretend to be dead underground. These words have hard shells, exoskeletons of silence and meaninglessness, but they are there in the ashes: caustic, incandescent, bearing the anger, ready to re-form at the slightest breath of revolution on the wind. Always ready.

They are re-forming in Madagascar at this moment. The words that had been burned to ashes in 1947, during the uprising against French colonial rule. The words that had been blown to the wind by gunshots on May 13, 1972, during the student revolution that demanded real autonomy for the island, going back to the Malagasy language and culture, moving away from French influence—France, which had continued to control the island’s economy and culture, which had imposed the CFA franc, which had imposed the French academic program. The words against Admiral Ratsiraka’s dictatorship that had lasted too long, from 1975 until 1991, the words that were bathed in blood in the Iavoloha rice fields on August 10, 1991, when the dictator gave the order to fire on the crowd of protesters.

The words through torture and civil war in June 2002, the decisive stand against the same Ratsiraka who had returned to power from 1996 to 2002 and was vying for yet another term, who would rather cheat in the elections and cause a civil war instead of withdrawing in defeat from the polls. The words of 2009, felled by machine guns in front of the presidential palace in Ambohitsorohitra as they called for Ravalomanana to step down, the businessman who had been beloved in 2002 when he put an end to the dictator’s reign, who had become president himself, and then was despised seven years later—in a single term, he had taken over every economic industry on the island, from yogurt and biodiesel to soda and vanilla, even going so far as trying to sell half of the country’s farmland to Samsung, for them to grow genetically modified corn for export to South Korea. These words are resurging today, carried on the wind of September 2025, carried today by young people who have chosen to name themselves Gen Z.

Z is not for Zorro, not the way others long ago did who dreamed of fighting injustice, but Z is for Generation Z. Z is like from the Tatsuya Nagamine movie, One Piece Film: Z. And Z is also for zandry, the youngest of the children, who in Malagasy society are not given the right to speak. In this society, words are a sacrilege if they have not originated first from the ancestors, in the form of traditional wisdom and examples drawn from past history, and then passed down through the ray aman-dreny—literally, “the fathers-and-mothers”, the term used for elders, the ones considered wise, who communicate with the ancestors. These sanctified words then make their way down to the zoky, the adults, who are called the oldest children, who enforce those words without question. And so, the zandry have only to obey, they have only to keep their mouths shut. But these zandry, this Generation Z, they are connected with the world, they have already been speaking up on social media. They want to look toward the future, not just to listen to the dead ancestors. They don’t want to obey adults blindly, to the letter, especially not the politicians at the very heart of the corruption and abuses of power, who have usurped the title of ray aman-dreny to impose their system of tyranny for their own personal gain.

In the Tatsuya Nagamine movie, Z is the name of an admiral who has sworn to destroy all the pirates of the New World, because of the pirates’ dream to have no leader, motivated only by their alliances that uphold the interests of every person and community. That framework is considered fictitious, but compare it with the latest uprising against a totalitarian regime in Madagascar: These very real protests have no political figure behind them, no recognized leader. The protests that began on September 25 were not sparked by political actors. They are caused by the water shortages and electricity cuts that have plagued the entire island for many long years.

The generation that has taken to the streets in Madagascar has known “délestages,” or load shedding, for their whole lives. These planned power outages are designed to ease demand on an overburdened electrical system, but they happen daily, at any time of day or night. This problem did not start now—it has existed for twenty years. The water from the faucets runs an abnormal yellow color. Whenever power outages occur, these young people do their homework by the light of their cell phones or a candle, and they risk being mugged or raped on their way back home in the evening because the streetlights don’t work. Teenagers don’t go out at night, because the darkness makes it unsafe. The cold chain to keep refrigerated products safe gets broken, because fridges and freezers cannot work without electricity. The consumption of these products can cause stomach problems or even lethal cases of botulism (which has happened several times over the past few years). Patients in hospitals—even in Befelatanana, the largest public hospital in Antananarivo—are routinely forced to bring in their own bottled water and their own candles. But how can a hospital function without electricity? How can they keep the ventilators on, how can they run the incubators for premature babies, how can they run any of the radiological equipment? Generators need fuel to operate, and public hospitals don’t have enough for every department. This is normal for these young people. They were born into this context.

So, Gen Z are pirates. For the island caught in the trap of the Republic’s machinery: a system which must be blown apart. The machinery was imported and implanted into a country that had been bled by colonization, and it demands the competence and integrity of all its cogs, all its parts, every level of its operation. Yet the competent and principled men on the island were wiped out under colonization. In 1896, at the beginning of colonization, when Gallieni took power as the new resident minister, didn’t he start by executing Prince Ratsimamanga and his minister, Rainandriamapandry? As an example to all those who would presume to think that the Malagasy monarchy still existed, that the colonial occupation was ineffective? Didn’t Gallieni also allow Captain Girard to massacre the entire village of Ambiky on August 29, 1897, and decapitate King Toera of the Sakalavas, who had put up a great resistance against the French colonial advance? In 1947, didn’t the membership list of the MDRM party (Democratic Movement for Malagasy Restoration) become the list of activists to massacre? The MDRM who had dared to seek autonomy within the French Union, after they had sent their children to the battlefields in World War II? So many had died, so much talent that could have built a new country!

And then, on the other side of that carnage: independence. In 1960, for sure, but with a staggering imbalance between the democratic system and the profile of the politicians and government officials who were supposed to “operate” it. The positions were filled by people who had been bought by France, carefully selected by France—which could then continue its manipulation, claiming that after it had brought civilization to Madagascar under colonization (despite, of course, the bloodbath and signature acculturation that came with), that the new democratic republic had been granted by France, as well. But what kind of democracy could that system be, which perpetuated colonial dominion by securing all the key elements to benefit France: the monetary system, foreign affairs, education, business, and much more.

Gen Z are pirates, in order to overcome this corrupted system: where every position of the State—from the simple civil servant to the minister, senator, and deputy—are critical components for the supreme leader’s predatory behaviors, nothing more.

May 1972, twelve years after independence: A student revolution, which caused the fall of President Tsiranana, cleared away the neocolonialism. But that revolution was co-opted by a dictatorship, as well. A military dictatorship, and communist: yet another imported governmental system, conceived without considering the reality of the country. The governing leaders who had been taking the island’s reality into account were killed with the assassination of Ratsimandrava, the fleeting president of the only republic that could have been truly Malagasy, which had been conceived under the Malagasy notion of fiaraha-monina, the idea of living together, based on traditional Malagasy mutual aid.

After that, the country has just been drifting, through multiple iterations of Admiral Ratsiraka’s reign, which inspired those of Ravalomanana and Rajoelina in its concentration of power, and specifically the extreme consolidation of presidential power. It is a republic of corruption and predators. The servants of this democratic republic’s machinery are, in truth, nothing but members of a mafia set up to plunder the island’s riches—and the West is complicit, with its own interests in the riches underground, in the ocean, from the soil. What business wouldn’t dream of employees who can be satisfied with $4-5 per day?

So then, Gen Z are pirates, in order to overcome this corrupted system: where every position of the State—from the simple civil servant to the minister, senator, and deputy—are critical components for the supreme leader’s predatory behaviors, nothing more. Would it be rejecting the republic, and democracy itself, to scupper the whole system?

Yet Gen Z has been to school. They understand the world, through their mastery of modern technology, their understanding of social media, their understanding of how this system has been generalized in many countries throughout the world—especially in Africa and Asia—a global system where, in reality, the poor countries are the lungs of the world. They are what keep this modern world ticking, with all the natural riches found in them: coltan, oil, uranium, rare earth metals, and even the workforce of immigration.

We could laugh at them, practically children, who are marching in the streets of Antananarivo. We could laugh at them for sporting their raffia bucket hats like Luffy and his Straw Hat Pirates, the heroes of One Piece Film: Z. Straw hats against unfathomably powerful stones, weapons of mass destruction. But Gandhi worn homespun cloth against the British power, didn’t he? And weren’t Gen Z’s own raffia hats woven by rural Malagasies, the very opposite of big corporations? The Straw Hat Pirates, who navigate in the dark and are constantly searching for water, aren’t they just like these young people—and all of Malagasy society—who suffer from water shortages and load shedding every day? These same young people suffer the burdens of climate change, and they are just trying to get out of Antananarivo’s extreme pollution.

Given all of that, then, is it any surprise that the Malagasy presidency—which is allied with predators both foreign and domestic—felt no hesitation in responding with weapons? Bombarding these children with tear gas grenades, firing real bullets, and driving armored cars into the crowd. Attacking a maternity hospital with a barrage of tear gas, after protesters had been chased inside. Breaking up the protests and then leaving looters to run free, thus painting a façade of violence over the legitimate demands for human rights.

Today, writing these words, I will be bold. I will already dare to look ahead, to look beyond. Beyond the fumes of tear gas grenades. Beyond the firing of weapons, beyond the screaming and crying that comes with injuries and loss. I will dare to look ahead, toward after. For sooner or later, this kind of president will fall. Fall down from up in his cable car—it’s an image, a metaphor—from way up high in his swaying cable car, constructed at a cost of millions of dollars while his people have no electricity and no roads. Fall from the dizzying tower of his lies—and that is no image. Fall from the emptiness of his promises—and that is not a metaphor. The Constitution is there to protect the Republic and its citizens, so who are these people embodying it here and now?

A senate president—meant to serve on an interim basis in the case of the presidential post being vacated—who continually supports and encourages repression. Ministers who turned to ghosts after the president became compelled to dismiss his government and is now recruiting via email, asking for CVs by Facebook or LinkedIn. Deputies who have never represented the words or interests of the people, maintaining only their own SUVs and villas that they earned automatically upon the close of polls. (Yes, it sounds unbelievable, but in Madagascar, our democracy awards an SUV and a villa to every deputy elected in every legislative election. In 2024, there were 163 new deputies.)

So, yes, I dare to be bold, I dare to look forward, I already dare to look ahead. The youth of ’72 were betrayed upon Ratsimandrava’s assassination and inherited nearly thirty years of dictatorship under Ratsiraka. The youth of ’91 were disillusioned after Ravalomanana. The youth of 2009 got played by Rajoelina. Gen Z waves the pirate flag, the flag of One Piece. The Z film is not about them, they will not confront the powerful evil Admiral on every sea. But we would do well to recall the ancestors’ utopias that have left their mark upon our island. Libertalia, a myth that survives to this day, has been at the heart of a good many revolutions in thinking. We can reread David Graeber’s Pirate Enlightenment, or the Real Libertalia, we can re-examine the Zanamalata, children of pirates, epitomized by the figure of Ratsimilaho, originator of the Betsimisaraka kingdom, established in the 18^th century by children of pirates and Malagasy women, which refused to name a single man at its head but instead aspired to create economic and political alliances between its different clans and important families. Their system had not power and domination at its core, but instead exchange and respect for differing interests.

So I dare, I dare to call out the world. These young people, Gen Z Madagascar, will bring down entire paradigms of thought. But the fall of this president, this president of tolerated corruption who will fall, that is not the end goal. But rather: How can we eradicate poverty, when the machinery of development and operational management is what produces that very poverty? A poverty which is, fundamentally, a poverty of thinking?

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