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Leader: Anerood Jugnauth, Prime Minister
Economy: GNP per capita: $1,270 per year.
Monetary unit: Mauritian rupee
Main exports: Sugar. clothing and knitwear, tea, tobacco, electronics
People: 1,000.000
Health: Infant mortality: 34 per 1.000 live births.
Life expectancy: 66 years.
Percentage of population with access to clean water: 95%
Culture: Ethnic groups are Indian (67%). Creole (29%). Chinese (3.5%). French and English (0.5%).
Languages:
French and English are official languages but Creole is lingua
franca. Hindi, Urdo, Tamil, Telugo, Gujaraii and Cantonese also
used.
Religion: 52% Hindu, 32% Christian, 15% Muslim, 1% Buddhist
Sources: World Bank 1983. Africa South of the Sahara 1984-85. State of the World’s
Children 1985
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The island of Mauritius lies in the Indian Ocean to the east of Madagascar. Its
dazzling white beaches, lazy pale azure lagoons and casuarina trees attracted the Dutch,
who colonised it in 1598. They named the island after Prince Maurice of Nassau and left
once they had plundered the black ebony forests and killed off that friendly but
flightless bird, the dodo. The French were the next to arrive. They planted sugar and
brought in African slaves but were rudely bundled out by the British in 1810. The British
imported indented labour from India. Chinese merchants were also encouraged to settle. The
basic communal pattern was thus established.
Independence came in 1968. Soaring world sugar prices meant that in the
early 1970s Mauritius had the highest growth rate of any developing country with less than
five million inhabitants, Economic success allowed the government to introduce free
education up to university level and to create a mini-welfare system. When the sugar
bubble finally burst, mounting frustrations led to the election of the radical left-wing
Movement Militant Mauricien (MMM) in 1982 with policies of anti-racism, nationalism and
self-reliance.
But internal conflicts - largely generated by the harsh
constraints imposed by the IMF and World Bank - ensured that the MMM government was
short-lived. It was replaced by a centrist, Hindu-dominated coalition headed by Anerood
Jugnauth in 1983.
Mauritius is still heavily dependent on sugar (92 per cent of all
cultivated land is under sugar cane) but the problem of low sugar prices, the impact of
artificial sweeteners, a mounting foreign debt and an unemployment rate of 25 per cent
means that all parties - left and right - now see the future in terms of
export-oriented industrialisation. The present government is busy wooing investors in
Europe and capitalist ‘hotspots’ like Hong Kong and Taiwan. This policy has met
with some success: Mauritius is now the third largest exporter of knitwear in the world
although recent import quotas imposed by France and the UK have taken a heavy toll.
With good reasons, Mauritius sees itself as a tourist paradise and
pursues an aggressive marketing policy in Reunion, (South) Africa and Europe. To speed
things along, the state airline Air Mauritius has recently acquired its first Jumbo jet.
Under its present leadership the country has opted for a pragmatic
course in an attempt to compete and survive. Strong pro-Western declarations in exchange
for the promise of economic betterment have even lead to the suppression of
Mauritius’s claim to the Diego Garcia atoll 1,200 miles to the north east on which
the USA, on a lease from Britain, has built a massive nuclear bomber and submarine base.
It is a high-risk strategy that could easily backfire on the government in the face of its
sophisticated and well-informed electorate.
Sean Carey
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new
internationalist 148
