Earlier this month the US Government’s National Institute of Health published an important research paper on the new risks of unpredicted food insecurity world-wide. Mauritius is badly exposed to just this danger. In LALIT, we have been campaigning on this for years.
The MSM Government has not taken the steps necessary for assuring food sovereignty. It has only paid lip service, and introduced marginal measures. Neither Government nor Opposition have the courage, for all their macho talk, to so much as whisper that it is necessary to force the big sugar estates to free up land for food production for the nation. They are too cowardly to do this. They bow down to the bosses.
In fact, it is necessary to legislate, as was done in World War II, to force the big land owners to allocate a percentage of the arable land that they have hogged since colonization, slavery and indenture, so as to plant food crops, and simultaneously to set up food processing units to deal with the new food production.
In fact, we should aim, in times like these, to export food.
We are not talking about a few lettuces and kotomili plants on top of houses or small planters’ onion crops, good as both of these are, but huge plantations of staple foods, on the one hand, and high-protein foods, on the other to replace part of the sugar cane. The food crisis looming demands it.
This would obviously create all kinds of jobs, and act as shock-absorber for the balance-of-payments crisis, which is the main threat to Mauritius’ economy. The selling off of arable land for villas and golf courses must be outlawed at once. It must be exposed as a terminally dangerous attempt to hide balance-of-payments problems. All the mainstream parties and most of the minor parties, too, are in lock-step with the sugar estate owners, and still in the thrall of sugar cane.
The risk referred to in the new American research is what they term unpredictable “synchronized low food crop yields” in different parts of the world as a result of changes in weather patterns, because of global climate change. In particular they talk about the changes in the jet-stream’s path. They warn that the world can, at the same time, suffer extreme weather conditions in different parts of the world that then coincide, causing deadly food shortages. As yet, there is no way to predict how this will unfurl, but the scientists assure us, unfurl it will.
We have already seen droughts, floods, fires, and urban spread, all causing a threat to food production world-wide. Freight charges are unpredictable, and shipping and air freight are massive polluters. General global warming will also threaten crops, as will the threat to species of insects that fertilize crops.
We can add that no-one had predicted that one of the world’s largest wheat suppliers, Ukraine, would be at war, and thus its food production under threat, nor that there would be a pandemic like Covid upsetting shipping and air supplies of food. Worse wars are in the pipeline. Worse pandemics are, too. And yet the Government fiddles, as Rome quite literally burns.
The politics of Mauritius is unable to cope.
Mauritius’ contribution to global warming is not small either. With one of the world’s biggest, most polluting military bases in the world on our territory, on Diego Garcia, we are contributing to this dangerous pollution. The US Department of Defense is the US’s biggest single polluter, and its military bases are its main polluters.
War, especially nuclear war, is a second, linked existential threat for humanity. The constant expansion of the war-like NATO alliance is now shamelessly heading for Japan and South Korea, having invaded Afghanistan, without provocation, and having encircled Russia, it now aims at encircling China. Political parties in Mauritius should be agitating for peace and against the nuclear base on Diego Garcia. What do we hear? Pravind Jugnauth has offered to lease the US base on Diego Garcia for 100 years to the US. What does the Opposition say? Demand more money from the USA! it is truly shocking.
Instead of addressing these existential threats, all the political parties in the country are unable even to campaign on specific items in a program. They do not touch even the basics like land reform and food. They do not focus on world issues like peace instead of war. They do not even propose a program for more democracy – with detailed propositions for this – and for less repression – showing how – and for more freedom – even freedom to use our own language in education. Political parties do not even announce in the interests of which class they intend to proceed. They all talk about the mafia having taken over institutions – blame each other – and yet fail to propose a road map that could get beyond such a situation.
Only LALIT does. We campaign for land reform. For food sovereignty. Against the military base on Diego Garcia, and against war and militarism. We campaign for more democracy – the right of recall, for example, and the election by the National Assembly of the Prime Minister, instead of his appointment by the President. This way, Prime Ministers, too, can be recalled by those who elected them. We call for more rights. The right for everyone to learn in the language they speak at home. The right for everyone to participate in politics – whether they work for the private or public sector, or anywhere else. We campaign for all this. Freedom from police prosecution for women who have abortions. We campaign for this. Freedom to marry who you want to, and to live with them. We campaign for this.
A program is what you campaign for, campaign for consistently, not just what you write down on a bit of paper when you make an alliance, or a couple of weeks before a general election.