MOLINACO, the Comorian Diaspora, and Decolonisation in East Africa's Indian Ocean

George Roberts

doi:10.1017/s0021853721000530

Abstract

AbstractThe marginal case of the decolonisation of Comoros has gained little attention from historians of Africa. By tracing the evolution of the Mouvement de libération nationale des Comores (MOLINACO) around East Africa's Indian Ocean basin, this article explores the possibilities and constraints of anticolonial organisation among a diaspora population whose own existence was threatened by the more exclusive political order that emerged from the process of decolonisation. In Tanganyika, Zanzibar, Kenya, and Madagascar, MOLINACO's activities were shaped and limited by contested issues of racial identity, island genealogy, partisan alignment, and international priorities among both the Comorian diaspora and their ‘host’ governments. Through a transterritorial approach, this article examines the difficulties for minority communities in navigating the transition from empire to nation-state, while also illustrating the challenges MOLINACO faced in its ultimately unsuccessful attempt to impose that same normative model onto the archipelago.

Highlights

In July 1963, a resident of Nairobi named M
By tracing the evolution of the Mouvement de libération nationale des Comores (MOLINACO) around East Africa’s Indian Ocean basin, this article explores the possibilities and constraints of anticolonial organisation among a diaspora population whose own existence was threatened by the more exclusive political order that emerged from the process of decolonisation
As Jonathon Glassman has powerfully demonstrated in the case of Zanzibar, ‘cosmopolitanism’ was not necessarily antithetical to ‘nativism’; both were instrumentalised by nationalist politicians for Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core

Summary

The making of the Comorian diaspora in East Africa

The Comoros archipelago consists of four main islands: Ngazidja (in French, Grande Comore), Ndzuani (Anjouan), Mwali (Mohéli), and Maore (Mayotte). Ngazidja — the largest, most populous, and northwesternmost of the islands — lies around 300 kilometres from Mozambique and 670 kilometres from Dar es Salaam. Comorians in Kenya, Tanganyika, and Zanzibar claimed ‘non-native’ status in order to access certain legal and commercial privileges.. Comorians in Kenya, Tanganyika, and Zanzibar claimed ‘non-native’ status in order to access certain legal and commercial privileges.30 In justifying this status, Comorians deployed a range of imprecise genealogical and civilisational arguments to demonstrate that they were distinct from the ‘African’ population, even as they were somatically similar to them. In 1948, Comorians in Nairobi substantiated their own claims to ‘non-native’ status by sending the British authorities a copy of his Short History.34 These debates about the place of Comorians within East Africa’s colonial order were distinct from the experience of the much larger diaspora in Madagascar. These interisland tensions meant that the ‘Comorian’ population in Madagascar had a very different complexion to its equivalent in continental East Africa, which was composed almost entirely of wangazidja.

Comorians and nationalist politics in East Africa

The origins of MOLINACO

The struggles of a transoceanic African national liberation movement

Conclusion