THE POLITICS OF SQUALOR AND DEPENDENCY: CHRONIC POLITICAL INSTABILITY AND ECONOMIC COLLAPSE IN THE COMORO ISLANDS

Abstract

CHRONIC POLITICAL INSTABILITY and general overpoliticization may have constituted some of the most enduring conditioning features of African independence, but very few African states have experienced the specific 'mix' of abject poverty and seemingly permanent political crisis that has been the hallmark of Comorian existence since the achievement of independence in 1975. The country has never had a viable economy, with the result that occasionally the Comorian state has had to 'auction' itself to the rival interests of several bidders, such as France, South Africa, the Gulf States, Mexico, Morocco and even the tiny enclave state of Gabon. This need to establish materially rewarding clientelist ties with external partners has given rise to a bizarre brand of politics, in the context of which it has proved to be virtually impossible to identify and distinguish sovereign Comorian 'national interests' from those of the patronizing states. Day to day governance has been so severely compromised that it is virtually synonymous with the individual private pursuits of the politically powerful. There exists no identifiable 'state form' with predictable institutions functioning in pursuit of the logic and goals that they have been originally intended to serve at independence. But, above all, the Comoros is unique in the sense that it is the only known state in contemporary Africa in which a 'sovereign' government has been installed and maintained by a group of mercenary freebooters who struck a formal relationship with the government and became an integral part of the supposedly legitimate state institutions. In this way, the Comorian state was probably one of the most telling examples of the privatization of the state through a joint functional alliance between local elites and their free-floating international partners.