ALBERT RENE – A DISPASSIONATE LOOK AT HIS POLITICAL CAREER.
A week before the official resignation date of former
dictator- President of the Seychelles – France Albert Rene, I received a call
on my mobile from an SBC reporter who said that she had been tasked with
preparing a programme about Mr Rene’s 40-year political career, with emphasis
on the vision he had for Seychelles. She said that I had been highly
recommended as someone who would give an independent, fair, honest, and
presumably a dispassionate flattering view of the former dictator’s political
career.
I replied that I could indeed give a fair, un-biased and
honest view of his career, but it would be not be a flattering one at all and
that her superiors would not view my opinion fit to broadcast on SBC. She
admitted, after a few minutes of my presentation on the telephone, that indeed
it would not be acceptable to her superiors for broadcast in the context of
what she had been tasked to prepare. She was gravely disappointed and quietly
admitted that she could not get any Seychellois who was not identified as a
past or present stalwart, sycophant or panderer to the dictator and his regime
that was prepared to take part in her programme.
So I pointed out to her that, in short, she had discovered
the true legacy of Rene’s career: he was leaving behind a people divided
between those who, when asked, would sing his praises and those who loath him
because they have been victims of his despotic, dictatorial, misguided and
brutal rule during the one party state. Statistics show that between 1977 and
1990, nearly 10,000 people left Seychelles to go and live in other countries.
They voted with their feet at a time when Seychellois could only vote for Rene
or pay the consequences.
WHAT MORALITY?
The year he resigned as President of Seychelles, Albert Rene
launched a slogan – in the fashion of every communist dictator to divert
attention from their faltering and unpopular rule – with the words Renaissance
Morale (Moral Renaissance). In my book, Mr Rene’s political career is full of
deception, misrepresentation and distortions of facts until the very end – a
career devoid of any sense of Christian morality, the faith into which he was
born and brought up. For example in the last programme on SBC, he came up with
a novel excuse for the coup d’état in 1977, one neither he nor the SPPF
propaganda machine had ever opined before - that Mancham would not agree to
redistribute land. For 27 years he pandered the lie that Mancham wanted to
remain president for life and now suddenly it’s all about land for the people.
Nothing displayed more the characteristic of heartlessness
and insensitivity than his response to the question about the three people who
were killed on the day of the coup d’état. He dismissed it as mere accidents.
For the benefit of the new generation who has grown up under the heavy blanket
of lies and distortions of the facts and history, here is what actually
happened:
Constable Berard Jeannie was a dedicated policeman whose
duty on the night of 4th June 1977, was to watch over the police armoury at the
Police Mobile Unit (PMU) headquarters at Mont Fleuri. Despite the fact he was watching over weapons and
ammunition, he was unarmed, like all policemen in Seychelles were until that
fateful day. Constable Jeannie could not have been a threat to anyone. His only
authority was the uniform he wore. Yet he was shot in cold blood with an AK-47 assault
rifle while sitting at his desk. This was no accident. One day history will
record who actually pulled the trigger and Mr Jeannie’s family will be able to
find closure. What morality does that teach us?
The first victim who paid the ultimate price with his life
for the misguided ambition of Albert Rene on the day of the coup d’état was
Francis Rachel. He was a semi literate labourer/farmer from Anse Boileau; a
dedicated follower and supporter of Albert Rene, the politician. On the
afternoon of 4th June 1977, he was taken under false pretences from his home at
Anse Boileau to René’s private residence at l’Exile, smack in the middle of the
Morne Seychellois National Park. There he met around a dozen or so people, who
had similarly been gathered, to be told of the plan to take over the country by
violent means while President Mancham was out of the country on official
mission. Those who did not agree to take part were told they would remain a
prisoner at l’Exile until after the event. Rachel was willing to do his party
leader’s bidding. Together with five others, some armed with AK-47 smuggled
into the country from the ANC – training camps in Tanzania, he was driven in a
Toyota mini bus to Corgat Estate that evening, their mission to capture the
police armoury next door. Given the fact that only the perpetrators of the coup
d’etat had weapons, Francis Rachel could only have been killed by his comrades
in arms. Yet he was declared a hero, given a funeral with “military honours”
and had a street named after him. Today, Francis Rachel lies forgotten
discarded into the dustbin of Albert Rene’s political history.
The murder of Davidson Chang Him, a father of three young
children, brother of the Anglican Bishop French Chang Him, was the most
despicable act of wanton violence of that day. He was peacefully standing next
to Marcel Zatte’s shop observing the goings on at the Central Police station
when three men jumped out of a green Volvo brandishing AK-47s. They ordered him
into the car and took him to the police station. As he got out of the car he
came face to face with one of the coup plotters brandishing an AK- 47. Within
seconds a shot rang out and Son, as he was commonly known, fell down dead. The
high velocity bullet went though his chest and came out of his back and
embedded itself in the door of the green Volvo. This was nothing less than pure
terrorist murder. This was no accident. The perpetrator remained free, becoming
a well known but feared enforcer for the illegal regime during the one party
state. He is reported to have masterminded the disappearance of Hassanali
Umarji in 1978, and others in the early eighties.
More than half a dozen people died or disappeared in
Seychelles during the one party state. Some of these incidents have been
documented by Amnesty International as well as by the democratic governments
that had embassies in Victoria at that time. Will the families of these victims
ever get closure, never mind justice? What morality does that teach us?
A PRIVILEGED CHILDHOOD...
Rene has been portrayed in SPPF propaganda as a child that
grew up in abject poverty, when in fact he had a relatively privileged up
bringing. As manager of an outlying island, his father was a not a slave
labourer, as the SPPF propaganda would have you believe. A wooden or corrugated
iron house with thatched roof was not a sign of poverty in the 1930’s and 40’s.
But the propaganda callously exploited the false perception of old poverty
images of the 30’s and 40’s to justify the coup d’etat after the event. The
experience of people in the seventies or even the sixties is never used. Never
mind that in the 30’s and 40’s many diseases were killing anyone regardless of
social or economic status. Today they no longer exist not because of Rene’s
rule but because of the advances in science.
The fact Rene attended the best schools available to a
favoured few at the time, remained hidden from the public. The Catholic Church
provided him with more than just basic education, however. On his own admission
he led the Bishop and the Church into believing that he wanted to be a priest
so he could go to Switzerland. Despite that, the Church even arranged for him
to go to the UK to study law, a privilege not available to 99% of the
youngsters of his age back in the Seychelles, unless he or she came from the
landed or commercial class. But the Catholic Church paid dearly for its
largess. One of the first things Rene did upon establishing his dictatorship in
1977 was to seize all the primary schools in Seychelles. They were all the
private property of the Catholic Church. He also seized large tracts of Church
land. No compensation was offered. As president under the multiparty system,
and under pressure from Mancham, Rene reluctantly agreed to an interest free
loan to the Catholic Church to renovate the Cathedral.
His disrespect for the Catholic Church that gave him his
best opportunity in life, was further demonstrated when he mocked Bishop Felix
Paul on national radio after the army rebellion in 1982. Bishop Paul had
earlier intervened with the rebels in a live radio broadcast, which they
controlled, to pacify them and at the same time urging Rene to speak to them
and negotiate a peaceful resolution to the stand off. Instead Rene remained
un-contactable for two days while he was preparing to unleash Tanzanian troops
on them, (reinforced in the meanwhile with fresh arrivals by air from Dar es
Salaam). Many, including innocent civilians died in the process. The rebels
were rounded up by the Tanzanians, some tortured and others made to serve hard
labour in a specially constructed prison camp on Coétivy Island. When Bishop
Denis Viehe, opined on SBC that the relationship between the Church and the
SPPF government had not always been cordial, he probably was not aware that he
was making the understatement of the century. Today Rene, it appears, professes
another religion, repudiating his Catholic faith, while he exhorts the nation
to renew its moral values. What an example does he represent and what values
should we relate to?
YOUNG LAWYER.
As a young lawyer Rene was a member of the privileged class.
After returning to Seychelles to practice law in 1958, he was inducted in the
Seychelles Club, the bastion of the grand blanc or land owners. A private club,
the Seychelles Club membership then was reserved only to those with white skin
pigmentation and who owned land. It was the only place where colour bar was
ever practiced in Seychelles outside the homes of the grand blanc.
Rene also returned to Seychelles accompanied by his English
wife and a daughter. His Chamber or legal practice was at Royal Street, now
Revolution Avenue, in the wooden complex that later became Progress House, the
birth place of the Democratic Party. The complex was owned by Richard Mancham,
father of former President Mancham. Years later, I witnessed an episode at the
Pirates Arms Hotel Bar in Victoria on a Saturday afternoon, when Rene took a
swipe at Babby Mancham, brother of the former president.
He had taken offence after Babby accused him, in a loud
voice for everyone to hear, of owing rent to the Mancham family for use of the
office.
For over forty years, SPPF propaganda (and Rene) never
mentioned the intervening years between 1958 and 1961 when speaking or writing
about René’s life. Only upon his retirement from office has Rene owned up
publicly that he had been living in Seychelles for a number of years before his
reincarnation as a Marxist firebrand in 1964. He now says he left Seychelles to
return to the UK to study economics and increase his knowledge of how a
successful country should be. This came about, he now says, after he had
decided, against family advice, to remain in Seychelles and not immigrate to
Australia. He now tells us too how he felt he had inadequate ability to take on
the responsibility to improve the lot of his fellow countrymen, as if he had a
special calling from God like Moses. Hence his decision to return to the UK to
study economics in 1961, to be better prepared.
The fact is his life was in shambles. He had been suspended
from the Seychelles Club; his career as a lawyer in tatters; in short he had
become a pariah in his community.
THE GRAND BLANC CONNECTION
Rene began his long political life of deceit soon after he
returned to Seychelles a second time in 1964. It seems that he had decided one
day, while still in the UK, to return and wreak havoc on the lives of everyone
who may have had a hand in his earlier humiliations. His weapons of preference
were radical Marxism and an AK-47. The Seychelles Club was the victim of the
first terrorism attacks in Seychelles and the subject of seizure after the coup
d’etat, even though it had by then opened its doors to everyone and most of the
new members joining at that time were those who took part in the coup d’etat
with Rene and had become the new socialist elite. The modern building that was
the club was torn down and the site remained vacant land until a few years ago.
Seychelles Club was only the outward symbol of the grand blanc in Seychelles.
And it was this symbol, it appears, that Rene wanted to
eradicate as if he did not want it to be known that it was the remnants of the
grand blanc who gave him his critical breath of political life after his
return. By seizing the property and destroying the building he would be able to
pull the wool over the eyes of the next generation, who would be subjected to
relentless one-party state propaganda about Rene’s political calling.
By the time Rene landed in Seychelles in 1964, the serene
and compliant atmosphere dominated by the grand blanc under the benign rule of
the British, had already been disturbed. A young lawyer by the name of James
Mancham, son of a rich merchant, had defeated the grand blanc for the first
time in an election (albeit of limited franchise) and he had joined forces with
David Joubert, a young, educated and black social activist teacher from a poor
family from Praslin, to campaign for social justice and economic changes.
Instead of joining forces with Mancham and Joubert, Rene went to join forces
with the remnants of the grand blanc class.
His true colours were to emerge very soon afterwards. The
opportunity came when Robert Frichot, a lawyer and member of the Taxpayers
Association, the front organisation for the grand blanc, resigned to take up an
appointment as Acting-Attorney General. For Joubert it was a chance not only to
mount the second challenge to the grand blanc but was also a unique opportunity
to serve his community where he was born.
But in stepped Albert Rene, the man, who La Digue’s most
famous grand blanc, Karl Ste Ange, described in his tribute to him as a bright
young socialist. Rene decided to become a candidate in the bye-election to
challenge Joubert. Although the Taxpayers Association fielded their own
candidate in the person of South African white supremacist settler Teague, it
surprised some that he and the grand blanc were urging everyone to vote for
Rene. On La Digue, which was part of the Praslin constituency, Karl Ste. Ange
also was rooting for Rene. Later Ste Ange joined Rene’s SPUP and was elected on
its ticket to represent La Digue. Rene won the bye- election.
The bye-election victory on Praslin provided Rene with an
opportunity to re-cement his ties with the Seychelles Club crowd. In the 1967
election, they became very prominent as SPUP candidates. This was the first
election held under universal adult suffrage principle. Even though he had won Praslin
previously Rene shifted his candidacy to East Mahe. In his place at Praslin he
nominated Joseph Albert, the most prominent grand blanc at the time and the
biggest private landowner in the Seychelles. On La Digue it was Karl Ste Ange,
who had become the party’s Vice –president. In South Mahe it was Raymond Deltel
Sr. whose family owned large tracts of land at Grand Police. Years later, the
Australian historian Derek Scarr, wrote that SPUP was a natural extension of
the grand blanc. But Rene, who had taken power by then, shelved the manuscript,
which was meant to be the school history textbook, in order to erase that part
of his political history. While he was preaching socialism and the
redistribution of wealth, Rene did not see the irony in being surrounded by
remnants of the grand blanc with large tracks of land, then the symbol of
wealth in Seychelles.
Anything was fair game in Rene’s ambition to win power at
all cost, including ungratefulness. The Deltel family was picked upon to suffer
humiliation by Rene when he seized their property at Grand Police after the
coup, while Joseph Albert was spared the humiliation, and the Albert family,
which owned more land than anyone else in the Seychelles, saw not one inch of
their land confiscated. But the real intentions of Rene came to light when,
shortly after the coup d’etat, he abandoned SPUP and created SPPF in its place.
It is not surprising why today he has been reluctant to publicly acknowledge
those who stood with him in the early days of SPUP, preferring the accolade of
an old man of black skin who he had employed as a general factotum all those
years ago.
THE BIRTH OF THE SPUP.
Little is known about what he actually did during the three
years he spent in London while “studying economics”. When in exile, I met
someone who told me he attended the launching of SPUP in a pub in Chiswick, in
the West of London. But Rene found few believers and supporters there for his
Marxist ideology. In fact he never won any true believers to his ideology.
Realising that overtly promoting Marxism was not going to
win him many adherents, he decided to adopt instead the new slogan of
nationalism. This coincided with the wind of change that was sweeping across
Africa at that time. Philibert Loizeau claimed that he invited Rene to come to
Uganda after he had heard about him from his side kick Paul Gobine from London.
In Kampala, Rene lost no time in making contact with the Soviet Embassy. Later,
when challenged by Mancham about his Soviet connections, he denied he ever went
there. He also went to Dar es Salaam. It is not known if he made his first
contact with the Chinese Communist Party there.
In East Africa, Rene found a sympathetic ear among the
Seychellois Diaspora, many of whom had passed themselves off as Free French in
order to enjoy some of the privileges reserved for the white colonial settlers.
Independence for them had meant becoming an African if they stayed, which was
anathema to many. Why not have their own “African” nation a thousand miles in
the Indian Ocean where they could enjoy the privileges they would lose if they
were to become “Africans” in East Africa. In Seychelles, they proved the most
vocal proponent of SPUP’s “Seychelles pou Seychellois” slogan. Not everyone,
who lived in East Africa, though believed in Rene.
Before leaving Nairobi for Seychelles in 1964, Rene gave an
interview to the Daily Nation newspaper which ran the article with the
headline: Independence Or Else. When challenged in court during the bomb trial
of Guy Pool in 1972, that this was proof that he was promoting violence, Rene
flatly denied it, as he denied and disowned many of the things he wrote and
beliefs he held, if it served his political ends.
When Rene saw that his call for independence fell on deaf
ears among the population he decided to publicly repudiate his original
political stand. His tactic was to deny and dissociate himself from the
independence call. He refrained from mentioning independence in his public
meetings where he spoke only in Creole. Instead, he promoted the new slogan
“Seychelles pou Seychellois”. Today, it appears that no record exists of the
speeches Rene delivered around the country and on the radio at election time.
It was common knowledge that the police Special Branch recorded all public
speeches during the colonial era. During the bomb trial, transcripts of one of
his Gordon Square speeches recorded by Special Branch were used by the
prosecution in his cross examination. One of the first places that were
captured on the day of the coup d’etat was Radio Seychelles, where recordings
of all the party political broadcasts were kept. Why would this important
historical evidence be allowed to disappear if it could serve in the propaganda
war?
In 1969 when the British Minister Lord Shepherd visited Seychelles
in order to report back to Whitehall the true sentiments of the people of
Seychelles about independence, both political parties were asked to organise
rallies to demonstrate the level of their support, since some on the left wing
of the Labour Party had been told that all Seychellois wanted independence. But
instead of being faced with the overwhelming proof that the majority of the
people wanted independence, Lord Shepherd was to find that Rene too did not
want independence, only association status like Anguilla in the Caribbean.
Hence he had to report back to London that indeed, no one in Seychelles wanted
independence. But this did not square with the photographs obtained by the UN
Decolonisation Committee in New York which showed demonstrators carrying
placards calling for independence.
Rene, the master of deception, would ensure, however, that
his party newspaper, The People,... which was written only in English or French
for foreign consumption, had sufficient articles about the call for independence.
Read years later, without the benefit of the oral evidence that no longer
exists, they give a false sense of consistency in his public declaration about
the independence issue. One of his first political deceptions was known as La
procession du Riz. To give justification to the march, he contrived with a well
know Indian merchant to sell a small consignment of rice below the imported
price and then made the claim that SPUP would bring cheaper rice for the poor.
The march started from Anse aux Pins to Victoria. Most of the placards,
however, carried slogans calling for independence, even if those carrying them
– who were in the main unable to read or write English - were oblivious to the
messages they were sending, which had nothing to do with cheaper rice. Pictures
of this and other similar public “demonstrations” or strikes were snapped and
sent to the OAU and the UN.
SPUP AS A "LIBERATION MOVEMENT"...
When it became clear to him that he was not going to win
elections against Mancham, and the OAU was getting tired of his fence sitting,
Rene decided that he must come out publicly to claim independence. The day
after his party’s electoral defeat in 1970, Rene went on the air to admit for
the first time in Creole that he had all along stood for independence and that
from now on he would be campaigning publicly in favour of it. It was not
surprising that he showed his true colours just when Mancham, at a much younger
age than him, was to become the Chief Minister under a new constitution, which
saw Seychelles become a self-governing territory.
In the next few years after that declaration, Seychelles was
to experience a series of terrorist acts and acts of wanton arson. Previously,
only one bomb explosions had taken place at that was at the Seychelles club.
Between 1970 and 1972 more bombs exploded.
The first was a newly built Radio Seychelles. This was
followed by one at the Reef Hotel, at Adam Moosa’s shop and Gros Samy’s shop at
Market Street when Queen Elizabeth was due to visit Seychelles to open the
Airport and the Reef hotel and at Progress House – the HQ of the Democratic
Party. In the dry season, bush fires broke out in the hills around La Misere.
The bomb explosions and arson ensured that SPPF was at par with the other
liberation movements on the continent, at least in their actions. SPUP was duly
recognised as a Liberation Movement, the only one to exist and operate legally
as a political party in the territory it wanted to liberate. True enough some
financial and material support from the OAU duly arrived in the form of a
couple of Land Rovers and kitenge cloths – which became the symbol of the
party.
Rene, however, came close to paying a heavy price for the
SPUP’s, so far, duplicitous activities to undermine the peace, progress and
tranquillity of Seychelles. Shortly after the bomb explosion at the Reef Hotel,
Guy Pool was apprehended after a tip- off to the police. The man who made the
tip-off was the common law husband of Guy Pool’s sister. The informer became
the key witness for the prosecution, was given police protection and eventually
settlement in the UK. While in detention at the Union Vale prison Guy Pool,
confessed to Mr Felix Hoareau, then Chief Prison Officer, that he placed the
bomb at the Reef hotel and named the person who gave him the bomb. Felix
Hoareau was a prime witness against Pool. Another bomber who was arrested and
confessed to the police was Raymond Bonte, then a taxi driver. He was not
prosecuted though. Bonte later joined the coup d’etat and became a senior
officer of the People’s Liberation Army until he fell from grace and was
sacked.
On 4th June 1978 Felix Hoareau, then retired, was arrested,
along with half a dozen men and women, accused of plotting to overthrow Rene.
He was held for three months before being forced into exile. He died in Wales
in the early 80’s. Hoareau was not the only one who faced the wrath of Rene
during the one party state. Ramnik Vlabhji – the local lawyer who’s chamber
officially represented Guy Pool, left Seychelles for voluntary exile in the UK
and his properties seized by the tax authorities. He only returned after the
multiparty system was restored. Everyone who knew the true facts about albert
Rene’s role in the Reef Hotel bombings was harassed by Rene during the one party
state.
The trial of Guy Pool was probably the most celebrated ever
held in Seychelles. I was lucky to have been a witness to history being made
when I was given prime sitting accommodation by the Chief Justice Sir George
Souyave, as one of two “reporters” in the packed court room. The other reporter
was the late Antonio Beaudouin who was reporting for the Seychelles Bulletin
(predecessor to the Seychelles Nation) and Radio Seychelles, while I was
reporting for Le Seychellois – the mouthpiece of what remained of the Taxpayers
Association.
The trial became famous because Guy Pool was being
“defended” by the celebrated trial lawyer of East Africa, the Kenyan Asian
Kapila. Kapila had earned prominence when, as a young lawyer, he formed part of
the legal team that defended Jomo Kenyatta on charges of masterminding the Mau
Mau rebellion. During his entire stay in Seychelles, Kapila was the personal
guest of Mrs Geva Rene (then Savy), and was frequently seen in public in the
company of Mrs Rene. They remained friends ever since, and Kapila often visited
the Seychelles on the anniversary of the coup d’etat, as a VIP guest. No doubt
SPUP foot Kapila’s substantial legal bill for the Guy Pool defence.
In the trial Rene was called as a witness for the defence to
deny that he had any connection with the incident. All the same, Guy Pool was
found guilty of placing the bomb at the Reef Hotel and sentenced to 12 years
imprisonment. He was pardoned by President Mancham as part of an amnesty for
all convicts on the occasion of Independence in 1976. A year later Pool was
part of the terrorist group that attacked the police armoury and was made a
lieutenant in the new People’s Liberation Army. He died in mysterious
circumstances a few years later when the dumper truck he was driving, went off
the dirt road the army was carving on the side of the mountain to create the
first palaces for the new military elite.
DUPLICITOUS POLITICS.
One of the constitutional structures the British
experimented on Seychelles was called the Governing Council system, which was
introduced in 1967 by Sir Colville Deverel. This provided for a two tier
system: a Legislative Council comprising of both elected members and a handful
of colonial officials appointed by the Governor, which debated and passed the
laws and an Executive Council made up of the same people from the Legislative
Council, which assisted the Governor to formulate policies and to “administer”
various portfolios. The Executive Council was divided into three committees
each with a chair person. Committee number 1 was chaired by Dr Hilda Stevenson
Delhomme, who had been elected as an independent but un-opposed by the
Democratic Party. Committee number 2 was chaired by Albert Rene and Committee
number 3 was chaired by James Mancham.
Each committee was nominally responsible or supervised
various administrative portfolios such as tourism, public works, housing and
land. Their decisions would later be ratified by themselves sitting as the
Legislative Council or vice versa. But this experiment was short-lived because
Rene was accused of voting and speaking in public sessions against the very
proposals he supported and voted for in private. The same accusation was of
course levelled by Rene against Mancham. Unsurprisingly, Committee number 2,
chaired by Rene, was responsible for the creation of the Morne Seychellois
National Park where Rene had just before bought land from the Crown to build
his house.
As a Minister in the Mancham administration during the self government
period between 1st October 1975 and Independence day, as well as prime Minister
after independence, Rene was responsible for land and housing. One of his
responsibilities was to buy land from private individuals for the government to
build low cost public housing. One of the properties which the cabinet had
approved to be bought was the Nageon Estate at Pointe Larue and money had been
provided by the EEC (now called the EU). Rene slept on the files until after
the coup d’etat so he could announce that he was building houses for the people
which Mancham had not done.
He was also responsible to approve the purchase of land by
investors. One group of investors, in 1977, had finalised plans to buy land at
Baie Lazarre to build a resort to be managed by the Intercontinental hotel
chain. The property belonged to the Albert family. Rene sat on the files until
after the coup. When I met Mr Guy Devoud at the Pirates Arms one day after the
coup, he recounted to me how the family managed eventually to get sanction to
sell the land, but only after certain contributions were made to a particular
party.
On the day of the coup d’etat, Rene rounded up all the six
British police officers on secondment to the Seychelles Police Force and
deported them. He appointed James Pillay, a senior local officer, as the
Commissioner of Police. Pillay was one of three senior local officers who were
in line to take over the top job of Police Commissioner occupied by a British
expatriate police officer. But Pillay had somehow been recruited by Rene to
join the coup plot. He was instrumental in giving local legitimacy to the coup
and to encourage other officers to remain in the force under his command.
When in exile, I discovered that Pillay would send Mancham a
postcard from wherever he found himself in the world, with simple messages of
good wishes, but no postcard ever came from Seychelles. Later, I found out why
James Pillay was doing this. It transpired that early in 1977, President
Mancham had signed the recommendation appointing Pillay the first Commissioner
of Police, but the appointment remained a secret until Pillay had finished a
series of administrative postings to gain experience. But throughout that time,
Pillay was being made to believe that Mancham had not supported him for the top
post and that his various postings were a punishment. After he became
Commissioner, however, Pillay discovered the truth but then it was too late.
Rene had already reneged on a promise made to Pillay that the police would be
the only security force in the country. Instead Rene created the SPLA, the
Seychelles People’s Militia and a secret police unit under his direct command.
The Seychelles Police Force was marginalized and gradually became subservient
to the political agenda of the one party state.
The most glaring piece of deception was to name the army
that was created after the coup d’etat The People’s Liberation Army (SPLA).
Never mind that it looked ridiculous to everyone. It would. Nevertheless,
ensure that when President Rene appeared on the world stage alongside Castro,
Brezhnev and others of their ilk, he would be seen with a similar baggage.
Otherwise he would be seen for the phoney liberator that he truly was.
MORE DECEPTION...
In 1979 Rene published his new vision for Seychelles. In it
he said he would create a National Youth Service which would compulsorily take
all children from the age of 16 and place them in special education camps on
coral islad of Coetivy, 150 miles out in the Indian Ocean, for two years. Rene
wanted to emulate Castro who built an infamous island indoctrination camp in
Cuba. When the plan was leaked many parents with children at Seychelles College
and the Regina Mundi grammar schools expressed alarm, especially among those of
the previous grand blanc class who were offering open support to Rene and
endorsing his regime. Shocked by the strength of the reaction, Rene thought he
could pacify them by personally chairing public discussions at the schools with
the parents, where he got a thorough grilling. But the fear and anger had
spread like wild fire and by the time Rene reached the Anse Aux Pins school he
realised his regime was under threat from a looming popular revolt. At Anse Aux
Pins he was humiliated by his own angry and working class supporters who were
happy to vote for him only a few months before in the one party election.
When the students went into the streets by the thousands to
demonstrate against NYS in October 1979, Rene sent Guy Sinon, his Minister of
Education, to pacify them. In a meeting broadcast live on national radio, Sinon
promised that NYS would not be compulsory and the students made him sign a
pledge to that effect. But true to his character, Rene then ordered that all
schooling should terminate after year two of secondary education, and made
clear that the route to further education was only via the NYS. At the same
time all private schools were prohibited to Seychellois nationals. This made
Sinon’s pledge not to make NYS compulsory worthless. Once more Albert Rene had
engineered a classic deception. The only compromise he allowed, NYS would be on
Mahe and Ste Anne, not on Coetivy.
By the time he took power in 1977, quite a number of the new
intelligentsia had high regards for Rene and his perceived dedication and hard
work as Prime Minister. Even l’Echo des Iles, the official mouthpiece of the
Catholic Church, took swipes at Presidetn Mancham’s practice of going places
with a lone police outrider in front blowing its siren and a security detail of
two plane clothes policemen in one car following behind. Two prominent
individuals who did not hide their glee at René’s coup were Dr Guy Ah Moye,
consultant physician at Victoria Hospital and Yvon Savy, previously the
Government’s Chief surveyor when Rene bought his Crown property. In early 1978
Ah Moye and Savy decided to hold public meetings to discuss proposals to put to
the new Constitutional Commission appointed by Rene to prepare a new
Constitution. They were enamoured by the perception of the new style of
Government Rene seems to promise. After all Rene was organising monthly press
conferences, which never actually took place that frequently under Mancham.
The meetings were held at the school hall of the Mont Fleuri
Senior Secondary School and the first meeting was lively and well attended.
Also buoyed by the new ‘freedom’ was young Ibrahim Afif from Radio Seychelles,
who brought along his tape recorder to record the proceedings and to replay the
opinions of the newly enfranchised masses, over the airwaves. I attended the
first meeting and even took part in the discussions. But after I heard the
first report Afif put out on the radio, which showed that most of the opinions
being expressed were not in sync with the new political reality, especially the
one party state concept, I cautioned Ah Moye and Savy that we were probably
playing with fire. Savy reassured me that Rene personally had given him his
word of honour to respect all opinions.
At the next meeting the following week, a carpenter from
Plaisance stood up and asked why should we have an army and spend thousands of
rupees on providing them with AK-47, when the money could be better spent to
build houses. The gathering, almost to a man, gave an approving applause, which
was reported faithfully with sound by Afif at the next broadcast. Little did
Savy and Ah Moye realise that this was going to be the last time free speech
was heard in Seychelles for a long time. The following Saturday evening Douglas
Cedras read an official but scathing attack on the unsuspected carpenter on
radio Seychelles branding him an enemy of the people, a term constantly used
from then on against the political enemies of Albert Rene. No more meetings
were held by Messrs Ahmoye and Savy. Instead, the new SPPF staged managed,
recorded and edited its own popular assembly. The edited recordings were
presented to the constitutional commission as the people’s overriding
“opinion”. Not surprisingly 100% of the “opinions” called for the creation of a
one party state. Even though Savy remained in Seychelles, Ah Moye packed his
bags and left the country.
When SPPF was launched in 1978, it was presented as a party
that would unite all the people under one super umbrella. Guy Sinon, its
Secretary General was naively enthusiastic to organise the new popular
committees across the country. The first and only meeting openly held was on
Praslin where Dan Payet, the Democratic Party’s National Assembly member was
king. Payet brought along sufficient supporters to register as members of the
new party and got himself elected its local chairperson. The same evening it
was announced that the membership rules had changed. New members would have to
serve a six-month probation and must be approved by Mr Rene himself.
Henceforth, SPPF would be not just a popular party but also a vanguard party in
the pursuit of the vision of its creator, Albert Rene.
Conscious of the criticism of Mancham and his lone police
outrider motorcade in l’Echo des Iles, Rene, in his first radio broadcast to
the nation after coup d’etat, pledged that he would not drive around with
official bodyguards. Two years later when reminded of his pledge at a press conference,
after his entourage had grown from John Pillay brandishing a Stirling machine
gun just after the coup to a posse of vehicles filled with heavily armed
bodyguards in military uniform provided by his People’s Liberation Army, Rene
responded with what became his classic line and his hallmark response to such
contradictions – it is the wish of the people.
WHAT VISION?
Albert Rene never had a vision for Seychelles. In actual
fact when one reads his often dialectic pronouncements, he was never so
categorical about a vision for the country. His vision was always a
retrospective one, cobbled together in party propaganda leaflets after a
programme had failed. Whenever a programme failed and had to be abandoned like
the NYS, it is portrayed as having achieved its desired objectives that it was
created to do, a phase in the grand design had ended and now all we needed to
do was go to the next phase and restore the old system. The one party state, he
now claims, was necessary to prepare the ground for the return of multiparty
democracy, as if he had set this vision all along.
For years he shunned the diplomatic world, refusing to be
seen alongside other heads of states and heads of government. Now on his
retirement from office, he claims he will be travelling to these places to be
seen with them, sort of making it up to them as a favour. He doesn’t care that
his behaviour as Head of State dishonoured our country and made us a laughing
stock among nations. Only Kim Il Sung bettered him on diplomatic visits. Yet,
during the one party era, Rene paid official visits to China and North Korea 5
times, including once to communist Vietnam.
SEYCHELLES WEEKLY-Paul Chow 23 April 2004.
