Things are accelerating in Mayotte where the government intends to raze more than a thousand “bangas”, sheet metal huts located in Majicavo. The French must be rehoused and the foreigners expelled.
In shimaoré, the main language in Mayotte along with French, this grandmother sitting in the middle of her cabin in blue and gray jail complains of her headache. Her name is Fatima and she has been living in her “banga” in Majicavo since 2002. Her granddaughter, who translates, explains that she has tension and that with what is happening, she can no longer eat or taking medicine so much the worry eats away at her. His shantytown in this district located in the north of Mayotte, in the town of Koungou, is the only one for the time being to be the subject of a prefectural decree as part of the “Wuambushu” operation, for a demolition scheduled for Tuesday. or Wednesday.
>> Operation “Wuambushu” in Mayotte: in the largest slum in France, Comorians fear “civil war”
“We don’t even know where to go in fact, explains the granddaughter. We’re going to sleep at the mosque”. Since Sunday, they have started to put their things away. Flip-flops in the muddy alleys, his uncle and his cousin take out the freezer, beds, TV stand. For the families who have received and accepted a relocation offer, the condition is to bring only one suitcase and leave their life’s belongings behind.
“Unworthy” relocations
“We force them to leave all their belongings!”, protests lawyer Marjane Ghaem. With a dozen colleagues, she started appeals against these expulsions. Seized by twenty families from Majicavo, she obtained a suspension from the administrative court for lack of a proposal for suitable rehousing. “These are 30 m2 spaces with shared bathrooms and kitchens in which we want to put a family of two adults and five children”explains the lawyer who denounces proposals for emergency accommodation “unworthy”.
“When people talk to me about overcrowding in a slum and a sheet metal box, I wonder why there is no overcrowding in a 30 m2 apartment when there are seven of us there.”
Marjane Ghaem, lawyerat franceinfo
More than 1,000 homes must be razed as part of the fight against illegal immigration and destruction of unsanitary housing wanted by the Ministry of the Interior and local elected officials. The French must be rehoused, according to the possibilities, and the foreigners, expelled, towards the Comoros in particular. But more often than not, these evicted families will swell the ranks of another shanty town in the area, sometimes just a few kilometers away.
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