Stirrings at the End of the World

To the animistic people of Madagascar, death is considered just another step in life. The dead are buried, but they are regarded as active family members, and their souls are believed to reside in the northeast corners of the houses in which they lived. Every four or five years, depending on the forecast of the family astrologer, their descendants dig up their bones, dress them in shiny new funeral silks and parade them around town in taxis. They introduce the dead to new members of the family, tell them the latest jokes, hire bands to play them the current hit songs and fill them in on the rest of the news. Next time the bones are trotted out, there will be plenty to tell them, as TIME Correspondent John Blashill learned during a visit to the island:

VOILA," said Philibert Tsirinana, the only president Madagascar has had since it won independence from France and became the Malagasy Republic in 1958. "So you are going to drive to Tamatave? Voila. You will find the road is bad. I will tell you why. First, because we do not have money to do all things at once. Second, because if we improved the road, people would use it and the profits of our railroad would be reduced. Third, because the sooner we improved it, the sooner it would be torn up and the sooner we would have to improve it again. Voil`a."

Such is life in Madagascar, the world's fourth largest island, where the phrase "Nothing ever happens around here" is not a complaint but an expression of supreme satisfaction. A French version of Shangrila, Madagascar was a French colony for 73 years, and the 40,000 Frenchmen who remain have seen to it that French food, fashions and pharmacies are almost everywhere. For all that, no one would mistake Madagascar for France. Director of Information Flavien Renaivo describes it as "L'lle-au-Bout-du-Monde" (The Island at the End of the World). Though it lies 250 miles off East Africa, its people are largely Polynesian rather than African, and the language is related to Javanese dialects. Much of the plant and animal life is unique to the island area; lemurs and about one-half of the 800 local varieties of butterflies exist wild nowhere else. The pace of life is slow, but in recent weeks the tranquil island has come alive--largely because of some unwonted political stirrings.

Itching for Action. Last August, Tsirinana's doctors ordered him to take a complete rest, and by the end of the prescribed three-month period he was so bored that he was itching to do something. What he did was fire his entire twelve-man Cabinet last month, then reappoint all but one Minister in the next three weeks. It was seemingly designed solely to prove who was boss.

Some proof was needed, since Tsirinana (pronounced Tsi-ran) is not in the best of health. A peasant boy who herded zebus until the French sent him off to a Jesuit school, he is now nearing 60. His gait is slow and his words sound mechanical. Moreover, the island's recent municipal elections--the first nationwide balloting in five years --indicate that discontent is on the rise.

Tsirinana and his Social Democratic Party (P.S.D.) describe themselves, not entirely accurately, as socialists. "Our socialism is not a socialism that steals," Tsirinana recently told his party. "To nationalize what others have done is to steal." In the municipal elections, the P.S.D. swept about 90% of the national vote, but in the colorful capital of Tananarive and the port city of Tamatave the quasi-Marxist opposition showed unsettling strength. The opposition, called the Congress Party for the Independence of Madagascar, increased its majority in the capital from 55% to 68%, and in Tamatave cut sharply into the P.S.D.'s margin. Though the P.S.D. still controls most of the island, the size of the opposition vote demonstrated clear dissatisfaction with the pace of economic progress.

The opposition is dominated by the 1,500,000 Merina tribesmen of the central highlands, while the P.S.D. represents the balance of Madagascar's 6,300,000 people. The Merina, a hardworking, intelligent elite, are mistrusted by non-Merina, including Tsirinana. The President, a member of the Tsimihety tribe (whose name means "those who do not cut their hair," though Tsirinana himself is well-barbered), does not have a single Merina in his Cabinet. This animosity is the dominant political fact of Madagascar. So far, Tsirinana has kept the problem under control, with considerable advice from French advisers and military forces, including a battalion of paratroopers and an air base in Tananarive, a major naval base at Diego Suarez and a regiment or so of infantry near the naval base.

Reincarnated Relatives. Despite the overlay of French influence, the island's own culture retains its vitality. In the north, the Ambahakoana worship crocodiles, believing them to be reincarnated relatives. The Betsimisaraka tribesmen in the south worship lemurs for the same reason. The economy is mostly agricultural. There are huge vanilla plantations and vast stretches of sugar cane in the north. Coffee is grown in the southeast, and in the southwest great swaths of land are being brought into production by kibbutz-like government cooperative farms, with help from half a dozen Israeli advisers. In the southwest, thanks to government investment, percapita income has more than tripled in the past ten years, to $105.

Despite a 6% growth rate, however, Madagascar's needs in the way of such basics as electricity and transport are enormous. France supplies $70 million a year in aid, but that is not enough. Communications are abysmal; it is easier to telex Paris than to telephone Tulear. Trains are unreliable, and the tiny fleet of Air Madagascar ("Mad Air" for short) is spread very thin.

And then there are the roads. The President said that they were bad, and he was right. The drive to Tamatave ended in confusion after four flat tires --and that road is supposedly one of the island's best. Before the French arrived, however, there were no roads at all, and few wheels. For many years the only wheels on Madagascar were huge stone disks that were rolled in front of forts to seal the entrances. The wheel was considered difficult to move --and in much of the island, it still is.

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