L'Affaire Kaya : creole malaise in Mauritius

In February 1999, the death of a well-known Mauritian singer, Kaya, under mysterious circumstances while in police custody, was the catalyst for violence and social unrest which paralysed Mauritius for a week. Kaya’s death and the riots which followed, can be understood as a result of the “Creole Malaise” – the social “malady” which describes the continuing poor health, housing and socio-economic conditions faced by many members of the Creole communities in Mauritius. While the anger of the rioters was initially directed against the state, the violence quickly took on an ethnic dimension. With a population that can be divided into Creoles (the descendants of African slaves), Franco-Mauritians (the descendants of the French colonisers), Hindus, Muslims and Tamils (descendants of those who arrived either as indentured labourers or as traders from the subcontinent) and Sino-Mauritians (descendants of traders from mainland China), the Indian Ocean island of Mauritius is usually seen as an example of a successful pluri-ethnic nation-state. This paper will explore the persistence of the “Creole Malaise”, the ethnic dimension taken by the riots and the reaction to the riots by non-Creole Mauritians, and how these points all illustrate the perilous nature of Mauritius’ pluri-ethnic ‘success’.