The Truth and Justice Commission Debacle

17.11.2009

The Truth and Justice Commission debacle has exposed an advanced degree of rot in the State. This
exposure was triggered by the decision of LALIT's delegation to leave before deponing before the
Commission - after four of us were, amongst other things, made to wait for over an hour without a word
of apology. In LALIT, we were already uneasy about deponing before the "Shell Commission" in the
absence of Prof. Shell, the sworn-in Chairperson. It seemed odd. A Commission like this without a Chair
is very weak. But, we decided to go ahead and give evidence because our belief that the question of
slavery and indenture is of key political importance over-rode what was then the one-off mystery of
Prof. Robert Shell's "temporary" absence, and there were no other apparent problems.

LALIT's testimony was to be on the need for collective and structural reparations for slavery and
indenture "and on who should pay whom" as well as on the continuity, as well as fracture, in the labour
law legal framework from slavery through indenture into modern labour laws, and on land ownership in
the absence of agrarian reform, on the non-recognition of the Kreol and Bhojpuri languages, on police
brutality, on communal/race classification through the Best Loser system, all of which we argue, are
direct legacies of the slavery and indenture systems. All of which need "repairing".

The treatment meted out to us by the Commission has caused us to lose confidence in it altogether.
They wrote calling us in at 1:00 pm on Wednesday 28 October. Then the day before they asked us to
vacate this slot for someone more important. We finally agreed to come at 2:00 instead of 1:00. No
problem. They requested us to be there 15 minutes early so as not to keep the Commissioners waiting.
No problem. They ushered us into a waiting room that was so unfurnished and lugubrious that it
exposed the Commission as rather "baclée". The place was manned by a police officer, and this did not
improve the atmosphere. We were then asked to produce our "passes", today called ID cards. Then we
were left sitting there without a word of apology for an hour. Thus our walk-out.

Our walk-out had an unexpected side-effect: it sparked off a major debate about why Shell was absent
from the "Shell Commission", and this in turn exposed the rot that seems to have set in to the State.

The State unmasked

Since then, hideous conflicts between individual Commission members, the Prime Minister's Office and
Prof. Shell have been publicly exposed. People have called each other liars, insinuated corruption, and
lavishly blamed the PMO. Ms. Vijaya Teelock and Mr. Lindsay Morvan have "explained" on radio that
Shell was "kept informed" by e-mail of Commission work schedules, and that he had disappeared. They
could not contact him, so the Commission proceeded without him. Later they said that he was trying to
" telecommand" the Commission from South Africa, where he lives.
Prof Shell claims that there had been deliberate administrative hurdles put in his way, particularly by
Ms. Teelock, to stop him from coming to Mauritius to chair the Commission. He says his airfare was not
paid. He also says he wife had meanwhile had an accident.

The PMO has kept noticeably silent throughout.

Why did the "Shell Commission" proceed in the absence of Shell? Why did they not expose the
problem? It was only two months ago that public attention was drawn to Shell's absence. Surprisingly,
this was when Sylvio Michel did so. He publicly demanded that Navin Ramgoolam nominate Ms. Vijaya
Teelock, who " peut parfaitement assumer cette responsabilité" as chairman instead.(1)

So, Robert Shell who had been sworn in as Chair of the Commission by the President of the Republic in
full ceremony was unceremoniously "sworn out". This was done by the Navin Ramgoolam government
through a letter from the President. (2) What the State accused him of would be interesting to know.
The Law setting up the Commission gives very restricted list of reasons for kicking someone out (3).

Another Professor from South Africa, Alex Boraine, is now being contacted by the PMO to Chair this now
rather infamous Commission. But we find out he had already been contacted long ago. Alex Boraine had
been initially approached by the State to chair the Commission. While he was thinking about it, he heard
Robert Shell had been nominated. Alex Boraine will have much more to think about this time round.
How a new Chairman will face the challenge of leading a Commission that has already proceeded with
its work and is getting ready to prepare the "interim report" that may be demanded is mind-boggling.
The MMM Opposition is now calling for "a Mauritian" to Chair.

What are the real reasons for the debacle? To answer this question we need to go back to the time
when the /i> Truth and Justice Commission was first announced by Alliance Social leaders. The first
references to it were made during the Alliance Social's 2005 electoral campaign. Rama Valayden
announced that the Alliance Social government would set up a "Truth Commission" to look into the
causes of the deaths of Kaya and Rajen Sabapathee, a statement that he repeated when he became
Attorney General (4). When the Commission was finally set up, there was no reference at all to Kaya or
Sabapathee, or to police violence. So the Truth and Justice Commission was by then no longer to be
about deaths in detention as Rama Valayden had announced. It was something else.

Truth and Justice Commission: An Alliance Social electoral deal?

References by Sylvio Michel and Navin Ramgoolam to the Truth and Justice Commission, made it clear
that this Commission was part of an electoral deal for the entry of Sylvio Michel's FTS-Les Verts into the
Alliance Social. When Les Verts candidates did not get elected, they still had to get their "bout". Their
"bout" appears to be this "Commission" (5). When the Truth and Justice Commission Bill was presented,
the terms of reference included not only the question of slavery, but of indenture as well. So it was clear
that one of the points that must have come up during negotiations between Michel and Ramgoolam
was that "descendants of indentured labourers" get the possibility of compensation too.

The Sylvio Michel Les Verts' political existence has for years been based on a campaign to gather
together individuals to whom he offers the hope of individual cash compensation as slave descendants,
and individual restitution of land. Les Verts sees its role as political negotiator for this form of individual
compensation. However, he may have changed tack. We will come back to this later.

Individual compensation v/s collective reparation

Once Sylvio Michel "got" the Commission, then came the next big question: who would chair it? Robert
Shell was Sylvio Michel's choice. He even publicly paraded that he was the one who had selected Prof.
Shell (L`Express 7 August, 2005). Michel believed that Shell was amenable to the demand for individual
compensation. When the first interviews of Robert Shell appeared in 2007, it became clear that he was
no longer. He was instead in favour of collective compensation through structural improvements
particularly in the education system that would most benefit people who had suffered harm because of
the social legacy of slavery and indenture. Sylvio Michel was livid. He had lost control over "his"
commission that formed the basis for his being part of the Alliance Social. He publicly denounced Shell
and in the same press conference applauded the PMSD for having left the Alliance Social government.
The message was clear: either Navin Ramgoolam act, or Les Verts would leave the Alliance Social. (6). At
some point, it seems that an administrative process was set in motion to "farouche" Prof. Shell.

Other communalists took a stand against Shell, too. But it was too late by then: Navin Ramgoolam had
already announced that Prof. Shell would Chair the Commission in the National Assembly.

Shell v. Navin Ramgoolam

Sylvio Michel was not the only one stuck with Shell. Shell's email interview in Mauritius Times (March
2008) reveals an even more formidable area of conflict between Shell and Navin Ramgoolam. In this
interview, Shell insists that "The Commission must be absolutely independent and that its mandate
should be wide. Above all, the length of the commission should span at least the following elections. (...)
it must span two electoral periods." In March 2009, in a meeting with the press, he was even more
direct: "La Commission devra produire un rapport intérimaire vers la fin de la première année des
travaux. Mais le Pr Shell ne souhaite pas rendre ce rapport public avant la tenue des prochaines
élections générales à Maurice. "C`est un rapport scientifique et je ne voudrais pas qu`il soit mélangé a la
chose politique", a-t-il soutenu." (Le Mauricien 30 Mars, 2009). Obviously Government wanted to use
the Commission electorally.
In the March 2008 Mauritius Times e-mail interview Shell made another revelation: "My nominations on
the task-force were not accepted and I have to live with that." Does he mean the nominations were not
independent? The nomination of Lindsay Morvan, a leader of a party in Government, the PMXD and
now PMSD, as Commission member could have been of concern. Shell clearly did not want Navin
Ramgoolam-Xavier Duval-Sylvio Michel dangling the Commission's recommendations to attract
communal support in the elections. So, it is not difficult to imagine how Shell had become a political
embarrassment for them and needed to be gotten rid of. Shell has called his visit here "horrible" and
"humiliating".

In LALIT, we believe that the questions of slavery and indenture and their legacies are serious questions
that need to be analysed and confronted in a serious way. We have campaigned for many years now for
a collective form of reparation for slavery. We have gained not only strong support in Mauritius, but
internationally too. You can read our petition in the News section of our website.

It is unacceptable for the Alliance Social to use important issues like the legacy to the present-day
working class of the previous legal frameworks for labour extraction (slavery and indenture) as a means
of rallying communal support for a general election. It can be dangerous, too.

But to end on a positive note, when Sylvio Michel finally came to, in fact, testify before the Commission
last week, he came round to the LALIT point of view and appears now to be demanding collective
reparations for everyone affected by slavery and indenture, no longer individual payments.

Rajni Lallah

For LALIT

(1) "Commission Justice et Verite: Sylvio Michel veut le depart de Robert Shell" of L`Express 30
September, 2009.

(2) "Apres sa revocation, robert Shell: "La Commission justice et verite a ruine ma vie"" of L`Express
online 6 November, 2009

(3) Section 6 (2) of The Truth and Justice Commission Act reads "A President may remove any member
from office for inability to perform the functions of his office, whether arising from infirmity of body or
mind, for incompetence or for misbehaviour."

(4) "Mort de Kaya et Sabapathee - La verite, rien que la verite..." of L`Express 3 November, 2005.

(5) "Conference de Presse - OF-Les Verts mi-figue, mi-raisin" of L`Express 7 August, 2005.
(6) "Les Verts jusgent incoherent les propos de Robert Shell" of L`Express 20 September, 2007.