French president\u00a0Emmanuel Macron\u00a0has sworn during an exchange as he was\u00a0heckled by angry residents\u00a0of a\u00a0Mayotte neighbourhood\u00a0ravaged by cyclone Chido, telling them: \u201cIf it wasn\u2019t for France, you\u2019d be 10,000 times deeper in s***\u201d.<\/p>\n
Nearly a week after the storm hit, the lack of potable water was testing nerves in France’s poorest overseas territory, an archipelago in the\u00a0Indian Ocean. Officials have confirmed at least 35 people were killed by the cyclone but there are fears that many more have died.<\/p>\n
The damage caused is profound. Some of the islands\u2019 worst-affected neighbourhoods, hillside shanty towns comprised of flimsy huts that are home to undocumented migrants, have not yet been accessed by rescue workers.<\/p>\n
“Seven days and you’re not able to give water to the population!” one man shouted at Mr Macron.<\/p>\n
“Don’t set people against each other. If you set people against each other, we’re screwed,” Mr Macron told the crowd in the Tsingoni neighbourhood. “You are happy to be in France. If it wasn’t for France, you would be in way deeper s***, 10,000 times more, there is no place in the Indian Ocean where people receive more help.”<\/p>\n
In the past, Mr Macron has often got in trouble with off-the-cuff remarks in public that he says are meant to “tell it like it is”, but have often come across as insensitive or condescending to many French people and contributed to the sharp drop in his popularity over his seven years as president.<\/p>\n
Back at home, opposition MPs pounced on the comments. “I don’t think the president is exactly finding the right words of comfort for our Mayotte compatriots, who, with this kind of expression, always have the feeling of being treated differently,” Sebastien Chenu, of the far-right National Rally, said.<\/p>\n
Hard-left politician Eric Coquerel said Mr Macron’s comment was “completely undignified”.<\/p>\n
The French president had already faced heckles the previous evening from a crowd who had chanted for his resignation and accused his government of neglecting Mayotte, which is located around 5,000 miles from mainland France.<\/p>\n
The French interior minister Bruno Retailleau said 80 tons of food and 50 tons of water were distributed on Thursday in nine of Mayotte’s 17 communes, and that the remaining eight would receive provisions on Friday.<\/p>\n
“Everything has been put in place to allow the distribution of 600,000 litres of water per day, or two litres per Mayotte resident,” he said on X.<\/p>\n
Later on Friday, Mr Macron led a crisis meeting of officials before departing in the afternoon for Djibouti, where he will share a Christmas meal with French troops stationed there.<\/p>\n
Supplies were also on their way from Germany, Belgium, Sweden and Italy, including tents and beds for the homeless, European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen said.<\/p>\n
Ali Djimoi, who lives in the Kaweni shanty town on the outskirts of the capital Mamoudzou, said Mayotte had been \u201ccompletely abandoned\u201d by the French state.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe water running out the pipes \u2013 even if it\u2019s working you can\u2019t drink it, it comes out dirty,\u201d he told Reuters.<\/p>\n
Mr Djimoi said eight people in his immediate neighbourhood were killed in the storm, two of whom were quickly buried close to a mosque.<\/p>\n
Authorities have warned it will be difficult to establish a precise death toll, in part because some victims were buried immediately, in accordance with Muslim tradition, before their deaths could be counted.<\/p>\n
The large number of undocumented migrants from Comoros, Madagascar and other countries also complicates matters. Official statistics put Mayotte\u2019s population at 321,000, but many say it is much higher.<\/p>\n
Three out of four people live below the national poverty line in Mayotte, which remains heavily dependent on support from France.<\/p>\n
The islands, which are close to the Comoros archipelago, came under France\u2019s control in 1841. In 1974, Mayotte voted to stay French at the same time as the three main Comoros islands opted to form an independent state.<\/p>\n
Chido also killed at least 73 people in Mozambique and 13 in Malawi after reaching continental Africa, according to officials in those countries.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
French president\u00a0Emmanuel Macron\u00a0has sworn during an exchange as he was\u00a0heckled by angry residents\u00a0of a\u00a0Mayotte neighbourhood\u00a0ravaged by cyclone Chido, telling them: \u201cIf it wasn\u2019t for France, you\u2019d be 10,000 times deeper in s***\u201d. Nearly a week after the storm hit, the lack of potable water was testing nerves in France’s poorest overseas territory, an archipelago in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":14587,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":1,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":{"format":"standard","override":[{"template":"1","parallax":"1","fullscreen":"1","layout":"right-sidebar","sidebar":"default-sidebar","second_sidebar":"default-sidebar","sticky_sidebar":"1","share_position":"top","share_float_style":"share-monocrhome","show_featured":"1","show_post_meta":"1","show_post_author_image":"1","show_post_date":"1","post_date_format":"default","post_date_format_custom":"Y\/m\/d","show_post_reading_time":"0","post_reading_time_wpm":"300","post_calculate_word_method":"str_word_count","show_zoom_button":"0","zoom_button_out_step":"2","zoom_button_in_step":"3","show_post_tag":"1","number_popup_post":"1","show_post_related":"1","show_inline_post_related":"1"}],"image_override":[{"single_post_thumbnail_size":"crop-500","single_post_gallery_size":"crop-500"}],"trending_post_position":"meta","trending_post_label":"Trending","sponsored_post_label":"Sponsored by","disable_ad":"0","source_name":"Independent","subtitle":""},"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":{"view_counter_number":"0","share_counter_number":"0","like_counter_number":"0","dislike_counter_number":"0"},"footnotes":""},"categories":[2976,29,2362,34],"tags":[3598,164,290,2491],"class_list":["post-14586","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-climate-change-news","category-east-africa","category-featured","category-society","tag-cyclone-chido","tag-emmanuel-macron","tag-france","tag-mayotte"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14586","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14586"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14586\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14587"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14586"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14586"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14586"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}