French president Emmanuel Macron has sworn during an exchange as he was heckled by angry residents of a Mayotte neighbourhood ravaged by cyclone Chido – telling them: “If it wasn’t for France, you’d be 10,000 times deeper in s***”.
Nearly a week after the storm hit, the lack of potable water was testing nerves in France’s poorest overseas territory, which is an Indian Ocean archipelago. Officials have confirmed at least 35 people were killed by the cyclone but there are fears that many more are dead.
The damage caused is profound. Some of the islands’ worst-affected neighbourhoods, hillside shantytowns comprised of flimsy huts that are home to undocumented migrants, have not yet been accessed by rescue workers.
“Seven days and you’re not able to give water to the population!” one man shouted at Mr Macron.
“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.”
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 his sharp drop in popularity over his seven years as president.
Back 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, from the far-right National Rally, said.
Hard-left politician Eric Coquerel said Mr Macron’s comment was “completely undignified”.
The French president had already faced heckles from a crowd the previous evening who had chanted for his resignation and accused his government of neglecting Mayotte, which is located around 5,000 miles from mainland France.
France’s 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.
“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.
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.
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.
Ali Djimoi, who lives in the Kaweni shantytown on the outskirts of the capital Mamoudzou, said Mayotte had been “completely abandoned” by the French state.
“The water running out the pipes – even if it’s working you can’t drink it, it comes out dirty,” he told Reuters.
Mr Djimoi said eight people in his immediate neighbourhood were killed in the storm, two of whom were quickly buried close to a mosque.
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.
The large number of undocumented migrants from Comoros, Madagascar and other countries also complicates matters. Official statistics put Mayotte’s population at 321,000, but many say it is much higher.
Three out of four people live below the national poverty line in Mayotte, which remains heavily dependent on support from metropolitan France.
The islands, close to the Comoros archipelago, first came under France’s control in 1841. In 1974, Mayotte voted to stay French at the same time the three main Comoro islands opted to form an independent state.
Chido also killed at least 73 people in Mozambique and 13 in Malawi after reaching continental Africa, according to officials in those countries.
