Benoît Godin, Billets d’Afrique, January 2025
Translated by Fausto
Giudice, Tlaxcala
Benoît Godin is a French journalist and activist with the Survie association, which fights against Françafrique. Author of the radio documentary Le combat ne doit pas cesser : Éloi Machoro, un super-héros pour Kanaky
On 12 January 1985, the GIGN [National Gendarmerie Intervention Group] shot dead Éloi Machoro, bringing to a halt two months of an uprising that shook the colonial order in New Caledonia and revealed to the world the existence of the Kanak people and their fight against French domination. Forty years on, that struggle is still painfully relevant today.
Who took the decision to shoot Éloi Machoro and one of his comrades in arms, Marcel Nonarro, on 12 January 1985? Edgard Pisani, the French Republic's High Commissioner, who had just arrived in New Caledonia with extensive powers to deal with a quasi-insurrectionary situation? Someone higher up in Paris? Or the GIGN men sent to the scene, the same ones who had been humiliated a month and a half earlier by Machoro and his comrades and who had allegedly gone beyond their orders? Forty years on, the question remains.
But is it really that important? The real culprit in this double murder - for it was one - is known: it was the French state, always implacable when confronted with peoples rebelling against the colonial yoke. That morning, France eliminated one of the men most hated by the whites of New Caledonia (the announcement of his death was greeted by howls of joy in the central square of Nouméa). He was the emblematic figure of the first major post-war Kanak uprising (and even since the wars of 1878 and 1917), which marked the beginning of the hardest phase of the period known as the ‘events’.
A man on the ground
Who was Éloi Machoro? Before those terrible weeks that shook the colonial order, he was already a leading local figure, elected to the Territorial Assembly. Along with Yeiwéné Yeiwéné and above all Jean-Marie Tjibaou, he was one of the most prominent representatives of the young Kanak generation who, in 1977, took over the reins of the archipelago's oldest political party, the Union calédonienne (UC), transforming it into a pro-independence movement. In 1981, Éloi Machoro even became the party's Secretary General after the assassination of his predecessor, Pierre Declercq. In this role, he was responsible for organising the life of the party. This man of easy approachability and obvious charisma was constantly on the move in the four corners of the country, in contact with activists of all ages and even of all origins. He was a man on the ground. And so it was there, on the ground, that he was to be found, quite logically, at the end of 1984, leading part of the Kanak forces.
The broken ballot box
There are many similarities between the Kanak uprisings of that time and this Spring of 2024, and one of the most obvious is the way they were triggered. Back then, restricting the electorate was already at the heart of the pro-independence demands. The aim was to counter the effects of almost a century and a half of colonisation, which had ended up with the indigenous people in a minority on their own land. The Socialists in power in Paris refused to take this into account: they imposed a new statute, known as the Lemoine Statute (named after the Secretary of State in charge of the French overseas departments and territories), and organised open territorial elections on 18 November 1984. This was too much for most pro-independence organisations, led by the UC, who formed the Front de libération nationale kanak et socialiste (FLNKS) and called for an ‘active boycott’ of the elections. On D-Day, the territory was ablaze with demonstrations, blocked roads, occupied town halls and even arson attacks.
Eloi's axe, by Miriam Shwamm
That morning, Éloi Machoro and a group of activists invaded the town hall in Canala, his home town on the east coast of Grande Terre. Armed with a tamioc, a traditional axe, he smashed the ballot box. It was a powerful gesture, immortalised by the local daily's correspondent. The photo went around the world. The struggle of the Kanak people suddenly came into the open, and it had a face: the severe face of Éloi Machoro, wearing a cap, sunglasses and a thick moustache.
It was the starting point of an epic story that was as dazzling as it was influential for Kanaky-New Caledonia. Two days later, Éloi Machoro and other activists from Canala joined the Kanaks in Thio, some forty kilometres further south, to occupy the gendarmerie. They vacated the premises after a day, but immediately began a ‘siege’ of the commune: for almost a month, the pro-independence fighters held Thio, setting up roadblocks and controlling all access routes.
While Canala was now overwhelmingly Kanak, Thio still had a large population of Caldoches (as Caledonians of European origin were known) and remained a stronghold of the colonial right. Its mayor, Roger Galliot, has just set up the local branch of the Front National. But beyond the political symbolism, Thio also represented a major economic challenge: it is home to one of the largest nickel mines in the world. Nickel is New Caledonia's main source of wealth, a windfall for the French state, but one from which the Kanak people have never benefited, with the exception of a few employees
Kanaky's Minister for Security
Machoro, who became Minister for Security in the provisional government of Kanaky proclaimed by the FLNKS, led the occupation. He and his men went round the homes of the settlers to confiscate their weapons. But at the same time, he demanded unfailing discipline from his militants. Alcohol, looting and even simple damage were forbidden. Those who failed to comply were severely reprimanded (to say the least) and sent straight home. The mine was shut down, but all the equipment was carefully protected. The aim was not only to preserve the economic tools that were essential to the future independent country, but also to show an exemplary face to the journalists who rushed to Thio. Machoro was happy to receive them and gave many interviews, well aware that the Kanak cause needed outside support, both within the administering power and internationally.
On 1 December, the GIGN tried to invade the commune to put an end to the occupation. But it was not to be: dozens of Kanak, armed with rifles seized from the Caldoches, surrounded them as soon as they got off the Puma helicopters, disarmed them and forced them to leave. It was a slap in the face for the gendarmes - the same ones who were to be found a few weeks later near La Foa. The episode left its mark on people's minds, reinforcing Machoro's aura in the Kanak world... and creating psychosis among Europeans, for whom Machoro became public enemy number one. Yet Machoro was anything but a brutal fanatic. After the massacre on 5 December in the Hienghène valley of ten Kanak (including two of Jean-Marie Tjibaou's brothers) by small settlers, he opposed some of his men, who wanted to take revenge on the isolated whites holed up in their homes in Thio. His action probably prevented a bloodbath.
On the other hand, Machoro had no intention of backing down in the face of the State and its ‘loyalist’ allies. If he ended up reluctantly respecting (and ensuring respect for) the FLNKS order to lift the roadblocks issued in mid-December, it was to immediately prepare, with a group of determined militants, for a new coup: the siege of La Foa, on the other side of Grande Terre. Almost a declaration of war in the eyes of the State: it was tantamount to attacking a ‘Caldoche’ commune and above all to cutting off the highly strategic Territorial Route 1 linking Nouméa, the capital, to the north of the island. On 11 January 1985, on the eve of taking action, Machoro and around thirty companions took up position a few kilometres away in a farm on the Dogny plateau. Spotted, they were surrounded by gendarmes. Early the next morning, the snipers did their dirty work.
Responding to colonial brutality
Forty years on, Éloi Machoro remains an icon in the Kanak world, particularly among young people, on a par with the great chief Ataï who led the war of 1878 against the French occupiers and to whom he is often compared. His portrait is everywhere: T-shirts, banners, tribal walls, Nouméa's working-class neighbourhoods, social networks... Having disappeared before the time of the agreements, Machoro embodies an uncompromising struggle against this colonisation that never ends. On 4 April this year, on the sidelines of a press conference organised at the UC offices in Nouméa, journalists were greeted by an axe stuck in a ballot box... When it comes to action on the ground, the spirit of old Éloi is invoked.
However, there is still a certain misunderstanding surrounding this relatively unknown man, almost as much on the part of his supporters as his opponents. Both sides maintain a legend which, whether golden or obscure, paints more or less the same picture, that of a hard-line Oceanian Che Guevara. Which has little to do with reality... Because although he died with a rifle in his hand, Machoro never fired a single shot - not even before being shot, contrary to the first version of the ‘law enforcers’ seeking to justify their crime.
He was in fact a man who was very open to dialogue - like other UC leaders at the time. In 1983, alongside Yeiwéné and Tjibaou, he took part in the Nainville-les-Roches round table, during which the pro-independence movement reached out to the other communities in the archipelago, who were recognised as ‘victims of history’. While Éloi Machoro raised the question of resorting to more radical forms of action, it was only in response to the contempt and brutality of the colonial system. In this, his path follows that of his people, who have always been open to exchange, but who have always come up against a French state locked in its criminal imperialist logic. It cannot be stressed enough that the outburst of popular anger on the evening of 13 May 2024, after the National Assembly voted on the constitutional bill to unfreeze the electoral roll, followed months of massive, pacifist mobilisation by the pro-independence forces, first and foremost the Kanak...
In a letter written on 17 November 1984, the eve of the active boycott, and for a long time wrongly presented as his last, Éloi Machoro wrote these words that are still remembered: ‘ The fight must not stop, for lack of leaders or for lack of fighters ’. If the Kanak people have since given the impression that they were less combative, it was only because they were giving the decolonisation process underpinned by the Matignon and then Nouméa Accords a chance. Following Machoro's motto, it never gave up the fight for his emancipation and for the independence of Kanaky-New Caledonia. The past year has proved this once again.
