Madagascar's Generals Are Stealing the Revolution Gen Z Bled For

Eighteen days. That is how long Madagascar's young people stood in the streets, chanting for water and electricity in a country where the lights go out whenever the state utility feels like it. Eighteen days of tear gas, arrests, and bruised courage. And at the end of it, the president did not face the people. He boarded a French military aircraft and disappeared.

One year later, we have to ask the question the generals hoped we would forget. What did those eighteen days buy us?

The answer, according to the young activists who risked everything to start it, is almost nothing. Mihary Rakotondravelo, one of the most visible faces of the Gen Z movement, put it plainly to the press: the basic demands still have not been met. Not the water. Not the power. Not the accountability. This was supposed to be a refoundation of the Republic. What we got was a new uniform in the same old room.

Let us be precise about who is in charge. On 12 October 2025, Colonel Michael Randrianirina, commander of the CAPSAT military unit, was installed as "President of the Refoundation of the Republic of Madagascar." He promised elections within two years. He promised a new constitution. He promised a break with the rot. Those were the words. Now look at the record. The consultation committees where Gen Z activists sit have been stuck in a process that moves at the speed of a bureaucrat's coffee break. The timetable says proposals will be presented in May, followed by a referendum, ahead of presidential elections scheduled for late 2027. Note the sequence: a junta writing the rules, then a junta running the vote. Every African who has watched a coup dress itself up as a democracy knows exactly where this road leads.

And who is the man at the center of it all? Andry Rajoelina, the ousted president, lives in comfortable exile in Dubai and spends his days lobbying other African leaders for sympathy. In February he turned up at an official ceremony in Eswatini, whose king had publicly called his removal unconstitutional. Think about that. A man who fled his own people is still collecting handshakes on the continent, while the people who stood in the rain for him remain in the rain.

This is not a man without a record. Rajoelina first seized power in 2009 with military backing, the same kind of backing that carried him out of the palace in 2025. The Court of Accounts has documented the diversion of public resources to benefit his inner circle. Those findings are not rumours passed around in tea houses. They are official audit conclusions. Yet his MPs never voted to impeach him, most of them have since switched allegiance to the military, and he has escaped prosecution entirely. His loyalists have either fled the country or been locked up. The machinery of impunity has simply changed hands.

Here is the uncomfortable truth we must say out loud. Madagascar's crisis is not a single man's crime. It is a system that rewards the powerful and punishes the young. Roughly three in four Malagasy live below the poverty line, according to World Bank estimates, in one of the most biodiverse places on earth. Vanilla, nickel, cobalt, and gold flow out. Electricity and water remain unreliable for millions. And when the people ask why, they are met with batons or with promises. Promises are cheap. Water is not.

The context matters. Madagascar's pattern of political crisis, coups, and dubious transitions is well documented, and the cycle repeats because the same unanswered questions remain unanswered. Who controls the military? Who audits the state? Who answers when the taps run dry? Each time the answer has been the same: a clique, a uniform, and a foreign plane. The SADC bloc called for a "return to constitutional normalcy" in August. Good words. But words from regional bodies mean nothing if they do not come with deadlines, consequences, and a clear line that says: no junta gets to draft its own exit.

So what should be done? We are not short of models. Botswana has shown for decades that a country can build credible institutions, protect property rights, and run regular elections that the losers actually accept. Mauritius has turned a small island into a stable, investment-friendly democracy by insisting on transparent rules that apply to everyone, not just the well-connected. Senegal in 2024 showed that a sitting president's attempt to postpone elections could be rejected by courts and citizens alike, and that a peaceful transfer of power is possible when the institutions refuse to bend. Madagascar can learn from all three.

Our demands are concrete. First, the constitutional process must have an independent electoral commission, a binding timetable, and a clear bar against any member of the junta standing for office. Second, the Court of Accounts findings must be referred for prosecution, starting with Rajoelina's inner circle, and the Madagascar government must pursue his extradition from Dubai through every legal channel available. Third, the state utility responsible for water and power must be subjected to independent audit and transparent private concessions, with published contracts and an independent regulator, because a people cannot build a future in the dark. Fourth, the AU and SADC must make clear that recognition and regional integration depend on a dated, monitored return to civilian rule. And fifth, Gen Z must keep its seat at every table and keep its phones recording every promise made in its name.

Madagascar's youth did their part. They took to the streets, they organized online, and they made the world look. Now the rest of us must do ours. Every African government that quietly hosts an exiled strongman, every regional body that accepts a junta's timetable without enforcement, every investor who signs a deal with a regime that has not earned legitimacy, is complicit in this betrayal.

We are not asking for miracles. We are asking for the basics that Gen Z marched for: water in the tap, light in the home, and a leader who answers to the people instead of fleeing from them. A year is long enough to hear excuses. It is long enough to demand accountability. The generals had eighteen days of warning from a generation that refused to be ignored. The question now is whether the rest of Africa will watch them steal the revolution, or stand with the young people who started it.

Based on reporting by RFI