On 22 and 23 November, the G20 held a summit in South Africa. This meeting was marked by the adoption of a declaration supported by the Global South promoting new international relations free from any hegemony. As an African country, Réunion is a full member of the Global South, which brings together countries liberated from Western colonialism. Paradoxically, Réunion's voice at this summit was carried by a Western leader, the French president, who came to defend the interests of his country, which is in decline in Africa and uses Réunion as a base for its counterattack because we host one of the last French military bases in Africa free of charge. This paradox leaves the ruling class in Réunion silent, which gives an idea of the extent of the alienation suffered by our people.
On 22 and 23 November, the G20 meeting in South Africa marked a symbolic break with the past: the adoption of a declaration, supported by the Global South, calling for international relations free from any form of hegemony. A powerful voice is rising from our continent, celebrating emancipation and South-South cooperation. In this chorus of liberated countries, one jarring dissonance persists: that of La Reunion Island.
An African country populated by the descendants of those whom the West enslaved and deported, La Réunion is, through its history and geography, a full member of the global South. Yet at the summit, our voice was confiscated, carried by the French president. The representative of the former colonial power, whose influence in Africa is waning, came to defend his country's interests. And Réunion, in this geopolitical game, plays a shameful role: that of a rear platform, a free aircraft carrier for the last French military base in the region. We are hosting, at our own expense, the instrument of Paris's neo-colonial counter-offensive.
This absurd paradox hardly moves our ruling class. Its silence illustrates the deep alienation that plagues our people, a lasting legacy of three centuries of colonisation and slavery. This alienation is a poison that flows through our veins and paralyses our will.
It manifests itself as fear: a visceral fear of displeasing the Parisian 'lender', which stifles any hint of responsibility. It feeds on total dependence -- political, economic, cultural -- , an institutionalised laziness that allows a distant country to dictate the fate of our economy. Finally, its most tragic symptom is the rejection of our African identity. We have been persuaded that our future lies in a pale glimmer from Europe, causing us to deny the warmth of the African sun that gave us birth.
This alienation blinds us. It pushes us to ignore the profound positive changes coming out of the global South, particularly the dynamic of mutually beneficial cooperation between Africa and China, from which we are cruelly excluded. While we look enviously towards a Europe undermined by the resurgence of racist far-right forces -- forces that the communist Soviet Union helped to defeat 80 years ago by defeating Nazism -- we are turning our backs on the opportunities and solidarity of our natural continent.
It is time to break these mental chains. The urgency lies with the primary victims of this neo-colonial system: our unemployed youth, our families plunged into precariousness, all those whom the current model condemns to marginalisation and powerty. The victims must be organised to lead the struggle for our psychological and political liberation.
The goal is clear: for La Réunion Island, finally reconciled with its African soul, to become fully integrated into the global South. This integration is not a slogan; it is the key to reducing job and housing shortages and building an economy that belongs to us. Turning the page on decolonisation means working to bring about, on the horizon of our struggles, a free, developed and democratic Reunion. A Reunion that will have banished racism, a poison inherited from the plantation era and reintroduced by assimilation into France, which still undermines the cohesion of our immigrant people. Our place is among the builders of the new world, not among the vestiges of empires. Let us reclaim it.