Notables during an awareness session. "Rivalries between administration and technical services" headline the Friday Notes of July 10 regarding plague control efforts during 1921-1936. This is a study conducted by researcher-teacher Faranirina V. Esoavelomandroso titled "From Plague as Disease to Plague as Politics - Merina Interpretation of the Plague Endemic Phenomenon on the Central Highlands after (1921-1936)" and published in the historical review journal "Omaly sy Anio" No. 11 (January-June 1980).
Malagasy people were well aware. Exploited, they realized that payment of the "Indigenous Medical Assistance Tax" (AMI) did not grant them free medical assistance and did not exempt them from materially contributing to their own welfare. According to the historian, established in 1902 and payable by all adult men, this tax largely funded the AMI budget. In 1928, the budget exceeded eighteen million francs, with fifteen million produced solely by the tax. "Ultimately, the colonizers' civilizing mission rested essentially on contributions of all kinds (labor, money, materials) demanded from the indigenous people themselves."
Worst of all, the administration skillfully avoided direct contact with the population. It used local notables and elites to pressure their compatriots. The author notes that autobiographies and official biographies of certain notables "mention, among their meritorious actions, the role they played during plague periods. This could earn them additional honors or the epidemic medal."
Moreover, they were tasked with conducting censuses and collecting information for supplying the isolated. To do so, they were forced to enter, not without risk, contaminated neighborhoods and houses. Additionally, the administration entrusted them with directing lazaret construction work and recruiting necessary labor. As notables, they faced "other obligations imposed by their rank and the example to set." Such as providing (more or less voluntary) support to the sick and their families through donations of food, sleeping mats, fuel...
For them as for ordinary Fokonolona members, "plague meant additional constraint." Moreover, due to its severity and the rigor of prophylactic measures applied to Malagasy people, plague revealed misery and social inequalities. According to Faranirina V. Esoavelomandroso, it illustrated the destitution in certain capital neighborhoods and rural areas. Severity and rigor that provoked among Malagasy people "acute awareness of social inequalities and questioning not only of health policy, but of all colonization."
The author explains that officially, "disease no. 9" (plague's designation in medical reports) struck almost exclusively Malagasy people in crowded capital neighborhoods and Imerina villages. The 1921 epidemic raised "the problem of lower-class neighborhoods" in Antananarivo. However, the solution advocated by certain French was "to remove those responsible for the scourge, namely the indigenous people." In 1899, in Tamatave, the Hygiene and Insalubrious Housing Commission decided on "expelling Malagasy people at a safe distance from this city."
Following the July 1921 epidemic in the capital, consideration was given to "relocating indigenous people outside urban perimeters, while facilitating their daily transportation to the city for work." The goal was actually to eliminate one of the main epidemic transmission factors by avoiding overcrowding in overly narrow and inextensible urban areas. Simultaneously, general sanitation of the capital paired with progressive urban planning appeared necessary to eradicate plague from the city.
Various suggestions pointed in this direction. Thus, in 1925, Dr. Couvy, in his "Organization of Plague Control in the Municipality of Tananarive," advocated imposing certain construction types for warehouses and private homes (hard material foundations), eliminating natural rat shelters, and especially adopting housing policy. This advocated allocating communal land (or having the city acquire it), ceding it free to owners expelled from insalubrious homes, and obliging them "to build, if necessary with compensation and according to a determined type."