Violence, its political outlet in particular, has deep historical roots. In South Africa for instance, when there is an outburst of xenophobic violence, there is a lack of political will to deal with the issue in a sustainable way. As a result of this inertia, Amnesty International warned, South Africa witnesses sporadic bursts of violence that can even prove to be fatal. A decade ago, 60 people were killed in a horrific wave of xenophobic violence. Since then, there have been several inquiries, including a major one conducted by former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pillay. However, her recommendations were pushed under the carpet and nothing concrete has been done to combat the impunity of political violence and other human rights violations.

It is no different in Mauritius, where we are still coming to terms with the pre-independence ethnic violence that has plagued the country and influenced its political landscape. This week, l’express will feature a series of articles on the January 1968 riots that tore Port-Louis to shreds. It is crucial for us to make sense of political and ethnic violence, so as to usher in an era of reconciliation and trust within a multicultural country.

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As 1968 began, the Vietnam War was going poorly and was about to get worse, highlighted Time magazine’s John Meacham. “A little bit more than half a million U.S. troops were there, and combat deaths occurred at a rate of about 46 U.S. troops a day, for a total of 16,899 that year. It was a terrible, tragic time. The promises of JFK’s New Frontier and LBJ’s Great Society seemed irretrievably lost in the humid jungles and sharp elephant grass of Southeast Asia.” However, for all the melodrama and confrontation of contemporary American politics, for all the tribal conflicts of the Age of Trump, the country is not yet engaged in a consuming war, and political violence is largely restricted to argumentative agitation. “Tet, we should remember, was worse than any single tweet.”

As our journalists comb through the newspapers in 1968 and research the changes that have occurred since, they are using more and more the past to study the present. Historical perspective refers to understanding a subject in light of its earliest phases and subsequent evolution. It differs from the stringent boundaries of pure history because its objective is to sharpen one’s vision of the present as opposed to the past. Using newspapers from 1968 (not only l’express), discussing with witnesses to understand the attitudes and political dynamics during the Port-Louis riots would constitute historical research. However, using that historical information on the riots to explain differences in attitudes today is what we call historical perspective. History is an important cog in the machine for journalists to grasp the raw materials of the past to better comprehend today’s issues and challenges.

Is it not normal to study any subject in light of its past? Historical perspective, as a research tool, is too often overlooked because of our westernized take (from Ancient Greece to now) on the notion of progress. Social scientists tend to describe the latter as an inexorable change over time from lower to higher states of knowledge and wellbeing. As a result, we tend to blindly look toward the future rather than trying to find the answers by digging into our past…

With our Special Independence series – today is J-48 – we aim to show how history can shed light and add an argumentative value to our most pressing current issues. We also hope to spark the interest of our younger generations in further developing their historical knowledge of Mauritius and encourage our policymakers to adopt a historically objective approach to current issues. As we celebrate the 50th anniversary of Independent Mauritius, ignoring the past would be as irrational as ignoring the current experiences of other countries that have undertaken the same path of decolonization…