From Gen Z revolt to junta control, Madagascar’s promise of change is slipping away

In late September, people in Madagascar took to the streets to protest rapidly deteriorating living conditions. Led by the Gen Z Madagascar youth movement, thousands protested against years of poor governance and corruption. Public frustration was compounded by the perceived colonial humiliation that came with finding out that the country’s president, Andry Rajoelina, was also a French citizen.

The protesters demanded that Rajoelina step down, a non-negotiable position that created the conditions for a military takeover two weeks later. On October 17, Colonel Michael Randrianirina was sworn in as head of state, promising to address the protesters’ grievances and to transition the country to elections within two years.

Six months later, the protesters’ demands remain unmet.

Repression, rather than investigations into those suspected to be responsible for killing dozens and injuring more than a hundred, now defines the country. The politics of exclusion, rather than meaningful participation by youth, women, and civil society in shaping reforms in the transition, has taken hold. Like the military regimes in the Central Sahel, Randrianirina’s junta has been all about political expressions of gendered narratives of strength and protection – dominance, decisiveness, coercion, authority and the capacity to impose and enforce.

Repression, deliberate failure to investigate violations

The junta’s first act a week after seizing power was to strip Rajoelina of Malagasy citizenship. Although Rajoelina took up French citizenship in 2014 – a status that should have disqualified him from holding the presidency in the first place as Malagasy law does not allow for dual citizenship – stripping him of citizenship was mainly the beginning of a wave of repression justified as the cost of national survival.

Each month since the military takeover, affiliates of the former regime have faced a series of unlawful searches, arbitrary arrests and prolonged detention under the broadly framed offence of “threats to national security”. All this has been carried out under the auspices of the junta’s zero-tolerance anti-corruption campaign.

It took Randrianirina less than a month in power to make clear his intention to run in the elections he had pledged to take the country to within two years. This not only explains the intensifying repression, but also the lack of serious effort to investigate soldiers, gendarmes and police who killed and maimed protesters last year.

Parliament – largely aligned with the junta – has unsurprisingly chosen not to operationalise the commission tasked with investigating senior officials for their alleged abuses. Instead, investigations into “violent actions to repress protesters” have so far targeted only the former president of the senate and former minister of education under Rajoelina’s regime.

The junta’s legitimacy rests upon the perception of strongmen in combat attire, untainted by wrongdoing. Acknowledging abuses by soldiers, police or gendarmes would weaken that moral authority and militarised masculine posture.

Politics of exclusion from legitimate concerns

Although he announced quitting the armed forces (probably in preparation for his presidential candidacy), Randrianirina explained that if he continues to show up in his military regalia, it is because of the respect it engenders among the public. The carefully staged masculine imagery has always been unmistakable under his rule. He is usually flanked by other senior male military officials. Youth and women are nowhere to be seen.

The junta reshuffled the executive branch of the state and made almost 600 appointments. The Gen Z Youth Movement and civil society it claims to have seized power for was neither involved nor consulted.

The 2026 Finance Act was to be a political tool to set in motion mechanisms to improve deteriorating public service delivery that drove the whole nation onto the streets last year. However, despite calls from Gen Z and civil society to be part of the deliberations, the junta hurriedly passed it.

It provides budget lines that preserve the spending priorities of the old regime, with sizeable allocations for the presidency and cabinet. A closer reading reveals where the money really goes: salaries, bonuses and administrative costs swallow the bulk of the budget, while direct investment in basic services – water, electricity, education and healthcare – remains marginalised.

Women’s political participation poses a direct threat to the masculine posture of the regime, which is sold as protective and reassuring for a people fatigued by years of poor governance and humiliation. From the junta’s high council, Randrianirina leads alongside four senior male security officials, each also with the status of head of state. And on March 15, after dismissing the entire cabinet without explanation, he appointed as prime minister a former gendarmerie officer and close associate of his – further entrenching the executive’s militarised masculine posture.

Women face an additional layer of political exclusion. Randrianirina, a Lutheran Christian, chose to place nationwide consultations on national reforms under the exclusive stewardship of the Council of Christian Churches. The council has historically opposed women’s reproductive rights and is likely to sideline LGBTQI rights.

Beyond electoral timelines

The junta’s geopolitical alignment reinforces its militarised masculine posture. Randrianirina quickly gravitated toward partners who frame repression, misogyny and homophobia as expressions of sovereignty and national honour. With US President Donald Trump’s White House, the junta is in discussions on the possibility of Madagascar hosting migrants expelled from the US under policies widely criticised as discriminatory.

With Russia’s President Vladimir Putin, and the Emirati leaders in Abu Dhabi, it is pursuing further environmental harm through fossil fuel extraction in Madagascar marketed as “energy sovereignty”.

With China’s Communist Party, plans are afoot to establish a weapons manufacturing facility.

With no progress on enacting the long-awaited law on access to information, civil society remains largely unable to demand – let alone receive – answers from the government about how its appointments and policies are meant to improve the delivery of basic services.

The disappointment among the Gen Z youth movement is palpable. On March 4, a statement by some representatives of the movement read: “Leaders are turning a blind eye to the demands expressed on the ground.”

The Southern African Development Community, the African Union and the United Nations have all focused on elections in September 2027 as a pathway to restoring civilian rule.

However, unless repression stops, those responsible for killing and injuring protesters are investigated, and the toxic masculine posture is dropped to allow for youth and women to meaningfully shape reforms before the vote, the much-anticipated elections risk repackaging this same authoritarian military junta in civilian clothes. DM