Independence is a word that returns annually to our memories as we cross the month of June. The term has long been trivialized, and even in our minds, it no longer carries the weight this treasure should possess—the treasure that fueled the will of those who fought to obtain it. It no longer holds the same power it had a century ago in the minds of those who have known only this independence. It is in this context, as the word has been reduced to such lightness, that the question asked many times across the African continent arises once again, faced with the burden of these years of independence, marked by unconsciousness, lack of civic spirit, and precariousness: “What have we done with our independence?”
For sixty-six years, our history has followed a downward path that has scarred our mentality, which has been reduced to a state as alarming as the country’s material situation. We are in an era where the flag flutters, agitated by the winds of misery, the edge of which does not spare the intellectual sphere, which has suffered the same decline since that era initiated on June 26, 1960. Independence seems to be a mirage that dazzles us only when the splendor of the festivities is at its peak. During those moments, the artificial gilding of the celebration covers all the ills accumulated over these years of “independence.”
Sixty-six years of enduring a Tantalus-like torment before the riches we know are buried in our soil, but which never cease to escape us. Sixty-six years also of living the punishment of Sisyphus, with a history marked by crises that force us to constantly restart the ascent of the boulder of development, from which a relapse is unavoidable. An unproductive back-and-forth that has bred weariness in some and despair in others. For still others, this harmful cycle rings more heavily the knell that, for a long time, has announced the loss of the fundamental values necessary for an independence placed under the sign of progress.
Since that day of the “return of independence,” the “Suns of Independence,” to quote the novelist Ahmadou Kourouma, have offered us ambiguous lights. The light of hope has shone, but different heats have also rendered the “children of the Republic” orphans. Sixty-six years later, education is still scorched by these toxic rays that dry up civic spirit and learning. More than ever, the Republic needs us to awaken another sun that, it too, has never stopped declining: that of the school and the consciousness of the common good.
Fenitra Ratefiarivony
Captured & Published at: 2026-06-29 08:00:27 (Madagascar Local Time EAT)
Original Source: https://www.lexpress.mg/2026/06/lourdes-independances.html