Madagascar for the Malagasy
말라가시인의 마다가스카르
A Malagasy party founded in July 1958 at Toliara (Tuléar) in the south by Monja Jaona, a nationalist who had taken part in the Malagasy Uprising of 1947. Standing for decolonisation and anti-imperialism, it represented radical intellectuals and peasants of the south, and it played a major part in the rotaka unrest of 1971–1972 that brought down President Tsiranana.
In depth
Its French name is given variously as Mouvement national pour l'indépendance de Madagascar or Mouvement Nationaliste et Indépendant de Madagascar. Jaona was mayor of Toliara from 1959 to 1961, and after independence in 1960 he came to see President Tsiranana and his Social Democratic Party (PSD) as unduly favourable to French interests. In the 1960s the party's programme had a Maoist tendency.
Jaona claimed authorship of the armed insurrection of 1–2 April 1971 by impoverished peasants in Androy. More than a thousand armed MONIMA members attacked five military posts in Tuléar province; the rising was quickly suppressed, with 45 MONIMA members killed and 847 held for questioning, and many were imprisoned on Nosy Lava. In 1972 the party, now a left-wing opposition movement, gained the support of university students and urban radicals whose demonstrations led to Tsiranana's resignation that May.
At its congress of November 1976 the party distanced itself from the new regime, demanding that it put its socialist choices into practice, and by the late 1970s Jaona had become disillusioned with Ratsiraka and gone into opposition. After Jaona's death in 1994 his son Monja Roindefo led the party. In 2007 it formed the TMM alliance with Tambatra and Manaovasoa, but since that year's National Assembly election it has had no seats.