12 March 1968, independence day

The text that made Mauritius a sovereign state runs to just a few lines. The Mauritius Independence Act 1968, passed in London, provides that from 12 March 1968 the Government of the United Kingdom shall have no responsibility for the government of Mauritius, and that no Act of the United Kingdom Parliament passed on or after that day shall extend to the island. The Constitution of Mauritius came into force the same day. Behind this legal dryness lie twenty years of patient progress.

For more than a century the colony was governed with a Council of Government created in 1825, which admitted elected members only in 1886, ten of them, chosen on a restricted franchise. The real breakthrough came in 1948. After years of negotiation for a more liberal constitution, the vote was extended to all adults able to pass a simple literacy test. The Council of Government gave way to a Legislative Council of nineteen elected members, twelve members nominated by the governor and three ex officio members. Elections were held in August 1948, and the new Council met for the first time on 1 September.

The constitutional conferences held in London in 1955 and 1957 then introduced the ministerial system. On 9 March 1959, for the first time, Mauritians voted under universal adult suffrage: the electorate numbered 208,684.

In 1961 a constitutional review conference, again in London, set out a programme of further advances. In 1965 another conference opened the way for Mauritius to independence and a place among sovereign nations. Sookdeo Bissoondoyal, who had founded the Independent Forward Bloc in 1958, took part. At the general election of 1967 the Independence Party won, and the Legislative Assembly adopted a formal resolution requesting independence.

Independence was proclaimed at the Champ de Mars, the Port Louis racecourse. Mauritius became an independent state within the Commonwealth, with a system of parliamentary democracy. Queen Elizabeth II remained head of state as Queen of Mauritius, but her constitutional functions were entrusted to a Governor-General. That day, citizens of the United Kingdom and Colonies who became citizens of Mauritius lost their former citizenship, save for the exceptions provided for by the law. On 24 April 1968 Mauritius was admitted to the United Nations.

The Constitution that came into force on 12 March devotes its second chapter to fundamental rights: it protects the right to life and to liberty, and protects against slavery, forced labour and inhuman treatment. The consensus of independence did not last: on 21 March 1969 Sookdeo Bissoondoyal left the Council of Ministers over a disagreement with the Prime Minister and became Leader of the Opposition.

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Seewoosagur Ramgoolam

The first Prime Minister was the man Mauritians call the father of the nation. Seewoosagur Ramgoolam was born on 18 September 1900 at Belle Rive, in the district of Flacq. After the Royal College in Curepipe, he went to London to study medicine at University College, and returned to Mauritius in 1935. Elected a municipal councillor of Port Louis in 1940, he would become its mayor in 1958. In 1941 he founded the daily newspaper Advance and entered the Legislative Council. He officially joined the Labour Party in 1947 and became its leader in 1953. Chief Minister in 1961, Prime Minister of the colony in 1965, knighted on 12 June of that year, he led the country to independence and remained Prime Minister until 1982.

He chaired the Organisation of African Unity in 1976, became Governor-General in 1983 and died in office on 15 December 1985. He was cremated in the Pamplemousses botanical garden, which has borne his name since 18 September 1988 and where his memorial stands. His portrait appears on every Mauritian coin and on the 2,000-rupee note.

In Plaine Verte, in the heart of Port Louis, the wooden house where he lived from 1935 to 1965 became the Sir Seewoosagur Ramgoolam cultural centre on 18 September 1987. Seven rooms are open to visitors: his furniture, his clothes, his medical equipment, his diplomas, and an exhibition of photographs following the great moments of his life and of the country’s. At Tyack, near Rivière des Anguilles, the house where Sookdeo Bissoondoyal was born has become a museum, where a leather bag stamped with the words “Independence 1968” can be seen.

Finally, every 12 March is a public holiday. It carries a double name, Independence and Republic Day, because the same date has served twice: twenty-four years after 1968, Mauritius chose this day to become a Republic.