The prince from the Great Island

In 1828, in Madagascar, the Great Island, King Radama I died. At court, the new queen had those who might challenge her for the throne eliminated. A Merina prince related to the royal family, governor of Majunga on the north-west coast, escaped the massacre: Ramanetaka.

He fled by sea with his followers — some two hundred people, it is said — and asked the sultan of Anjouan, Abdallah II, for hospitality. The sultan welcomed him. But the guest won supporters and soon became a threat to the man who had taken him in. To get him out of the way, Abdallah sent him to govern Mwali in his name.

It was like entrusting an island to an ambitious man. Around 1830, Ramanetaka made himself master of it and no longer recognised the authority of Anjouan. He converted to Islam and took the name Abderemane.

Abdallah II never accepted it. In 1836, his dhows came to besiege Mwali. Talks were still under way when a gale blew up: the storm drove the Anjouanese ships ashore, and those aboard had to land, where Ramanetaka's men were waiting for them. The sultan of Anjouan was taken prisoner along with several of his companions.

He never saw Ndzuwani again. According to the account published more than thirty years later by the Frenchman Alfred Gevrey, Ramanetaka had him shut in a dungeon and left him there to starve to death.

Ramanetaka-Abderemane reigned over Mwali until his death, in Fomboni, in 1842. He left a little girl of five or six, who would become the most famous of the island's queens: Djoumbé Fatima.