When the Lights Go Out, the People Rise Up

Picture this: You’re a young person in Antananarivo, Madagascar’s bustling capital. It’s September 2025, and for the twelfth hour today, you’re sitting in darkness. No electricity. No water. Your phone is dying, your food is spoiling, and any hope of running a small business or studying for exams evaporates with each passing blackout.

Now imagine you’re not alone. Thousands of young Malagasy are experiencing this same suffocating reality—and they’ve had enough.

What erupted in Madagascar last month wasn’t just another protest. It was a full-throated roar from a generation that refuses to accept systemic failure as inevitable. The movement calls itself “Leo Délestage”—literally “Fed up with load shedding”—and it’s become the most significant challenge to President Andry Rajoelina’s government since his contested 2023 re-election.

The numbers tell a grim story: at least 22 people dead, over 100 injured, with the UN explicitly pointing fingers at security forces for their violent response. In the face of sustained street mobilization, Rajoelina dissolved his entire government—a dramatic tactical retreat that activists rightly view as only a “small victory” in a much longer war.

But here’s what makes this movement truly extraordinary: these young activists aren’t just angry about power cuts. They’re wielding the symbols of global youth culture, the organizational power of digital networks, and a sophisticated understanding of political strategy to challenge an entrenched system that has failed them for generations.

And they’re flying the flag of the Straw Hat Pirates while they do it.

The Powder Keg: Why Madagascar Was Ready to Explode

To understand why Leo Délestage caught fire so quickly, we need to grasp the context these young activists are fighting within.

Madagascar is one of the world’s poorest nations. When your baseline is already survival mode, the collapse of essential services isn’t just inconvenient—it’s catastrophic. Twelve-hour power and water cuts became routine in Antananarivo and spread to major cities like Antsirabe, Antsiranana, Majunga, and Toliara.

Think about what that means in practice. No refrigeration for food or medicine. No way to charge devices that connect you to work or education. No water for sanitation. The psychological shift from “this is frustrating” to “this is intolerable” happened fast, and it was powerful.

When a government can’t provide water and electricity—the absolute bedrock of modern life—it has effectively torn up the social contract. The message becomes clear: your basic needs don’t matter to those in power.

The Rajoelina Paradox

Here’s the bitter irony that makes this moment so charged: President Rajoelina first came to power in 2009 through a coup, positioning himself as the populist voice of urban discontent against the previous president. He was the outsider, the disruptor, the man who understood the anger of Antananarivo’s streets.

Now he’s the target of that same fury.

Madagascar has a history of cyclical upheavals—major social explosions in 1947, 1972, 1991, 2002, and now 2025. Each regime’s legitimacy is defined by the crisis that preceded it, and each eventually faces its own reckoning. Rajoelina rode a wave of populist rage to power. Today’s youth activists are wielding that same energy against him, amplified by digital tools he couldn’t have imagined sixteen years ago.

The cruel reality of political leadership is that the exciting vision that wins you power eventually crashes into the grinding, unglamorous work of actually governing. Infrastructure doesn’t fix itself. Corruption doesn’t evaporate because you give inspiring speeches. Rajoelina promised dynamism and got stuck in the muck of institutional failure—and now a new generation is refusing to wait any longer.

How a Movement Goes Viral: The Genius of Leo Délestage

What transformed scattered frustration into a national movement? A combination of brilliant branding, digital organization, and culturally resonant symbolism.

“Leo Délestage” is a masterclass in movement messaging. It’s simple. It’s concrete. It’s emotionally powerful. Everyone knows exactly what it means because everyone is living it.

The phrase does three things simultaneously:

• Identifies the problem (load shedding)
• Validates the emotion (we’re fed up)
• Creates unity (this is our shared struggle)

Compare that to abstract political slogans about “reform” or “governance.” Leo Délestage speaks to lived reality. When you’re sitting in darkness for the twelfth hour, this name means something.

Facebook as the Great Connector

The initial call to action spread through Facebook—still the dominant social platform in Madagascar. This isn’t accidental. Digital platforms enable what organizers call “horizontal communication,” allowing small groups of friends to rapidly transmit ideas across their networks to other clusters of people.

But here’s where it gets interesting: early on, three officials from Antananarivo’s municipal government joined the cause, along with the influential workers’ union Randrana Sindikaly. These weren’t anonymous voices online—they were trusted community figures who translated digital energy into credible, legitimate action.

This is the bridge from mobilization to organizing that Marshall Ganz and Hahrie Han talk about. It’s easy to get people to click “share” or even show up once. It’s much harder to build the sustained commitment and distributed leadership that movements need to survive past the first wave of enthusiasm. The involvement of established institutions gave Leo Délestage something many digital movements lack: structural legitimacy and the capacity to coordinate complex action.

The Power of the Straw Hat

And then there’s the flag.

Across Leo Délestage demonstrations, protesters have been flying the skull-and-crossbones flag of the Straw Hat Pirates from One Piece, the massively popular Japanese anime. This same symbol has appeared at Gen Z protests in Indonesia, Nepal, Kenya, and beyond.

To anyone unfamiliar with the story, this might seem like random pop culture. But to the activists carrying it, the symbolism is profound and deliberate.

One Piece follows a crew of pirates fighting against the oppressive World Government, searching for ultimate freedom (the titular “One Piece” treasure). The protagonists are underdogs, outlaws challenging an overwhelming power structure. They’re bound by the concept of “nakama”—chosen family and absolute loyalty to your crew.

Sound familiar?

This flag transforms Leo Délestage from a local utility protest into something bigger: a story about young people battling an entrenched, unresponsive power structure in search of liberation and a livable future. It creates instant identification—you’re not just an isolated protester; you’re part of a crew, a movement, a global generation demanding change.

The beauty of this framing is that it doesn’t just define what activists are against (darkness, corruption, failure). It defines what they’re for: adventure, freedom, meaning, dignity. That positive aspiration is what sustains people when the going gets tough.

What Are They Really Fighting For?

This uprising is about so much more than electricity.

President Rajoelina’s political style has always emphasized big projects, central control, entrepreneurial dynamism, and appeals to religious morality. It’s a form of what we might call “industrial populism”—governance focused on spectacle and production metrics rather than distributed problem-solving.

The youth are rejecting this entire model. Their slogans—”Madagascar is ours,” “youth rise up!”—articulate a demand for genuine ownership and self-determination. They’re not asking for better managers of a broken system. They’re demanding a system that actually works for them.

Without reliable power and water, young people can’t build businesses, can’t study effectively, can’t pursue careers. These aren’t luxury demands—they’re the baseline requirements for economic dignity and agency. The activists understand that inequality isn’t about personal failure; it’s about structural barriers created and maintained by political elites.

They’re choosing the uncertain path of resistance over the false security of accepting permanent dysfunction. That takes courage.

Part of a Global Wave

Leo Délestage didn’t emerge in isolation. The activists explicitly cite inspiration from Gen Z movements in Kenya, Nepal, Indonesia, and the Philippines—young people around the world demanding accountability from failing governments.

This global connection is rocket fuel for local movements. When you see peers in Nairobi or Jakarta successfully mobilizing, it shifts your sense of what’s possible. The threshold for joining drops. The risk feels more manageable. You’re not alone in uncharted territory; you’re part of a worldwide generation refusing to inherit a broken world.

The shared tactics—the One Piece flags, the digital organizing, the focus on a “livable future”—create a template that travels. Madagascar’s youth are plugged into a global consciousness that their government can’t control or suppress.

The State Strikes Back: Concession and Repression

Faced with the largest challenge to his rule, Rajoelina deployed a two-pronged response: tactical concession and brutal force.

Rajoelina’s first move was politically clever. He publicly apologized for ministerial failures and dissolved the entire government, promising dialogue with the youth.

Let’s be clear about what this is: a sacrificial offering. Throw the cabinet overboard to save the presidency. It addresses the emotional core of the protest—someone is being held accountable—without touching the underlying power structure.

Activists recognized it for what it is: a “small victory,” not the war won. The faces change, but the system remains. New ministers won’t magically fix decades of infrastructure failure and corruption. This is the regime buying time, hoping the movement loses momentum during the lengthy process of forming a new government.

It’s a classic negotiation tactic: make a visible concession to disrupt your opponent’s momentum, then slow-walk any substantive change.

Violence and Delegitimization

Simultaneously, security forces unleashed tear gas, rubber bullets, and live ammunition on protesters. At least 22 people are dead. The UN has explicitly condemned the violent response.

Authorities imposed nighttime curfews and Rajoelina framed the protests as “acts of destabilisation in the form of a coup d’état.” This language is deliberate—it paints legitimate grievances as extremist criminality, justifying the crackdown.

The state also benefited from conflating peaceful protesters with separate looting incidents, creating public confusion about the movement’s character. This makes participation psychologically harder for fence-sitters, raising the cost of joining.

Regional Pressure

Madagascar’s membership in the Southern African Development Community (SADC) adds an external constraint. SADC issued a statement condemning the violence and urging restraint—significant because the organization previously suspended Madagascar after Rajoelina’s 2009 coup.

This regional scrutiny limits how far the regime can go with repression without risking diplomatic isolation and economic consequences. It’s a check on absolute power, forcing at least the appearance of democratic engagement.

The Long Game: What Comes Next?

This is where the real test begins.

Leo Délestage has demonstrated extraordinary capacity for rapid mobilization. But no clear individual leaders have emerged from the activist core who might step into institutional power. The movement remains structurally decentralized, coordinated through social media and allied organizations like the Randrana Sindikaly union.

This is the central tension of digitally native movements. Horizontal networks are brilliant for spreading ideas and coordinating events. They’re terrible at translating momentum into durable organizational capacity.

As Ganz and Han have documented extensively, lasting change requires moving beyond mobilization—asking people for low-effort actions like showing up—to genuine organizing. That means developing leaders, distributing responsibility, creating accountability structures, and building institutions that can sustain pressure over months and years.

The youth need to transform from challengers throwing rocks at the fortress to builders constructing a viable alternative. That’s unglamorous, exhausting work. It’s also the only path to actual power.

Surviving the Dip

Right now, the movement is riding high on the energy of the government dissolution. But that energy will fade. Daily life will reassert itself. The regime is counting on activists getting tired, distracted, or discouraged.

This is what Seth Godin calls “the Dip”—the long slog between initial excitement and ultimate success where most people quit. Surviving it requires clarity of purpose and strategic focus.

The movement needs to narrow its demands. “Rajoelina must resign” is a maximalist position that’s easy to rally around but hard to achieve. Instead, identify one or two critical “keystone changes”—reforms that would fundamentally shift power dynamics.

Maybe that’s judicial independence. Maybe it’s specific anti-corruption legislation. Maybe it’s complete restructuring of Jirama, the failed utility company. Whatever it is, it needs to be concrete, achievable, and meaningful enough to keep people engaged during slow political negotiations.

Without that singular focus, the energy dissipates.

Three Possible Futures

Co-optation and Fragmentation: Rajoelina successfully brings moderate voices into a new government, fragmenting the movement. Core demands get superficially addressed while the patronage system stays intact. The streets quiet down, and five years from now, we’re back where we started.

Radicalization and Renewed Upheaval: The new government fails to deliver tangible improvements. Security forces continue their violence. Frustration deepens, commitment hardens, and Madagascar enters a sustained period of instability and conflict.

Institutionalization and Reform: The movement translates digital mobilization into institutional political power. New leaders emerge from the activist core and contest municipal and national elections. The youth organize around a clear ideological alternative—rejecting industrial populism for decentralized, accountable governance focused on solving human problems. Structural reforms actually happen.

Only the third path delivers on the demand for a “livable future.”

Why This Matters Beyond Madagascar

Leo Délestage is a microcosm of a global generational fight.

Around the world, young people are inheriting systems that don’t work—economically, environmentally, politically. They’re watching institutions that promised security and prosperity reveal themselves as corrupt, incompetent, or both. And they’re refusing to accept it quietly.

What makes these movements powerful is their clarity of moral purpose. The demand isn’t ideological abstraction; it’s concrete and universal: we deserve a livable future. That’s not radical. That’s baseline human dignity.

The youth of Madagascar, flying their Straw Hat flags, are fighting the same fight as young people in Nairobi, Jakarta, and Manila. They’re demanding that power actually serve the people it governs. They’re exposing the gap between political spectacle and lived reality. They’re choosing courage over resignation.

They deserve our attention. They deserve our respect. And they deserve our solidarity.

A Note to the Activists

To the young people of Madagascar organizing, marching, and risking everything:

You’ve already achieved something remarkable. You’ve shattered the illusion that things can’t change. You’ve built networks and narratives that will outlast any single protest. You’ve shown your government—and the world—that you exist, you matter, and you will not be ignored.

The road ahead is longer and harder than the first euphoric weeks. The regime will try to wait you out, buy you off, or divide you. Don’t let them.

Stay focused. Build your organizations. Develop your leaders. Identify your keystone changes and fight for them relentlessly. Transform your digital networks into institutional power. Hold each other accountable and take care of each other.

The Straw Hat Pirates kept sailing because they knew where they were going and they trusted their crew. You’ve got both. Don’t stop now.

Madagascar is yours. Go claim it.

The international community should watch Madagascar closely in the coming months. What happens here will shape the trajectory of youth movements across the Global South—and determine whether a generation’s demand for dignity will be met with reform or repression.