'We need to create a Middle class': Clarens Renois shares vision to save Haiti from gangs

For the past few months, we have had a neighbor in our Jerusalem apartment building, Clarens Renois, from Haiti. An imposing figure, a muscular six-footer with a perennial smile, he is accompanying his wife, who works in Jerusalem. A journalist in print and on the radio, as well as a university lecturer, Renois has his sights on returning to his troubled land – as its next president. 

In an exclusive interview, he told me about his own life story and his determination to take control of what is, by United Nations standards, a failed state.

“I was born into a small community in Haiti. I went to a public school when they were at a good level. I then became a journalist. When I was a young boy, we were living so far from the center that it was very difficult to know what was happening in the capital. Maybe this developed in me the idea of listening, trying to understand what was happening elsewhere. In 1986, I traveled to France to study in a school of journalism.

“I began writing for the AFP French news agency. I worked there for 14 years, becoming the head of the bureau. Before that, I was a freelance correspondent working for many radio stations in French. I also broadcast for the Voice of America in Creole. Sometimes, too, I broadcast for CNN or CBS. I am also a teacher of political communication at the Centre d’Etudes Diplomatiques. I even opened a private class of communication, where I trained others. 

“I wrote four books, the first of which was an autobiography. In it I was able to relate things that I was not able to in my newspaper or radio broadcasts. My second book was published in 2015 and is more political. The Haiti I described was at one time a beautiful place which was beautiful but simultaneously the scene of misery and poverty.

“I’m a Haitian and I’m suffering. This is my country. A group of us young professionals got together and asked ourselves whether we wanted to leave the country or to change it. If we want to stay there, we need to do something. 

“My colleagues said that because I was well known, people would respect me. ‘You are going to be the flag waver, and you will represent us,’ they said. So in 2014, we formed a political party.

“What sort of ideas can we bring in order to change how people think of us? Why can’t we be like the USA, where we see rival politicians talking together?

“Our society is split between the 5% rich and the 95% poor. As young professionals, our party exists between these two segments. How can we bridge the gap between the very poor and illiterate and the rich elite? How can we create some hope for these masses? These 95% need work now, education now, money now. The politicians come along and say: ‘If you vote for me, I’ll give you these things right now.’ But instead, we got a president who was assassinated, another who fled from the island and then resigned. So the vicious circle begins again. 

“We need to have good government, transparency, law for everyone. We called our party UNIR to unify the party. We are saying to 95% of the people: ‘You are not the enemy of the 5%. We are the same people, living on the same land. There may be differences between us, but we are the same people. Let’s work together.’ To the 5% we said: ‘You are a small minority. If the 95% rise up, they can defeat you. Create change, open up opportunities, give them hope.’ 

“This is our philosophy. Our name – UNIR – stresses how to unify with integrity. We are the national union for integrity and reconciliation. But it is not easy. The masses need money, and they need jobs to change their daily life. You can have these nice words. But without practical steps, it is going to fail. We need to create a middle class.

“The gangs are peopled by men from the 95%, but they are financed by people from the 5%. Initially, they were under their control. But the money they earned and the weapons they acquired has meant that they have become independent from their masters. They have become strong and rich. In 2023, some 5,000 people were killed in gang warfare. 

“As a group, these gangs have no sense of history, even of their own history. They remain illiterate, anarchic. Some of the gangs’ leaders like this chaos. This is how they can manage their power. But for the elite, this situation is also good. It guarantees their staying in power. The judges, too, are controlled by this rich elite. 

“Our way is to talk to the people in power and convince them that if they become legitimate, they could make more money. But by perpetuating this chaos they themselves become vulnerable, since the gangs are prepared to attack them. Neither can the gangs live in this situation forever. Let us create a society that allows us to talk to each other in a social dialogue. We can change the situation without violence.

“I could consider myself as upper middle class. Yet I cannot go to the movies with my kids or to a place where they could ride their bike. You are confined to your house. This is not a life. You can’t go to the beach on the weekend or to the gym because you never know what will happen to you on the way. So you are really poorer than the poorest man in the USA! Yes he’s poor, but he’s working. He can go to a baseball game or a basketball park. But the rich people have to put walls around their houses and hire security guards. We need a path to reconciliation. But we cannot do this at the moment because of the situation. I don’t think we will have democracy soon like you have in Israel.

“Last night as we left the house in Jerusalem at 10:30 to buy something at the pharmacy, I was on the phone with my mother in Haiti. She asked me what time it was; and when I told her, she was amazed. You could not imagine going out at that time in Haiti! 

“Our teenage son would never leave the neighborhood by himself. We take him to school by car, and then wait for him at the end of the school day to take him back home. And you have to do this as quickly as possible! You never know when someone will emerge to kidnap you and so on. Many people who can afford it send their kids abroad. But who can afford that? I cannot see this change in the near future, but at least we can begin to make the changes.” 

The fascinating history of Haiti, as related by Clarens Renois

“In 2010, when a massive earthquake hit Haiti, it did more than kill 316,000 people and destroy a huge amount of infrastructure that included schools, churches, and administrative centers. It also exposed the widespread corruption that had torn apart the population for decades, which had characterized the country most of the time since its official independence in 1804. Haiti was by then one half of an Island in the Caribbean, the other half being the Dominican Republic. They had been two separate peoples since the 18th century – the French side (Haiti), and the Spanish side (the Dominican Republic).

“Initially Haiti was called Kiskeya, which was the aboriginal name,” Renois explained. “In 1492, Christopher Columbus ‘discovered’ the island but killed the Taino natives, mainly for the gold. He also pushed the majority of the population that was left to the eastern part of the island.

“When the French came in 1633 as colonialists, they occupied the island and divided it permanently into two. The western part became Haiti, and the eastern part the Dominican Republic. They also imported slaves from Africa. The Dominican side of the island was inhabited by the Spanish, who also brought slaves. The attraction was the natural beauty of the island, its rich soil for agriculture, especially its sugar plantations, and its mining potential. At one point, it was considered the richest of all French colonies. But the main ‘industry’ for three centuries, from the 15th to the 18th centuries, was slavery,” he said.

Ironically, it was the French Revolution in 1789 that gave the local Haitians the impetus to revolt. When the revolution came, at the beginning of the 19th century, it appeared that its colonial past was over. The slaves felt that a new era had been ushered in. But this was not to be so.

“Slaves remained slaves, no longer in the fields but in the houses of the rich minority. Some of the slaves were freed by the owners and were called Affranchis. Some of the women became pregnant by the owners and produced a generation of mulattoes. These were half-slaves and half-free. In the houses, these slaves would hear the landowners speaking French. They adopted the language and put it together with the African languages they had and thus created the Creole language.

“One of the leaders of the revolt was a man named Toussaint Louverture, who went to the Spaniards and asked them to grant the Haitians independence, in return for which he would support them against the French. For the French, the colony of Haiti was very important and Louverture was considered a traitor. He was imprisoned by the French and sent to Fort de Joux in France, where he died in 1803. Many of the chiefs of the slaves then secretly got together and decided to fight. They sealed themselves together with a blood ceremony and fought the French. This pact put all the factions together, even though they all came from different parts of Africa and couldn’t really speak to each other. Nevertheless they were sufficiently united. Led by Jean-Jacques Dessalines they beat the French, and in January 1804 they declared independence. This marked the beginning of modern Haiti.

“The country had great potential being rich in agricultural produce, as well as in minerals. But what happened right after this revolution is that the different groups started to fight with each other. Each of the generals claimed to have been victorious in the revolutionary war. One of them declared that a particular territory was his and that he was the king there. Other generals did the same. These generals, who had fought together in the war, now began fighting each other. Two years after the independence, the chief general Jean-Jacques Dessalines was assassinated, even though he had united all the generals in the revolt, killed off the French, and burned their houses. He had killed the owners of the slaves and declared himself the emperor of Haiti. 

“One reason for his unpopularity was that he declared that after pushing out the French, they needed to share the country with the slaves. He argued that the slaves were the ones who fought the war, so it was necessary to share the county with them, to make them partners.

“Instead, slavery continued – this time of black on black. It was not colonial slavery but slavery within the country. The logic of the generals was that now that they were in control, they needed slaves to work for them. The treatment was the same as before, and the basis of the Haitian crisis was there. It was not based on justice but one in which there was a ruling class and then the rest. The children of the slaves could not go to school, whereas the owners could. They sent their offspring to French-speaking schools. French remained the official language of the country. Despite their revolution, they wanted to copy the previous rulers. The mulattoes and their descendants were also privileged. They could go to school, and maybe even to France and other countries in Europe or in the USA. Thus there was a small group of people controlling everything, with the masses staying in the same situation even after the revolt. 

“It might be thought that religion would unify the people. Catholicism was brought in by the French and became the official religion. The natives, however, kept their Voodoo religion, often practicing it behind closed doors. It was this that kept them together. They had practiced Voodoo in Africa and so did the same in Haiti. Catholicism was only the superficial religion of the poor people. Catholicism was practiced by those close to the elite and the mulattoes.

“You cannot talk about slavery as such, but you have something similar. You are free, but you are not. You cannot afford to send your kids to a good private school – that’s for the elite. So you have to send them to the public schools, and they are not good. The same structure existed as before. You have two kinds of students emerging from this situation – the rich and the poor. There was even a word Restavek in Creole or Reste avec in French, which meant ‘I am here at your service.’ ‘If there is anything you want me to do, I will do it. Go shopping, make your beds, clean the house, wake up before anyone else and prepare your coffee. I don’t need to be paid. I have a place to eat and sleep. If you give me some money, maybe I’ll send it to my family. I am your slave.’ I’m talking about kids of seven to eleven, who were taken, or given by the families. Their parents said: ‘I have too many kids, I can’t cope. Take them and do what you want with them.’ At private schools they will study in French; at public schools, the language will be Creole. So the same kind of division was perpetrated.

“As a result of the revolt of 1804, the French obliged the Haitians to pay for their independence, since it marked the loss of the French colonies, specifically for the loss of income from their plantations. This levy, initially 150 million francs, though eventually reduced to 90 million, was crippling for a small country. The French threatened anyone who did not pay up with being shipped off to France as slaves! So they paid up. This left Haiti a poor country. This imposition only ceased in 1927. Despite this, Haiti felt it could use its independence to help others. This including selling weapons to countries such as Greece. They also sent mercenary soldiers to help other exploited regimes, such as those countries fighting against the Ottoman Turks, in the Caribbean, and in Latin America.

“Initially, the USA blocked any commercial connections between Haiti and the outside world, thus making the political situation unstable, the economy stalled, and the people impoverished. The USA recognized Haiti’s independence only 50 years later. This is hardly surprising, as at the time the USA still had slaves, and they were being asked to recognize a country of former slaves! When the USA did intervene, for example between 1900 and 1915, it was to take over the central bank by putting their own people in charge. They created a national guard to make sure that the military was in control of the population.

“One other result of these imposed restrictions was that Haiti had few doctors or engineers or other professionals in the country, since most of them had left. Moreover, everyone wanted to live in the capital Port-au-Prince because that was where you had everything you wanted, though at a price. This included good schools and hospitals and was the center of power and of commerce. The only international airport is also there. The politicians know that if you can control the capital, you can control the country. This is what we would discover when the earthquake came. Too many people were living in the capital. There was a question of space, not only in the capital. The population was growing very fast. In 1980 there were five or six million people. By 2000 to 2010, there were 10 million. In a short time, we had doubled the population, two-thirds of whom lived in dire poverty. When I walk though the streets of Jerusalem, I see people eating in restaurants close to the streets! That could never happen in Haiti. There, you see youngsters begging in the streets asking for money.

“One consequence of the lack of rule of law was to be found in the construction of buildings. Anybody could build a house without a permit. When the earthquake came in 2010, many of these constructions were destroyed. The earthquake took place near Port-au-Prince, and all the important buildings collapsed.

“As a result of the earthquake, some people who could fled abroad. I can tell you because journalists like myself were living and sleeping in the streets. The international community came and tried to help, but they too were hampered by the existing situation.

“Now, some 14 years after the earthquake, the government buildings are still not rebuilt. The government and the president are still working out of small rooms. The same situation still exists in that each group is fighting each other for control of the politics, justice, culture, and education. Everything is in turmoil. Society is divided between these groups – each of whom tried to control the power of the state. This reached its peak in 2021 when the incumbent president, Jovernel Moise, was assassinated. It was a fight between the rich people who wanted to control the state and the politicians who were fighting each other through the gangs. If you go through all their history after the independence, you will see the same fight between interest groups. If I am a politician, I want to gain control of the society. I have my group of people, and I can march on the capital and take control. This is the pattern since independence. These gangs exist for economic reasons, and for trafficking of drugs, human beings, and other materials. If you have power with a group of supporters, even the president will be afraid of you. Not all the politicians do this, but many do. If you want power you have to fight for it, which means burning things, blocking, creating chaos.

“Some 95% of the population is poor. So if you can give the 95% something, then you have power. There is a fight between the groups. The military are under the control of the rich people. Officially they are there to protect the people. But they help create the chaos. Historically, few of the presidents finished their term of office. There was one exception. In 1957, François Duvalier grabbed the presidency and was a dictator for 30 years. He sent many opposition leaders into exile. This included many professors, writers, and poets who were suspected of being Communists. They fled to Africa or to the USA. Others, he put in jail. That’s the way he rid himself of opposition. When he died of natural causes in 1971, his teenage son Jean-Claude took over and ruled till 1986, when there was an uprising of the military, with the help of the USA. The USA told Duvalier that he had to be democratic. ‘If you want to stay in power, you must let other parties emerge and function normally.’ When Duvalier refused, the Americans said, ‘Enough.’ The subsequent revolution destroyed everything that the Duvaliers had established in the 30 years of power. It killed people who supported the Duvaliers. From 1986 we had a start of democracy, but once again it didn’t really get off the ground because of these structural problems. From 1986 to 2004, there was a change of government every half a year! It was the national game.

“At present we are governed by a presidential group consisting of nine members. These nine members represent the divisions in the society. We could not find one person to represent the groups in the country. No one wanted to let the other become the one leader. Each one wants to be leader, so each group has a representative. I myself am identified with one of these groups. We are a collective of five or six political parties, with whom I am in contact night and day. Our aim is how to return to normalcy.”