The self-styled “Creole capital of the world” makes its play for the title this week celebrating its unique African, Malagasy, Indian, Chinese, French and British blend at a six-day festival. Whether the claim is correct, this provincial city of 27,000 – crammed on to reclaimed mangrove swamps and artificial islands on the main Seychelles island of Mahé – is one of the world’s smallest capitals. Most tourists will know it as a sarong-shopping time killer between the airport – 8km to the south – and the harbour that ferries them to the Seychelles’ other principal islands.



King Creole

The Seychellois heritage – which includes the French-based Creole seselwa that has official language status here – has become a cultural selling point for Victoria. A new April carnival was created in 2011, which has this year been incorporated into the Festival Kreol that has run since 1985. Cue parades, dance competitions, seselwa theatre … But Creole culture isn’t mere shadow play for the tourists in Victoria or an abstraction beloved of the preservation society; it’s an integral part of daily life. “The city is a particular kind of melting pot where everything continues to melt,” explains Nirmal Shah, chief executive of Nature Seychelles, whose Gujarati-origin family has been in the islands for 125 years. “It’s a particular sort of society where everybody is welcome. Because people are upwardly mobile and go overseas a lot, they often come back with foreign spouses. So it continues to evolve. Creole societies in many parts of the world remain stagnant because they’re not open.”

Victoria in numbers …

15,075 – Seychelles GDP per capita. It is Africa’s only high-income nation

2 – Times Victoria’s “Little Ben” replica of London’s famous clock strikes on the hour

45 – South African mercenaries who stormed Victoria airport in 1981 and attempted to overthrow the new socialist government

1.5m – Cans of tuna produced every day at the Indian Ocean Tuna factory, the city’s major employer

$450 – Black-market price per kg of coco de mer, which is only found in the Seychelles. A single nut can weigh up to 35kg.

History in 100 words

The Chinese and the Arabs had already sailed and charted the Seychelles by the time Vasco da Gama “discovered” the archipelago in 1502. The French formally colonised it in 1772, and founded a settlement, l’Établissement du Roi, on the banks of the Saint Louis River on Mahé. Their stint in paradise – purchased on the back of African and Malagasy slaves – was cut short in 1810, when the islands passed into British hands, and the Mahé outpost was renamed Victoria in 1841. The British-funded international airport opened in 1971, allowing Victoria’s economy to transition from plantations to tourism in time for independence five years later. Under the socialist France Albert-René’s dictatorship and later elected rule, universal healthcare and free education were established for its citizens.

Victoria in sound and vision

Olivier Levasseur – the French turncoat privateer played by Basil Rathbone in 1935’s Captain Blood – is reputed to have left a £100m treasure somewhere on Mahé.

Dancing the moutya was one of the ways Seychellois slaves made their lives bearable. In 2015, a minister proposed revoking an archaic law that forbids the beating of moutya drums – which supposedly contained coded messages – in Victoria.

Eco-fitting the city

Victoria’s tightly constrained position – “literally between a rock and the ocean”, as Shah puts it – has presented tough ecological choices. With further development up into the granitic hills endangering the water supply (many people are reliant on rainfall-derived groundwater), land reclamation has ultimately won out. In greater Victoria, the Perseverance housing estate, Eden island luxury development and Providence industrial estate have all been sited on artificial islands.

The Eden island reclamation

This has obvious implications for the marine environment, but Shah is philosophical. “This is a modern society. People want the opportunity to develop like anywhere else. One has to balance it out. About 50% of our land area is national park or protected reserve, so we’ve protected more than most countries.”

Key subculture

The Seychelles has at least 1,000 heroin users, and 2.3% of the 90,000 population are intravenous drug users according to the UN; among the worst rates in the world. The addicts have only appeared in recent years, says Shah. One reason could be the fact that the archipelago lies on the trafficking routes between Afghanistan and eastern Africa. But, like a visible rise in vagrancy in Victoria, drug use could be seen as a canary in the coal mine for the traumatising effects of rapid societal change.

The country’s economic boom since it recovered from the 2008 foreign currency crisis has, for the first time, created income inequality. There is a job surplus in Victoria and good social security, so the government is currently “struggling to understand” why some people have been marginalised, says Shah. “We’re grappling with all the things that richer countries have been grappling with for some years, and the solutions are hard to find.”.

What’s next for the city?

A struggle to hang on to its ramshackle soul as it develops economically. Creole culture may be all the rage – but Creole architecture is not. Foreign investment is paying for much of the current development happening in Victoria, including a much-needed port expansion. But the price is a bland globalised style of house that Shah believes has almost eradicated the traditional local look: corrugated sheets, high-pitched roofs and large windows to maximise natural light, bright colours. He inherited the rainbow-hued Jivan Jetha House in the heart of the old town from his father, a prominent merchant and Seychellois historian. It’s one of the few traditional Creole buildings left in Victoria, but Shah says he may knock it down unless he starts to get financial support from the government for costly restoration. “Once upon a time the planning authority was very insistent on Creole elements in the architecture being maintained. Now they’ve abandoned that because people want high-rise buildings and because we’re going vertical thanks to the lack of space.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Sri Navasakthi Vinayagar Hindu temple in Victoria. Photograph: Alamy Stock Photo

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Victoria is poorly documented online; the lack of easily accessible information about the city’s slave and Creole past is especially disappointing. The Nation is there for up-to-date news – but it is government-backed.

Do you live in Victoria? What key facts, figures and cultural highlights have we missed? Share your stories below



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