As president flees and army takes control, Gen Z protesters demand clean water, steady electricity and dignity for all.

Antananarivo, Madagascar – On a typical Sunday morning in Mahamasina, a suburb of Madagascar’s capital Antananarivo, Sarobidy Ramarimanana joined the queue at her neighbourhood water point just after sunrise.

“I just wanted to fill my jerrycan and go to church,” she told Al Jazeera. “I was about to draw water when people started running; jerrycans everywhere.” The sound of police sirens had sparked panic, interrupting the calm of the neighbourhood as people fled.

After weeks of tense antigovernment protests – and a crackdown that turned deadly – fear has become instinct, Ramarimanana said. People ran, tripping over their jerrycans, scattering them across the street. “I picked mine up and ran, too. I was scared.”

The 22-year-old student returned home, but she went back “angry”, she said, frustrated by the years of severe power and water supply cuts, sometimes lasting for days at a time, and the government’s failure to deliver improvements to such services.

She never made it to church. But later on Sunday she decided to join a bustling protest march in nearby Independence Square.

“How can they expect us to stay silent?” she asked from the square, holding a yellow jerrycan and small tin-can lamp – “jiro-kapoaka” – items that have become symbols of resistance among the youth protesters.

“We fetch water in the dark, we sleep through power cuts, and they tell us to be patient? For how long?”

Since September 25, hundreds of protesters led by the “Gen Z Madagascar” youth mov