by SHREYA PARIKH
On 21 February 2023, President Kais Saied called a meeting with the National Security Council to take urgent measures “to address the phenomenon of the influx of large numbers of irregular migrants from sub-Saharan Africa to Tunisia.” According to the statement published by the Tunisian Presidency on their Facebook page, Saied “pointed out that there is a criminal arrangement that has been prepared since the beginning of this century to change the demographic composition of Tunisia and that there are parties that received huge sums of money after 2011 in order to settle irregular immigrants from sub-Saharan Africa in Tunisia.” The goal of this migration, according to Saied, is to make Tunisia “a purely African country with no affiliation with the Arab and Islamic nations.” The statement adds that Saied “stressed the need to put an end to this phenomenon [of irregular migration] quickly, especially since hordes of irregular immigrants from sub-Saharan Africa are still continuing with the violence, crimes and unacceptable practices they lead to, in addition to being legally criminalized.”
This statement, which French far-right politician Eric Zemmour has supported and linked to the “Great Replacement” theory, launched a state- and civilian-supported mass violence to rid Tunisia of ‘Africans’- on the streets, in private spaces, and on the social-media. Many Tunisians on already-proliferating anti-sub-Saharan online groups declared themselves the protector of Tunisia’s so-called Arabo-Muslim identity in the face of the fear of Tunisia becoming ‘too African.’ For them, to be Tunisian is to be Arab and Muslim, all of which are antonymous to being African. In the Tunisian social imagination, to be African is to be Black, economically, and culturally poor, prone to all forms of excess and vice, needing to be controlled and (if need be) annihilated. By extension, to be Tunisian is to not be Black.
“Africans eat too much!” Blaming the other for the escalating socio-economic crisis
Since January 2022, rice has disappeared from the shelves of Tunis’ supermarkets. One of the popular explanations that has emerged for this disappearance is that the ‘Africans’ in Tunisia are ‘eating away all the rice,’ as pointed out to me by Yasmina, a 41-year-old Black Tunisian woman who has been active in denouncing all forms of racism in Tunisia.[1]
‘Les Africains,’ in the Tunisian vernacular, refers to the sub-Saharan migrant populations, who are estimated to number around 57 thousand.[2] Most of them are undocumented guest-workers, while a small proportion of them are university students. Many are hoping to make their way to the Global North. ‘Les Africains’ as a racializing category also includes the Black Tunisian population who are estimated to be make up between 10 and 15 percent of the population; Black Tunisians are assumed to be sub-Saharan migrants or assumed to trace their ancestry to enslaved families, even though a complex variety of migrations from other African regions brought their ancestors to Tunisia.[3]
The rice-crisis is not the first time that populations racialized as ‘African’ are blamed for a social and economic disaster in Tunisia, which in reality is a direct consequence of the state’s abandonment of marginalized communities and the pressures of global capitalism. Back in June 2021, while I was doing my fieldwork in the city of Sfax, protests were held by a group of unemployed Tunisians, calling for expulsion of ‘African’ migrant workers whom they accused of ‘taking away Tunisians’ jobs.’
The anti-African discourse has now infected President Kais Saied’s regime, finally reaching the words of the president himself. In the past few months, an ex-minister as well as members of Saied-supporting Parti nationaliste tunisien(Tunisian Nationalist Party) have openly made racist and xenophobic comments, calling for expulsion of ‘Africans’ from Tunisia. Saied, who took on authoritarian powers with a coup d’état on 25 July 2021, has increasingly relied on a populist discourse that blames a constructed ‘other’ for the social and economic crisis facing Tunisia; this ‘other’ has included political opponents, NGOs, and civil society figures, and recently, the ‘Africans.’
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