Tunisia: The Art of Plain Talk

When Tunisian students passed a bristling condemnation of U.S. policy in Viet Nam last month, President Habib Bourguiba decided to give them a cooling little lecture himself. His message, rare in the Arab world for its espousal of U.S. views: “If the Vietnamese guerrillas could contain the American Army, China would not hesitate to unleash its masses on South Viet Nam, Asia and even Russia.” Later, Bourguiba described his fellow Arabs’ belligerence against Israel as “vain obstinacy” and Gamal Abdel Nasser’s closing of the Gulf of Aqaba as “a monumental miscalculation.” He has also shocked Moslems by recommending birth control and the end of the Ramadan fast. In fact, Bourguiba habitually does something that is exceedingly rare in his part of the world: he talks straight.

He also does a good deal more than talk. His actions, like his speeches, are based on a philosophy of political and economic realism that he unabashedly calls “Bourguibism.” Bourguibism is shaped by the belief, he explains in the Cartesian style that he acquired in elite French schools, that “no domain of terrestrial life must escape man’s power of reason.” Ever since the French left him to rule Tunisia in 1956, Bourguiba has been trying to apply reason to nation building. He has not always succeeded, but there are increasing signs of more success than failure.

Kicking the Tradition. Under the paternalistic rule of le Pere, as his countrymen call him, youngsters everywhere now flock to new secular schools that have replaced the dreary old Koranic institutions. Young Tunisian women wear mini-djebbas that are the scandal of the mullahs, and bikinis among the scantiest on the Mediterranean. But Bourguiba is kicking more than tradition into the North African dust.

He is building dams and plants, drilling for water (oil has just been discovered) and razing gourbis (mud shacks) in the casbah. He is pushing Israeli-style tree planting to restore the forests that legend says once covered ancient Carthage and promoting a new fishing industry that has already spawned four shipyards and 16 canneries. He has also encouraged tourism, which perked up four years ago when northern Europeans began discovering Tunisia’s unspoiled beaches, its jasmine-scented Arab towns and the antiquities that date back to Hannibal’s time.

As Bourguiba’s admiring silent partner, the U.S. gives more per capita assistance to Tunisia (pop. 4,460,000) than to any other African state. This fiscal year American aid will reach $62 million—mostly in Food for Peace. Though politically pro-West, Bourguiba also welcomes Communist aid: the Russians are building Tunisia’s first institute of technology, and the Bulgarians financed a gleaming new 70,000-seat sport stadium outside Tunis. Bourguiba has not been so lucky with all Communists. After he allowed four Chinese sports instructors in to teach young Tunisians pingpong, he discovered that they had opened a campaign to spread Mao-thought; now Tunisia is on the verge of breaking relations with Peking.

The Ladies’ Man. The Tunisians need all the help they can get. Their economy has been temporarily crippled by drought and tough foreign competition in phosphates, their chief export. Ever pragmatic, Bourguiba is taking the bitter pill prescribed by the bankers and sharply limiting spending. Still, it may be a few years before Tunisia is able to resume growth of 6% a year.

At 64, Bourguiba is still Tunisia’s most popular man and the particular darling of Tunisian women, who revere him as their emancipator. By giving the doctrinaire radicals of his own Destourian Socialist Party just enough socialism, he has managed to curb most serious political opposition. Some students would like to push Tunisia off its moderate track and further to the left, but they do not worry Bourguiba. “We have been rendered immune against the Red bug,” says his Economics Minister, Ahmed ben Salah. “When we see a student turning Communist, we send him to the Soviet Union for a cure. They always return 100% Tunisian.”