Northwest Africa: Roads Not Taken in the Independence Era

Major politicians from the 1960s and after - although defeated at the time - live on as key symbols in various countries' politics.

In much of Africa and Asia, formal decolonization - sometimes involving fairly competitive elections - often gave way to long-term rule by a powerful individual. Of course, those individuals didn’t rule on their own, but they came to symbolize the independence era. It would be impossible to think of Egyptian independence without considering Gamal Abdel Nasser (1918-1970), or Senegalese independence without mentioning Leopold Senghor (1906-2001). Some countries have retained a political system with one individual at the center, ruling in a more or less open-ended way, such as Egypt; others have become more competitive, such as Senegal.

Reflecting back on the leaders who symbolized the independence era, it is striking that in many countries there is also a figure who serves as a kind of counter-symbol. Here I want to consider four individuals, all of them from northwest Africa - and to ask why all of these figures have had such important political afterlives, infused with meaning even for people born long after the periods in question.

Morocco: Mehdi Ben Barka (1920-1965)

Educated in colonial schools in Morocco and Algeria, Ben Barka joined the Moroccan independence movement as a teenager. His growing prominence in the movement and in the Istiqlal (Independence) Party earned him the hostile attention of the French; he spent approximately two years in prison after co-signing the Proclamation of Moroccan Independence in 1944, and was placed under house arrest in the early 1950s. Following Morocco’s independence in 1956, ideological differences sharpened within Istiqlal, and Ben Barka broke with the party in 1959 to found the National Union of Popular Forces, a Marxist party. An increasingly vocal opponent of King Hassan II (in power 1961-1999), Ben Barka was exiled in 1963. His disappearance in Paris in 1965 continues to resonate - a new graphic novel, for example, raises old but haunting questions about the involvement of Moroccan and French intelligence in the politician’s death.

Tunisia: Salah Ben Youssef (1907-1961)

The dominant figure emerging out of Tunisia’s independence movement was Habib Bourguiba (1903-2000), who went on to lead Tunisia from 1956 until his overthrow in a 1987 palace coup. During the independence era, Bourguiba’s ally and later rival was Ben Youssef. The two men fell out in the 1950s over the nature of independence, the presence of French troops in Tunisia, and the question of Tunisian support for Algeria’s war of independence; on all these questions, Ben Youssef basically saw Bourguiba as a sellout. Pro-Bourguiba forces expelled Ben Youssef from the Neo-Destour Party, and he lived in exile for much of the 1950s. Ben Youssef was murdered in a Frankfurt hotel in 1961. Ben Youssef’s memory was revived in Tunisia during the decade after the 2011 revolution; in 2019, his assassination became the subject the first trial held under the post-revolutionary transitional justice program. The trial elicited strong reactions, both from those who saw a “dirtying” of Bourguiba’s legacy by awakening old accusations, and from those who saw Ben Youssef as a martyr of an independence process gone wrong.

Senegal: Omar Blondin Diop (1946-1973)

In Senegal, the key rival to independence-era President Leopold Senghor (in office 1960-1980) was Mamadou Dia (1910-2009), who served as Prime Minister from 1960-1962 but was fired and imprisoned for allegedly plotting a coup against Senghor. Dia was, like Ben Barka and Ben Youssef, well to the left of his ally-turned-rival. Yet in recent years, another, younger figure has loomed larger as a symbol in Senegal - Omar Blondin Diop, a Marxist student revolutionary. Expelled from France after participating in the 1968 uprising there, he spent the next few years traveling between Senegal and other countries as part of left-wing activist networks. Arrested in Mali in 1972, he was extradited to Senegal and imprisoned on Gorée Island; in 1973, authorities reported that he had hung himself. Outcry over his death helped push Senghor and his successors into holding quasi-competitive elections from 1978 onwards. Diop remains a symbol of radical change in Senegal,

Niger: Djibo Bakary (1922-1998)

Bakary initially headed the Nigerien Progressive Party, but was ousted in 1954 amid conflict with Félix Houphouët-Boigny, future president of Cote d’Ivoire and a huge regional influence during the independence period. Bakary went on to serve as mayor of Niamey and later, briefly, as President of the Government Council of Niger for a few months in 1958. Bakary opposed Houphouët-Boigny and others on the question of the 1958 French constitutional referendum, which gave colonies a choice between immediate independence with drastic economic consequences, or autonomy under French control. The referendum overwhelmingly carried the day in Niger (and almost all French colonies in West Africa, except Guinea), in an atmosphere of intimidation. Bakary was forced out of power and replaced with Hamani Diori, who went on to lead Niger until being overthrown in a 1974 coup. Part of Bakary’s Sawaba party entered into clandestine activity and armed rebellion against Diori in the late 1950s and 1960s, and Bakary went into exile. He returned to Niger after the 1974 coup but remained under heavy restriction through the democratic opening of the 1990s; he ran for president in 1993 but scored less than 2% of the vote. In terms of how he’s remembered, a major study of the Sawaba came out in 2013, and in 2024 Niger’s new junta renamed Niamey’s Charles de Gaulle Avenue as Djibo Bakary Avenue.

Patterns

In these cases and others, power struggles at independence routinely resulted in defeat for the figure who (a) was further left and (b) had a vision of independence that was less deferential to France. Given those two basic patterns, it’s not surprising that at moments of upheaval in the present, activists and in some cases authorities latch on to these figures as symbols of an alternative past and a potential future. Another figure who largely fits this pattern, and who is perhaps the ultimate symbol of the road not taken, is Burkina Faso’s Thomas Sankara (in power 1983-1987); although he came a generation after most of the politicians mentioned here, Sankara also serves - not just in Burkina Faso, but in many countries - as a symbol of the past that might have been. At the same time, it’s worth noting that those who take up such symbols are not always on the left themselves, particularly in the case of the current military regimes in Burkina Faso and Niger, which are somewhat ideologically fluid and vague. Nor are the symbols always a fully accurate reflection of the actual person. A companion of Senegal’s Diop writes, “Omar’s current political exploitation would have unnerved him. The enfant terrible of the undefinable revolution loathes protocol, distinctions, honors, and special treatment.” Ultimately, however, the point is that the independence era periodically receives intense reconsideration and reflection, including at the present moment when various countries are reflecting on their own trajectories.