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Intellectuellement, idéologiquement et conjoncturellement, je me situe et me positionne à l’antipode des thèses, des projets et des «normes» islamistes que je considère à la fois archaïques, dangereuses, porteuses de graves risques sociaux, économiques et politiques.

Ceux qui ont manifesté ce 9 août 2012 à Sidi Bouzid en criant «Thawretna thawrat zawali, lé Sebsi we lé Jbali (Notre révolution est une révolution des pauvres, ni Essebsi ni Jebali), m’ont semblé demander autre chose: en finir avec la pauvreté, l’exclusion et la misère. En finir avec le chômage, le mal développement, le manque d’accès aux ressources (l’eau en particulier)

Incontestablement, Caïd Essebsi s’est donné la mission de «sauver» le pays contre le risque islamiste

Laïc convaincu, ancien compagnon de Bourguiba et défenseur de la modernité telle qu’elle est conçue en Occident mais avec une forte dose de conservatisme social, Caïd Essebsi n’est de toute évidence pas moins légitime que l’un ou l’autre. Une large partie des Tunisiens partagent, à quelques nuances près, ses convictions.

Je garde aussi les mêmes distances politiques, intellectuelles et idéologiques vis-à-vis des libéraux et du libéralisme économique comme une idéologie qui nourrit les processus d’appauvrissement et d’exclusion qu’on connaît en Tunisie et partout dans le monde libéral et dont les victimes se comptent par millions.

Mais reconnaissons que du 6 janvier 2008 à la veille du 14 janvier 2011, rares parmi celles et ceux qui se présentent aujourd’hui comme des leaders politiques, développent leurs propres stratégies pour accéder au pouvoir ou du moins en profiter directement ou indirectement et proposent initiatives et projets, peuvent se targuer d’une quelconque participation au long processus de la révolution.

Pas moins que l’islamiste Ghannouchi ou le populiste Marzouki, Caïd Essebsi s’inscrit pleinement dans le libéralisme économique dominant et ne voit le développement qu’en termes de taux de croissance économique et de balances commerciales. Modernisations techniques, investissements, tourisme, exportations, taux de croissances, agrobusiness,… sont ses créneaux et ses indicateurs. Les hommes et les femmes d’affaires, la grande bourgeoisie et le haut de la classe moyenne, les grandes fortunes et la finance sont ses amis. Ce sont ses amis, qu’il avait mobilisés pendant sa période de Premier ministre de la transition. Ce sont les mêmes qui l’entourent et le financent aujourd’hui. Et ce sont les mêmes qui seront demain aux commandes du pays si, par aventure, il gagnait son pari et accédait au pouvoir, en battant les islamistes. L’histoire et l’itinéraire politiques de l’homme le prouvent.

rien de différent par rapport aux lignes générales suivies pendant les deux présidences de Bourguiba et de Ben Ali

favoriser l’investissement privé, accélérer la libéralisation des marchés et la privatisation du secteur publique, le «retrait» de l’Etat et l’abandon de ses obligations économiques et surtout sociales et environnementales, l’accélération de l’intégration du pays dans les processus globaux de mondialisation économique, l’obéissance reconnaissante aux institutions financières mondiales et aux multinationales, l’aggravation de l’endettement du pays

ces choix économiques et sociaux n’ont fait qu’aggraver la misère d’une large partie de la population et creuser davantage l’écart, devenu de plus en plus vertigineux, entre les plus riches qui ont continué à accumuler les richesses et les pauvres et les exclus qui ont continué à s’enfoncer dans la misère et de se voir déposséder de leurs ressources, perdant à la fois les moyens de la simple survie et la dignité humaine

Caïd Essebsi au pouvoir ne sera pas notre prochain dictateur. Mais la dictature de la finance n’en sera que plus renforcée et encouragée

l’exploitation minière des ressources continuera comme avant, voire pire, les pauvres et les marginalisés de ce pays, qui ont été à l’origine de notre révolution, ne verront pas leurs situations sociales et économiques changer, comme par miracle ou magie, et les générations futures risquent de ne rien hériter des grandes ressources naturelles de ce beaux pays. Nous laisserons un désert…

une lutte féroce pour le pouvoir entre les islamistes (libéraux-religieux) et les modernistes (libéraux-laïques). Ces deux forces occupent la scène et ne laissent pas beaucoup d’espace aux autres forces politiques organisées

Géographe tunisien, chercheur enseignant. Universités Paris 8 et Paris 10 (France), Université Américaine du Caire

young Africans are living in waithood

a growing number of young men and women must improvise livelihoods and conduct their personal relations outside of dominant economic and familial frameworks

their sense of being “˜trapped’ in a prolonged state of youth

recent protest movements, led mainly by young people, stem directly from the economic and social pressures they suffer, and from their pervasive political marginalisation

Young activists appear to be struggling to translate the political grievances of the protest movement into a broader political agenda. Clearly, they seem to be more united in defining what they don’t want and fighting it, and much less so in articulating what they collectively want

interviews I conducted with young people in Mozambique, Senegal, South Africa, and Tunisia, between 2008 and 2012, which resulted in my two most recent books: The Time of Youth: Work Social Change and Politics in Africa (published in August 2012 by Kumarian Press in the USA), and Youth and Revolution in Tunisia (published in June 2013 by Zed Books in the UK)

there is scepticism among youth that growth alone, without equity, will bring the solution to their problems

In Dakar in June 2011, rallying around the movement Y’en a Marre! (Enough is enough!), Senegalese youth came out to the streets, clashed with police, and managed to stop the approval of constitutional amendments that would benefit former president Wade. Galvanized by this victory, and using the slogan “Ma Carte d’Electeur, Mon Arme“ (my voting card, my weapon), the young Senegalese helped to remove Abdoulaye Wade from office in February 2012.

Young Africans constitute a disenfranchised majority

Liggey, which means work in Wolof, the national language of Senegal, is celebrated as an important marker of adulthood. The ability to work and provide for themselves and others defines a person’s self-worth and position in the family and in the community. Yet, the majority of young people in Senegal and elsewhere in Africa are unable to attain the sense of dignity embedded in the notion of liggey.

African societies do not offer reliable pathways to adulthood; traditional ways of making this transition have broken down, and new ways of attaining adult status are yet to be developed

a liminal space in which they are neither dependent children nor autonomous adults

Waithood also evidences the multifaceted realities of young Africans’ difficult transition to adulthood, which goes beyond securing a job and extends to aspects of their social and political life

Ibrahim Abdullah (1998) and Abubakar Momoh (2000) have pointed to the use of the vernacular term youthman, in many West African countries, to describe those who are stuck in this liminal position

youth as a socially constructed category defined by societal expectations and responsibilities (Honwana and De Boeck 2005)

While Singerman’s usage of waithood suggests a sense of passivity, my research indicates that young people are not merely waiting, and hoping that their situation will change of its own accord. On the contrary, they are proactively engaged in serious efforts to create new forms of being and interacting with society. Waithood involves a long process of negotiating personal identity and financial independence; it represents the contradictions of a modernity, in which young people’s expectations are simultaneously raised by the new technologies of information and communication that connect them to global cultures, and constrained by the limited prospects and opportunities in their daily lives

Although women are becoming better educated and have always engaged in productive labour alongside household chores, marriage and motherhood are still the most important markers of adulthood. While giving birth may provide girls an entry into adulthood, their ability to attain full adult status often depends on men moving beyond waithood (Calví¨s et al. 2007)

Although growing numbers of young people are completing secondary school and even attending university, the mismatch between educational systems and the labour markets leaves many unemployed or underemployed; they are pushed into the oversaturated informal economy or become informal workers in the formal sector (Chen 2006

Young Senegalese and Tunisians employ the French term débrouillage, making do

in the realm of improvisation, or “making it up as you go along,” and entails a conscious effort to assess challenges and possibilities and plot scenarios conducive to the achievement of specific goals (Vigh 2009)

young women and men in waithood develop their own spaces where they subvert authority, bypass the encumbrances created by the state, and fashion new ways of functioning on their own. These youth spaces foster possibilities for creativity; and as Henrietta Moore puts it, for self-stylization, “an obstinate search for a style of existence, [and] a way of being” (Moore 2011: 2). The process of self-styling is made easier by cyber social networks such as YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

these new “˜youthscapes’ (Maira and Soep 2005) resemble Michel Maffesoli’s notion of “urban tribes,” understood as groupings that share common interests but whose association is largely informal and marked by greater “fluidity, occasional gatherings and dispersal” (1996: 98)

Waithood constitutes a twilight zone, or an interstitial space, where the boundaries between legal and illegal, proper and improper, and right and wrong are often blurred. It is precisely at this juncture that young people are forced to make choices. Their decisions help to define their relationships towards work, family, and intimacy, as well as the type of citizens they will become. Rather than being a short interruption in their transition to adulthood, waithood is gradually replacing conventional adulthood itself (Honwana 2012).

growth alone, without equity, will not guarantee social inclusion and better lives for the majority of the population. Indeed, young people rebel against the widening gap between the rich and the poor, and the rampant corruption that they observe as elites enrich themselves at others’ expense

Young Africans today are generally better educated and more closely connected with the rest of the world than their parents. The young people I interviewed did not seem like a “˜lost generation’ nor did they appear apathetic about what is happening in the societies surrounding them. They are acutely conscious of their marginal structural position, and no longer trust the state’s willingness and ability to find solutions to their problems. In their shared marginalisation, young people develop a sense of common identity and a critical consciousness that leads them to challenge the established order (Honwana 2012, 2013).

Asef Bayat calls these dispersed actions “˜non-movements,’ which he describes as “quiet and unassuming daily struggles” outside formal institutional channels in which everyday social activities blend with political activism (2010: 5)

Young activists find themselves more divided; the broad unity forged during street protests dissipates as they struggle to articulate a new common purpose and to define a new political role for themselves

In the aftermath of street protests, young people appear to be retreating back to the periphery of formal politics, into their “˜non-movements.’

Today, the divorce of power from politics is deepening because power is being seized by supranational finance and trade corporations and by transnational organised crime syndicates. Devoid of power, politics remains localised in the nation state and responds to the interests of supranational powers rather than to the will of the people. In this sense, “˜sovereignty is outsourced’ and democracy becomes a charade, as politics has no power but instead serves power.

Aditya Nigam points to the current crisis of the “˜political’ and suggests that in the wake of the North African revolutions, these societies are “living in an interregnum when the old forms of politics have become moribund and obsolete but new ones have not yet emerged … Something, clearly, is waiting to be articulated in this relentless refusal of the political” by the younger generation (2012: 175).

In Tunisia, young activists are enjoying the freedom of independent civic and political engagement following the revolution, as these were banned under the old regime. But at the same time, their disappointment with party politics makes some young people turn to politicized forms of Islam. For example, the famous rapper of the revolution, “˜El General,’ is today an advocate for the instauration of Sharia law, and the lyrics of his latest song, titled “I Wish,” call for Tunisia to become an Islamic state. Indeed, young Islamists who joined radical Salafist groups believe that Sharia will be the solution to their problems because, as some of them put it: “Sharia is not politics, but a whole way of life, with its laws and its science.”

In Senegal, the Y’en a Marre activists pride themselves on being non-partisan and vow to work towards making politicians accountable to those who elected them

a “˜New Type of Senegalese’ described as: one that is more socially and politically conscious, assumes her/his responsibilities as a citizen, and fights for the well-being of the Senegalese people

my young interlocutors seem to believe that it is possible to achieve fundamental change outside of dominant political structures, even if they have not yet fully articulated how to do so