MOROCCO AND AFRICA: FROM BEN BARKA TO SEBTA AND MELILLA

When Patrice Lumumba was assassinated, my father, then still a teenager, went out to demonstrate in front of the Belgian Consulate General in Casablanca. Thousands of students joined him, and were severely beaten by the riot police. That same year, my mother, a Swedish au pair in Brussels, felt the brunt of some Belgians’ hostility towards her country, which was fuelled by UN Secretary General Dag Hammarskjöld’s perceived, but in fact imaginary, bias in favour of Lumumba. Insults were hurled and tyres flattened.

I grew up hearing these family recollections, so I’ve always felt connected to Africa; a statement ludicrous in itself as I am Moroccan and thus African, but nevertheless necessary in view of the mental and ideological distance that some discourses have managed to place between North Africa and sub-Saharan Africa.

What strikes me about these family stories is that in 1961 —which is to say, not so long ago—thousands of young Moroccans spontaneously took to the streets to protest the murder of Congo’s prime minister. The common struggle against colonial oppression and an abstract though vividly felt affinity with tiers-mondisme, meant that young Moroccans could, and did, feel directly and personally concerned by the murder of Patrice Lumumba at the hands of Congolese accomplices of Belgian and American powers.

But the relationship between Morocco and Congo would turn less idealistic: while Patrice Lumumba gave way to Mobutu Sese Seko, King Mohammed V gave way, that same year, to King Hassan II. Ideology and solidarity between colonized people gave way to Cold War realpolitik. Alignment with Western powers led to diplomatic and military solidarity between regimes and rulers, rather than between peoples.

In this context, it is perhaps no coincidence that the tiers-mondiste Patrice Lumumba died in Congo, while the pro-Western Moise Tshombé and Mobutu died in ignominious exile in Algiers and Rabat, respectively. Nor is it coincidental that the spontaneous outbursts of popular protest in Casablanca in January 1961, were to give way to the Franco-Moroccan military intervention in the Shaba in 1978, aimed at quashing an anti-Mobutu uprising.

This sketch of the recent history of Morocco/Congo relations epitomizes the evolution from popular solidarity to élite realpolitik between Northern and Southern Africa—because Moroccan history is not specific in its estrangement from Southern Africa. Algeria and Libya, despite having had a distinct socialist and tiers-mondiste political orientation, are as much aloof from the rest of the continent as is Morocco.

But it began differently: under King Mohammed V, Morocco was a founding member of the Accra and Casablanca groups, which united like-minded African progressive countries and leaders, including Gamal Abdel Nasser, Sékou Touré, Kwame Nkrumah, Modibo Keita and King Mohammed V. When the king died in 1961, his son and successor Hassan II opted out of his father’s progressive and non-aligned foreign policy. This was deliberate. The break from his father’s legacy extended to the domestic scene, where the charismatic and internationally minded leader of the Union Nationale des Forces Populaires (U.N.F.P)—Morocco’s then main leftist party—Mehdi Ben Barka, was keen on pursuing a comprehensive reform of Morocco’s economy and institutions as he was on fighting against colonialism in its different shapes and colours, be it in Palestine, South Africa, Cuba or Vietnam. The more Hassan II began to close ranks with Western powers, the more Mehdi Ben Barka stressed the need for Third World unity against Western imperialism. In 1963, he became secretary-general of the Organisation de solidarité des peuples d’Afrique, d’Asie et d’Amérique latine (OSPAAL), also known as the Tricontinental, where he rapidly became a world figure on a par with the likes of Fidel Castro, Gamal Abdel Nasser, Ho Chi Minh or Nelson Mandela. Incidentally, this international and progressive profile contributed to his death, as Moroccan authorities were able to count on French, American and Israeli complicity to rid the international scene of his inspiring presence—he was “disappeared” in Paris on October 29, 1965.

One of Ben Barka’s last contributions to the Tricontinental was to attend the Wenneba conference in Ghana in April and May of 1965. That meeting, which was attended by four hundred people, comprising of Asian, African and Latin American delegates, was held to prepare the first Tricontinental Conference and was recounted by Otmane Bennani, his assistant. His aim was to strengthen the international solidarity with the help of movements in Asia and Africa fighting against colonialism and neo-colonialism—a solidarity manifest in his many travels to over thirty African countries in 1963, for instance.

At the Wenneba Conference—dubbed by Bennani “the most important one in the history of the Tricontinental”—the Latin Americans joined their African and Asian brethren and elected Ben Barka “president-to-be” of the first Tricontinental Conference in Havana in 1966, with Ghana replacing Morocco. Ben Barka then went on to Beijing to try and mend the Sino-Soviet rift, which deeply divided the non-aligned African and Asian countries. He returned to Europe and Paris in 1965, where he was abducted and has never been seen again.

As we all know, things haven’t evolved as Mehdi Ben Barka or Kwame Nkrumah would have hoped. Ideological solidarity across the continent was soon replaced with heightened national, ethnic and religious tensions. The thought of thousands of Moroccan students taking spontaneously to the streets, to protest against the murder of a Congolese prime minister, now seems surreal. In fact, the most salient phenomenon linking the average Moroccan to sub-Sahara Africa is, besides the periodic disappointment after each African Nations Cup, the increasing presence of sub-Saharan migrants in Morocco, desperately trying to slip into a fortress Europe present on Moroccan soil through the Spanish enclaves of Sebta and Melilla. Enduring heavy-handed treatment at the hands of Moroccan authorities, they symbolize the division of the group of countries formerly known as the Third World. It is only once they reach European soil that Moroccans and other Africans face a common fate as potential and equally unwanted illegal migrants. Sharing a common hope in the 1960s, they now share common frustrations and hardship.