And the cycle begins anew.
Three years of Ben Bella’s government.
The opposition accuses him of doing little.
Who says?
The balance sheet of his government has its indisputable credits: Ben Bella brought order to a country emerging from war; he got Algeria moving: the state apparatus, the economy, education, normal life. He turned over to the workers plantations and factories that the colonists had abandoned. Each time he nationalized an enterprise, it was an act of bravery. He prevented the civil war that was threatening the country and would have plunged it into a long decline. He prepared a programme of agricultural reform which changed the lives of several hundred thousand Algerian workers. He conferred on Algeria the prestige of becoming a leading country in the Third World, wanting Algeria to be the bridge between Europe and Africa. He opened Africa and the Arab world to the European left and to Communist parties. He was an active spokesman in the fight against colonialism.
Orthodoxy, fanaticism, did not burden Ben Bella’s view of the world, which was open, receptive, tolerant, even if sometimes insufficiently discriminating. In his youth, Ben Bella had been a student of no ideological school and had joined the movement only because he wanted a free Algeria. He fought and was imprisoned. When he took power, his views seemed right wing, but then moved left, an unmistakable evolution, but an evolution that proceeded not from intellectual operations but rather somehow from his instincts, through practical politics. They say that Ben Bella’s socialism was sentimental: they say that Ben Bella ‘had his heart on the left,’ that he simply liked socialism. Ben Bella tried to create the conditions in which youth could develop, to free the fellah from the tyranny of the magnates, to free slaves, to fight for the rights of women: Algerian women despaired when they heard that Ben Bella had been removed; they dressed in mourning. (One told me: ‘He wanted to create a life for women. Now the men will lock us back up in the home.’)
Ben Bella’s socialism was brave and original. In simple terms, it was a socialist economy with the Islamic superstructure left undisturbed. The opposition accused him of talking too much and doing too little. They said that Ben Bella’s socialism was verbal.
How much time does the president of Algeria devote to fighting the opposition?
Ben Bella had a running battle with the opposition. Instead of developing his programme, he had to deal with his enemies. The situation is typically Algerian. Somebody is always plotting, and the constant threat of a coup paralyses the government. Take the year 1963. In April Ben Bella removes Khider, the general secretary of the FLN, because Khider has been organizing an opposition to him. In June he arrests Budiafy for conspiring against the government. In July the Kabyle leader Ait Ahmed announces that he has declared an open war against the government. In August Ben Bella removes Ferhat Abbas, the leader of the National Assembly, because Abbas opposes the party. In September he removes Rabeh Bitat for opposition activity; the same month he also removes Colonel el-Haji for organizing an uprising in Kabylia. In October and November there is a major rebellion among the Kabyle, who constitute nearly a fifth of the Algerian population. These are only the affairs that made headlines; how many conspiracies were nipped in the bud? How many small-time seditionists were there? In Algeria, nothing ever ends in a discussion. Political discipline is lacking, and the ability to think in terms of the good of the state is unknown. For that, you need years, whole generations.
Everything that occurs here is ideological, but the ideology is fluid, undefined, because this is not capitalism, which nobody espouses, and it is not socialism, which is known in only a cursory way, and it is not yet an Islamic orthodoxy. Some new quality is being born, and it is not yet expressed in any doctrine; everyone understands it in his own way. The Algerian mentality is full of clutter, contradictions and collages of the most fantastic incongruities. Political contentions are tortuous, as political opponents, operating without clear conceptions, can neither understand each other nor define their own positions. Their battles are fought on the ground of personal antagonism and old quarrels.
Nevertheless Ben Bella, with the members of the opposition gradually finding themselves behind bars or choosing to emigrate, seems to be picking his way skilfully through the labyrinth. Ben Bella thinks he is standing on solid ground.
Ben Bella is not standing on solid ground.
What was happening in Algeria just before the coup?
Things were not going well.
There were the problems that still needed to be solved: the millions of unemployed, the rural poverty, the confusion in the private sector, the lack of expertise, the gap between what the government said it would do for the country and its actual state, the deficit. Ben Bella could not solve these problems, and it was hard to see who would; it was hard to see when they could be solved.
Economic stagnation, internal disappointments, bureaucratic inertia, and the immobility of the masses always push Third World politicians in one of two directions: they become dictators or else they escalate their activities abroad, enlarge their foreign policy.
Ben Bella tried to make up for his domestic failures with a foreign policy that enhanced his prestige in the world. His policies attracted more and more of his time, more and more of his passion. He enjoyed visits and round table discussions. He could be captivating; people fell under the spell of his personal charm. His ambitions were great. He thought about supporting the rebels in Angola and Mozambique; he trained South African guerrillas. He invited members of the World Youth Festival to Algiers. He made the capital the site for the second Afro-Asian conference. They say that he supervised the preparations personally, refusing to share them with anyone. Before the conference he was conducting wide-ranging correspondence with heads of state: he invited Chou En-Lai for a visit in June. He would set out on a visit to de Gaulle in July. Algeria became the pivotal Third World state, but the cost of its status — above all, the financial cost — was staggering. It ate up millions of dollars for which the country had a crying need.
Gradually, the gap between Ben Bella’s domestic and foreign policies grew wider. The contrast deepened: Algeria had earned an international reputation as a revolutionary state; its policies were brave, decisive and dynamic; it had become a haven for the struggling and the oppressed of the world; it was an example for the non-European continents, a model, bright and entrancing: while at home, the country was stagnating; the unemployed filled the squares of every city; there was no investment; illiteracy ruled, bureaucracy, reaction, fanaticism ran riot; intrigues absorbed the attention of the government.
This gap between foreign and domestic politics, typical of many Third World countries, never lasts for long. The country, even if of the politician’s making, always drags him back down to earth. The country cannot carry the burden of these policies. It cannot afford to; and it has no interest in them.