Tunisians rally on May Day, raising their hands in defiance, as workers and activists protest repression, economic hardship and the erosion of democratic freedoms. (Photo: Wikimedia Commons)Once the Arab world’s democratic success story, Tunisia has rapidly descended into authoritarian rule. YUSRA GHANNOUCHI traces the country’s political collapse, the imprisonment of dissenters, and why Africa’s democracies must stand in solidarity.
In August last year, South Africa’s Minister of Science, Technology and Innovation, Prof Blade Nzimande, was leading a high-level delegation on a science and innovation visit to my homeland, Tunisia. Such deepening pan-African collaboration is a development to celebrate. When I visited South Africa for the first time a few months earlier, the warmth of its people reminded me of home. Yet today, the trajectories of these two nations – bookending our continent – could not be more stark.
South Africa remains an inclusive democracy, increasingly rare on a continent, and in a world, where democratic norms are under sustained assault. It stands almost alone in offering consistent moral leadership at a moment when human rights, international law and long-agreed global conventions are treated with open contempt. Tunisia, by contrast, has suffered one of the fastest and most alarming authoritarian reversals of recent decades.
Fourteen years ago, Tunisia was a symbol of hope. The 2011 revolution shattered decades of one-man rule and ignited the Arab Spring – a regional uprising against authoritarianism, corruption and inequality. My father, Rached Ghannouchi, returned from more than twenty years in exile to lead his party, Ennahdha, into the country’s first free and fair elections. Like thousands of Tunisians, he had been imprisoned under dictatorship.
Throughout those dark years, South Africa’s struggle against apartheid – its courage, its sacrifices, its transformative victory – served as a guiding light. My father travelled to South Africa twice in the 1990s, profoundly moved by President Nelson Mandela’s journey from prisoner to reconciler. Mandela’s moral clarity shaped my father’s commitment to peaceful democratic transition for more than four decades.
After the fall of dictatorship, Tunisia embraced this spirit. We prioritised national unity, adopted the most progressive constitution in the Arab world, and established an independent Truth and Dignity Commission. Ennahdha, despite winning a majority in parliament, chose to govern in coalition and remained committed to pluralism and broad-based governance – recognising that, in a fragile transition, a simple majority is never enough.
The work of building democracy, however, proved far harder than toppling dictatorship. Economic hardship, regional instability, global recession, and entrenched resistance from those who benefited from the old system all slowed the pace of change that Tunisians rightly expected.
Into this uncertainty stepped Kais Saied. Elected in 2019, he exploited political fatigue and the pressures of the Covid-19 pandemic to claim extraordinary powers. In 2021, he unlawfully invoked Article 80 of the constitution, suspended parliament, shuttered media spaces, arrested bloggers and opposition figures, and dismissed the Supreme Judicial Council. He concentrated all executive and legislative authority in his own hands, dragging Tunisia back to the very model of one-man rule from which it had so painstakingly emerged.
At that moment, my father was Speaker of Parliament. On the night of the coup, he stood outside the locked parliamentary building and declared openly that a coup d’état had taken place. He worked relentlessly to build a peaceful, broad coalition against the slide into authoritarianism. For this, he became a primary target.
He was arrested on 17 April, 2023. With the judiciary purged and brought under presidential control, courts became instruments of persecution. Opposition leaders, judges, journalists, academics, trade unionists, activists and ordinary citizens have faced fabricated charges in sham trials – often conducted remotely, hidden from media scrutiny, and reliant on anonymous witnesses. My father has now been convicted in three politically motivated cases and sentenced to a cumulative 41 years in prison, without ever being tried for the allegation used to justify his initial arrest.
This is the tragic portrait of Tunisia today: a nation once lauded for its democratic courage now suffocated by repression, its hopes extinguished by a personalised autocracy that manufactures enemies – from ‘corrupt politicians’ to desperate sub-Saharan African migrants scapegoated through toxic xenophobia.
Yet repression is also a sign of fear. Saied’s inability to govern, his refusal to engage in dialogue, and his divisive rhetoric have left him increasingly isolated. Four years after the coup, nearly every major political party and civic organisation – despite profound differences – rejects his authoritarian imposition. They understand a crucial truth: no matter how imperfect a young democracy may be, its problems cannot be solved by destroying democracy itself.
Today, Tunisia’s prisons hold some of the most courageous defenders of that principle. Ten days ago, leading leftist academic and National Salvation Front co-founder Jaouhar Ben Mbarek began a hunger strike to protest his unjust imprisonment and the denial of his right to attend his own trial. His health has since deteriorated to a life-threatening point. On November 7, in solidarity, fellow political prisoner Issam Chebbi and my 82-year-old father joined the strike. Beyond prison walls, young Tunisians in Gabes, Sidi Bouzid, Sfax and elsewhere continue to protest for dignity, bread and freedom.
Their struggle is intertwined with others across the world. They draw strength from South Africa’s historic fight against apartheid and from the steadfastness of the Palestinian people, who remind us daily that no force can extinguish the human demand for freedom. Meanwhile, the complicity and silence of Arab dictatorships in the face of the Gaza genocide reveal the deep rot of authoritarianism. In sharp contrast, South Africa – shaped by its own liberation – has stood firmly with the Palestinian people.
In an age marked by democratic retreat, South Africa’s moral leadership matters. Tunisia’s crisis is not merely a domestic tragedy; it is a continental warning. African democracies must stand together, because the struggle for freedom and dignity is universal, indivisible and always shared.
Only in solidarity can we ensure that the democratic dream Tunisia once embodied is not lost forever.
Yusra Ghannouchi is a Tunisian-British researcher and commentator. She holds a master’s degree in astrophysics and a PhD from the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, on gender, religion and reform. She was the international spokesperson for the Tunisian Ennahdha Party and a member of its External Relations Committee.
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