Authors: Ryszard Kapuscinski
The debate that, as the
Tanganyika Standard
reporter wrote, ‘destroyed the traditional seriousness of parliament’ now began.
Delegate P. Mbogo (Mpanda) expressed the opinion that the child-support bill would lead to a widespread increase in prostitution. ‘Girls are going to want to have as many illegitimate children as possible, because that way they will make money for cosmetics. Those girls will be like an underdeveloped country—they will have to be invested in.’
According to Delegate B. Akindu (Kigoma), the child-support bill would create ‘a special danger for wealthy people, such as for instance delegates to parliament, because pregnant girls will be able to falsely proclaim that the fathers of these illegitimate children are government ministers or delegates to parliament … These perfidious beings,’ the delegate said, ‘will sow neo-colonialist propaganda in the hope of extorting money from rich men.’ The delegate stated that many ‘TD men’ (the letters ‘TD’ appear on the license plates of cars belonging to high state officials) invite girls walking the streets into their cars. In such cases, it is up to the girl to refuse. ‘If you cannot restrain your desires, find yourself a husband and do so quickly,’ the delegate begged the girls of Tanganyika.
Delegate R. S. Wambura (Maswa) saw no need to introduce a child-support law since—in accordance with African tradition—legitimate and illegitimate children were treated the same way. ‘This law,’ the delegate stated, ‘can only incite women to make money from their charms. And besides,’ the delegate said, ‘our girls usually have many
men, which is going to make it hard to decide who the father is.’ The speaker advanced another argument. ‘This bill runs against the laws of nature, because it is known that the unemployed are equally capable of making babies, and yet the unemployed have no money for paying child support.’
Delegate R. S. Wambura enjoyed the support of Delegate Chief A. S. Fundikira (Tabora): ‘The illegitimate child poses no problem in the African family; on the contrary, it is another pair of hands to work in the fields.’
The Minister of Justice, Delegate Sheik Armii Abedi, spoke in defence of the proposed government legislation. In the minister’s words, ‘If a man doesn’t want it, he can proceed in such a way that the woman with whom he is dealing will not become pregnant.’ The minister urged that the child-support law cover both working and unemployed men. ‘If the law does not apply to those without money, the unemployed are going to feel that the government has given them full freedom to produce children by the dozen. The production of children—that will be the work of the unemployed,’ stated the minister among applause and laughter from the delegates’ benches.
Delegate F. Mfundo (Handeni) mentioned that the distinction between legitimate and illegitimate children was erected only under colonialism—traditional African law makes no distinction—and that therefore, a child-support law revealing a preference for illegitimate over legitimate children (the bill does not, after all, require the payment of support for legitimate children) was ‘a reflection of the colonial mentality’.
Urging acceptance of the bill, Delegate Lady Chesman (Iringa) challenged Delegate Mfundo. Thanks to this legislation, she said, financial responsibility for illegitimate children would rest on the men, freeing the state of the
obligation to build orphanages and allowing it to assign more funds for the struggle against Tanganyika’s three principal foes: ignorance, poverty and disease.
The next speaker, Delegate A. S. Mtaki (Mpwapwa), stated in a lengthy presentation that the child-support law would have dreadful social consequences. First, it would cause a widespread increase in murder. ‘People who are forced to pay support for illegitimate children are going to murder them—murder costs nothing.’ Second, the rate of marital infidelity would rise: ‘As a result of this legislation, men will avoid contact with unmarried women, and instead seduce the wives of others.’ Third, the divorce rate would go up, ‘because, as the married man would have to pay support for an illegitimate child, his wife was bound to discover what occurred and demand a divorce, or perhaps even leave him at once.’ Summing up, Delegate Mtaki opined that ‘experts in this field, such as Karl Marx, teach us that prostitution is capitalism.’
Victor Mkello (Dar es Salaam) vigorously supported Delegate Mtaki, demanding that the government withdraw ‘this unfortunate legislation.’ In the delegate’s view, the law would force men to marry chance female acquaintances merely to avoid payment of child support. ‘Such marriages will never be happy.’ The government should take steps towards ‘making girls aware of how to avoid pregnancy.’
The Vice-President of Tanganyika, Delegate R. Kawawa, argued on behalf of the government and denied that the proposed legislation would lead to a growth in prostitution, since the growth of prostitution is already restrained by other laws. The Vice-President also criticized the idea of teaching women how to avoid pregnancy. ‘Such views are alien to our society and have been imported from outside,’ the Vice-President said. ‘Teaching women to avoid pregnancy would be nothing but an inducement for people to perform immoral acts.’
Delegate Bibi Mohammed (Rufiji), the director of the women’s division of the governing TANU party, defended the bill. ‘In some tribes,’ she said, ‘girls are locked up at home on attaining maturity, so that their parents can be sure they will not become pregnant. Yet men are like rats: they sneak into the house, and, as a result, the dumbfounded parents realize after a certain time that the girls, despite being kept under lock and key, are pregnant. Men never have enough: every one of them, even if he has conquered sixty women, will keep chasing and trying to get his hands on women whenever he has a chance.’ Delegate Bibi came out strongly against the speakers who had objected to the bill: ‘Delegates, as representatives of the entire Tanganyikan nation, ought to think about women as well as men, and they should not take advantage of the fact that they outnumber women in parliament to block legislation that would be of great benefit to women and men alike. Who of you, delegates, can say that he has a clean conscience? Many women come to me from all over and tell me that this or that delegate is the father of their child. I have promised these women that I will stand up in parliament and name names …’
At this point, Delegate Bibi’s speech was interrupted by Delegate J. Namfua, the Vice-Minister for Trade and Industry, who said that Delegate Bibi should either restrain herself or stop speaking altogether. In his opinion, she has ‘strayed too far from the issue at hand.’ Delegate Bibi agreed that in fact ‘it would be better for me to stop here, because I can see that too many delegates who are interested parties have very troubled expressions on their faces. I want to add one more thing,’ Delegate Bibi concluded, ‘which is that many girls die as the result of abortions. If we accept this legislation, nobody will need to have an abortion and we will save the lives of many young people.’
Delegate M. S. Madenge (Tabora) stated next that he would support the bill if it applied to schoolgirls, but if it was to be extended to girls from the street he would definitely oppose it.
A similar position was taken by Delegate H. S. Sarwatt (Mbulu) who took the position that the legislation would ‘lead to a decline in morality among women.’
Another Delegate, M. S. Haule (Kondoa), pointed out that according to the last census, there were 5.5 million women and four million men in Tanganyika. ‘This disproportion has arisen through the will of God,’ stated the speaker, ‘and we should draw the conclusion from this that God permits a man to have more than one woman. Therefore, this legislation intends to violate the natural order of things.’
The outcome of this debate was that ninety-five per cent of the Chamber came out strongly against the government child-support legislation. Although the Tanganyikan parliament consists exclusively of members of the ruling TANU party and had always given its unanimous approval of all bills placed before it by the Nyerere government, this was the first case in which virtually the entire Chamber had taken an anti-government stand. The government had to back down. Long procedural discussions between the government and parliament led to a compromise: a commission of five was established to make a fresh examination of the child-support bill.
Ahmed Ben Bella, the president of Algeria, was overthrown on 16 June 1965. It happened during the night-time changing of the guard, just after two o’clock in the morning. Ben Bella lived on the Avenue Franklin Roosevelt, about half-way between the stifling, overcrowded centre of Algiers and the exclusive villa quarter known as Hydra. His house, though it bears the lovely name Villa Joly, was not particularly distinguished, just as the presidential offices were, while elegant, hardly grand. Those invited to Ben Bella’s home remember that he would always have to open the gate himself with a key and, being absent-minded, was always having to look everywhere for it. Ben Bella was forty-six and lived alone.
Ben Bella was modest, uncommonly honest and scrupulous about material affairs. He drove a Peugeot 404, a car that in other African countries would be driven by no one more senior than a department head. This was not a calculated modesty. The president always had an inborn, natural disregard for worldly goods. He ate at odd hours, on the run, and his clothes could never have been described as fine. These were simply things he did not care about.
Although forty-six, Ben Bella seemed much more youthful—physically and mentally. He was, as we might say, an example of the
eternal youth
. When I saw Ben Bella in Addis Ababa in 1963, I would have said he was thirty-six, thirty-seven. He had thick black hair that grew low on his forehead and a strongly expressive face, a masculine face, young, with fair skin. I was always struck by the infantile aspect of that face, an aspect that suggested boyish caprice, whimsy. In fact, Ben Bella had an uneven nature. Everything about him was fluid, uncoordinated, contradictory. He was a seething element, electrified, one that
could not be confined. In an instant, Ben Bella might easily jump from one mood to another. He was impulsive, gusty, swept by passions. He would get impatient, and that impatience finished him. When excited, he would let words fly, unchecked, unconsidered, and then make irrational decisions that he would have to disown the next morning. ‘Ben Bella put the leadership in a situation,’ one of his close associates said later, ‘where nobody knew what to hold on to.’ His behaviour reflected the traits of his character. From prison he developed a peculiar habit of relaxation; he could sit for hours without moving, with his face of absolute stone, not a single muscle stirring. The effect was eerie. Suddenly, he would come to life, become ecstatic, gesticulate violently as he spoke, until, exhausted and smiling, he then calmed down again. The terrific stress of his life must have destroyed his internal harmony.
Ben Bella’s character riveted the attention; it was fascinating.
Soccer was his passion. He loved to watch it and played it himself. Often, between meetings, he would drive to a soccer pitch and kick a ball around. In these impromptu matches, Ben Bella’s closest companion was another enthusiastic soccer player, the foreign minister and one of the leading organizers of the plot against Ben Bella: Abdel Azis Buteflika.
Technically, the
coup
against Ben Bella was carried out with an absolutely flawless precision. The conditions were ideal: Villa Joly lay near Colonel Houari Boumedienne’s house, and near the Villa Artur, where Buteflika lived, and above all near the
gendarmerie
barracks, the general staff headquarters, where the plot was thrashed out. Ben Bella lived alone, surrounded by the houses of the very people who would later throw him into a dungeon. This was a drama
that was literally played out in the backyard.
Ben Bella’s house was watched by police and soldiers. At just after two in the morning, as the sentries went off-duty, they would have seen that the commander of the next shift was Tahar Zbiri, the chief of staff of the Algerian People’s Army. Zbiri, the son of peasants, was a born military talent, a classic guerrilla type, who as a partisan commander in the liberation war distinguished himself by his unbelievable bravery and his splendid tactical thinking. After the liberation, Zbiri was marginalized by the élite of Boumedienne’s army, and Ben Bella, guided by a foreboding—of which he may not even have been conscious—that Boumedienne might one day turn against him, raised Zbiri to chief of the general staff, believing apparently that in the event of a showdown with Boumedienne, Ben Bella could put Zbiri at the head of the army.
Yet it was Tahar Zbiri who, on the night of 19 June, led the operation. Several general staff officers took part, all wearing helmets and fatigues and carrying automatic rifles. They entered the Villa Joly. A pair of juggernauts, T-54 tanks, clanked along the Avenue Franklin Roosevelt.
The first thing Ben Bella must have seen when he woke was the rifle barrels pointed at him and then the massive but graceful silhouette of his friend, the hero of the liberation war—Zbiri, in whom the president had invested such great political hopes.
There are four different versions about what happened next; they are all journalistic invention. The only thing we can assume is that Ben Bella was led out of his bedroom. The rest is rumour.
Literally
nothing
, in fact, is known.
Ben Bella is said to have been killed. To have been wounded. To be alive. To have been not wounded, but ill.
Everything is reported, since nothing is known. One version has him on a ship anchored off Algiers. That version is confuted by a report that they are holding Ben Bella in the Sahara, at an army base. According to another view, he is still staying at the Villa Joly, which has a certain logic in that it would allow Boumedienne to keep Ben Bella under close observation. Boumedienne could be meeting with Ben Bella right now and negotiating.
Everything is possible, since nothing is known.