Linguistic mystification

After Independence, Ben Bella had announced the color while declaring by three times at the airport of Tunis, on April 14, 1962: “We are Arab, Arab, Arab! ”. Therefore, from now on, Algeria was going to be Arab, Moslem and its official language, the classical Arabic, at the detriment of its berbérophone components and French-speaking person and of the Algerian-arabic. It was the essence of the market concluded with colonel Houari Boumediene in their catch for power.

The new Algerian regime began immediatly repression against the Berbers.

The Berber first names were prohibited because they had a “foreign consonance”. The town halls had to stick to an authorized list for the new-born babies. Ben Bella used single Berber File in the teaching, stored at the national Printing works. Later, in 1976, president Boumédiene will confiscate the Berber File which contained a whole of publications on research written in Latin alphabet. In parallel and as it missed teachers of classical Arabic, the authorities made come in catastrophe more than 1000 Egyptian teachers. Actually, these teachers were “Masters of religion”.

Boumediène or the linguistic purification and the authoritative Arabisation

Boumediene had received its instruction almost exclusively in classical Arabic, in the Koranic schools of the area of Guelma and in the theological universities of Zitouna (Tunisia) and Al-Azhar (Egypt), a high-place of Moslem fundamentalism. So he has never been able to release himself from the influence of the religion and the Koranic Arabic, feeling a deep animosity against the french and Berber languages. The Colonel-President, who claimed himself an “authentic Algerian”, granted ministerial wallets to the religious conservatives and developed a linguistic policy of Arabisation.

In July 1965, Boumediene chooses Ahmed Taleb Ibrahimi as Minister of Education, an enthusiastic partisan of arabo-Islamism. As the regime was unpopular, the Arabisation appeared useful to legitimate the regime in place. Taleb Ibrahimi intended well to use the school to destroy “this mixture of elements of disparate, often contradictory cultures, inherited from the times of decline and the colonial period, and to substitute a unified national culture to it, closely bound to our past and to our arabo-Islamic civilization”.

Remarks influenced by the linguistic nationalism of the Eastern. Boumediene has then, by a decree in 1968, imposed the Arabisation of the Public office: within three year, “the civils servant will have to sufficient learn Arabic to work in this language. ”

Chadli and the Islamization of teaching and continuation of the Arabisation

While the Arabisation of teaching continued, Chadli prohibited the Algerian pupils to attend the establishments of the French cultural Mission, only possibility for them to circumvent the Arabisation. Moreover, one powerful lobby tried to reduce the place of French by substitute English to the fourth primary year. Actually, it was not any more the Arabisation which imported, but Islamization of teaching. Chadli wanted to thus tranquillize the islamists, growing more and more. The Berber militants were constantly repressed and imprisoned.

In 1989, a strike of teachers to the call of a “arabist” committee, supported by FIS (ndr: islamic front of salvation), was partially followed. The bilingual baccalaureat Arab-French was removed. In 1990, the Parliament, controlled by the FLN, votes the first law of generalization of the Arab language. The following day of the vote, a half-million people manifest in Algier for the democratization of the regime and the defense of the tamazight (Berber language).

Fall of the single party and amplification of the Berber claim

The democratic opening of 1988 allowed a competition of the languages in Algeria (Algerian Arab, classical Arabic, French and Berber). In 1990, benefitting from the weakness of the regime, the president of the APN (ndr: algerian assenbly), Abdelaziz Belkhadem, imposed the reading of verses of Coran at the beginning of each parliamentary meeting… Chadli had time to make adopt by the Parliament the law of Arabisation of January 16, 1991, intended for eradicate French and Tamazight and promote the Koranic language (the classical Arabic) that however, no Algerian used as mother tongue.

Arrived then Boudiaf, the only Algerian Arabic speaking president. He had announced that it was necessary to speak “in Algerian Arab” so that all can understand it. He carried out sine die freezing then with the carryforward of the law on the generalization of the Arab language before undergoing his sad fate. He was the only president witch will be regretted by the Algerians.

In the main time, many demonstrations were organized to assert the statute of national and official language to Berber language which led all the area of Kabylia to boycott the school year of 94-95.

Then came Zéroual, new master of the country, and decided to reinstaure the law of Arabisation of January 16, 1991. On December 17, 1996, the national Council of transition (CNT), unanimously voted a law on the generalization of the use of the Arab language. It stipulates in particular that at the date of 5 July 1998 “the public administrations, the institutions, the companies and associations, whatever their nature, are held to use the only Arab language in the whole of their activities such as the communication, management administrative, financial, technical and artistic”. And to specify: “The use of any foreign language in the deliberations and debates of the official meetings is prohibited. ”

Bouteflika or the impossible reform

The new president called to the national reconciliation and expressed his will of opening. On the linguistic question, President Bouteflika innovated: he often expressed himself in French in his public statements, as much in Algeria than abroad. He testifies to a certain freedom compared to the tradition while declaring:

“It is unthinkable to study exact sciences during ten years in Arabic, whereas they can be it in one year in English. ”

He thus summarizes the interminable linguistic conflicts in Algeria: “It has never been linguistic problem in Algeria, just a competition and fights to take the place of the executives formed in French! ”. He had even taken part in the top on the francophonie in 2002 in Beirut and promised to reform the Algerian school.

The Algerian Parliament adopted in April 2002, unanimously, a modification of the Constitution instituting the Berber language as a “national language”. This historical gesture intervened with the arrival of the legislative elections, whereas a tended climate by the demonstrations and the claims called into question the authority of the State in Kabylia.

After the re-election of Bouteflika in 2004 at the head of the country, negotiations were committed between the government and the representatives of the citizen movement of the archs, which assert a greater democracy as well as the recognition of the language and the Berber culture. In a marked speech on October 4, 2005 at Constantine, Bouteflika once again disappointed Kabylia by declaring that Tamazight will not be officialized and that the Arab language will remain only language official in Algeria:

“There is no country in the world having two official languages and it will be never the case in Algeria where the only official language, devoted by the Constitution, is Arabic. ”

Thus Revealing its ignorance of the world situation because 40 Sovereign states have two official languages, including 16 in Africa.

From this point of view of extrem Arabisation, president Bouteflika had stated in 2005 about the private schools exempting a teaching exclusively in French: “Any private institution which does not give an absolute priority to the Arab language has to disappear”

The consumed failure

The origin of the Algerian crisis is due to the fact that there never were true democratic regimes in Algeria. Linguistic installation in Algeria remains the work of a small political oligarchy with huge power. It is founded on a culture which was defined in opposition to colonial France and by imitation of to the Middle East. Algeria hardly supported a bringing together between the oral examination and the writing and, consequently, did not contribute to the elimination of illiteracy because the linguistic policy was founded on the arabo-Islamism of the Middle-Eastern model. The Algerian Arabisation was justified only by purely political concerns: conservation of the power by the language and the religion.

One then passed from the dependence of colonial France to another dependence, that of the Middle East with his ideological corollaries, far from the Maghrebian ancestral values.

If the Algerian leaders could not impose the classical Arabic in the everyday life, it is that this language is not adapted to the needs for the Algerians, contrary to the Algerian Arab, Berber and French.

For the linguists, any policy which encourages the linguistic coexistence can only promote one spirit of comprehension and tolerance. In this direction, the diversity of the languages within a national framework can represent an asset. After more than four decades of Arabisation, the Algerian leaders do not seem to have understood the message! They preferred to resort to coercion for arabizing the society. This, in order to secure the support of islamist and other conservatives to hold the whole of the Algerians under their control.

The majority of the Algerians see the classical Arabic like the symbol of authoritarianism, corruption and social injustice! From this point of view, the term of half-failure to qualify the Arabisation with Algerian is almost an euphemism.

Ultimately, about thirty laws having milked to the Arabisation had been adopted, but none seems to be completely respected:

In a more particular way, one can quote the decree of May 22, 1964 relating to the Arabisation of the administration, the ordinances N° 66-154 and N° 66-155 of June 8, 1966 on justice, the ordinance of April 26, 1968 on the obligatory knowledge of Arabic for the civils servant, the circular of the ministry for the Interior of July 1976 on posting, the new law N° 05-91 on the generalization of the use of the Arab, promulgated language on January 16, 1991 (adopted on December 27, 1990) and schedules it No 96-30 of December 21, 1996, which comes to modify some articles of the law N° 05-91, supplemented and implemented on July 5, 1998.

However, one cannot change a society and rebuild his identity on the basis of exclusion.

A logic which urged the Algerian regime to make reflect while leaving lately, a bearing decree about the creation of a Berber Academy and an institute of research in this language and the promotion of the French language in the three stages of teaching as well as the reduction of religious influence.

Yassin Mohellebi - DDK of the 10/7/2007 Translated by Jugurten for north-of-africa.com