Politics and the Price of Bread in Tunisia

Abstract

The connection between economic disadvantage, large-scale unemployment and social unrest in the south of Tunisia was intimate; as one local member of the Communist Party remarked: “in Gafsa, out of 700,000 inhabitants, 12,000 are unemployed. All of the evidence suggests that increased prices for basic goods, either actual or prospective, played a crucial part in triggering the violent upsurge of social unrest of January 1984, and that the majority of those involved were young unemployed or casually employed workers and students. When the price increase came in Tunisia at the end of December 1983, it was dramatic, and hit the poorest hardest. Despite the emphasis in public announcements by the officials in Tunisia and Morocco on the role of politically motivated agitators, it is undoubtedly the case that the governments and heads of state in both countries recognised the massive threat represented by the upsurge of social protest to the stability of their regimes.