Episode: 48 · Guest: Houda Mzioudet · Full Episode #48
Houda Mzioudet, a Black Tunisian researcher, shared a historical detail during her episode: Habib Bourguiba, Tunisia's first president and the architect of its post-independence national identity, had family origins in Misrata, Libya.
The irony is considerable. Bourguiba constructed a Tunisian nationalism that was defined, in part, by its distinctiveness from its neighbours. He emphasised a specifically Tunisian identity — secular, modernising, Mediterranean-facing — and built state institutions designed to consolidate that identity at the expense of competing affiliations. Amazigh identity was suppressed. Black Tunisian identity was rendered invisible. Regional and tribal affiliations were subordinated to the national project.
That the man who built this project had roots across the border in Libya undercuts the premise of the nationalism he promoted. The borders between Tunisia and Libya, drawn by colonial powers, cut through populations that share language, tribe, family, and history. Bourguiba's own biography is evidence of this: his family's presence in Misrata predates the border that separates the two countries.
Houda raised the detail not as an attack on Bourguiba's legacy but as an illustration of a broader point: national identities in North Africa are constructed, not given. The boundaries between "Tunisian" and "Libyan" are political inventions that do not correspond to the movement of actual people across the region. Bourguiba — Tunisian by birth, Libyan by lineage — embodied the contradiction even as he worked to erase it.
The detail also connects to the episode's broader theme: that identity in the Maghreb is more complex than the nation-state permits. Houda's own discovery that her surname is Amazigh, revealed to her by a Libyan colleague, parallels Bourguiba's suppressed Libyan connection. Both stories describe identities that the state has chosen to forget.