The light of the searchlights rips the twilight. On the synthetic lawn of the stadium of the Faculty of Economics of Sfax, Baba Car, the captain of the Senegalese student team, drops the ball at the penalty spot before taking a few steps back. The referee blows his whistle. The young man springs and strikes with force and precision. The unfortunate guardian can do nothing. The stadium exults. On this evening in early May, Senegal won 2 to 1 against Chad in this group match of the African University Cup of Nations football.
At the edge of the field, a man fidgets like a kid. ” Good job guys ! Cheer ! “, he repeats, congratulating the winners. Jogging, sweatshirt, cap, Franck Yotedje has swapped his clothes as an active member of civil society for the outfit of a coach. This 31-year-old Cameroonian, who has been living in Sfax for seven years, chairs the association Afrique Intelligence. It was on his initiative that the competition was organized with the aim of bringing together, around sport, young people from sub-Saharan Africa who came to study in the country and their Tunisian comrades.
Through this type of event, the association has been working in recent years to promote the integration of migrants. It is particularly active in Sfax, a port city with a rich trading tradition and the second largest city in the country, where a relatively large community of students, trainees and workers is established. But above all, it has been fighting for a few months to preserve a semblance of social cohesion, strongly shaken by the wave of racist violence unleashed on February 21 by President Kaïs Saïed’s speech against the “hordes of illegal migrants”.
” Everything has to be done again “
By designating sub-Saharan migration as “a criminal plan to change the composition of the demographic landscape in Tunisia”, the Tunisian head of state has made any sub-Saharan migrant a suspected accomplice in this alleged plot. Everything happened in the wake of the harangue. Expelled by their landlords, fired by their employers, the foreigners have also had to come under physical attack. “The assaults, the serious injuries, the media hype…”, lists with regret Franck Yotedje. However, before that, his association enjoyed a “favorable context”, he assures.
“During Covid, there was a huge outpouring of solidarity with migrants. Many things have been put in place to help the most precarious. After the pandemic, it made it possible to organize social cohesion and advocacy activities and we made some progress. But today, “everything has to be redone”.
In the weeks following the presidential visit, Afrique Intelligence recorded 246 attacks against migrants. More recently, on the night of May 22-23, a racist knife and sword attack by Tunisians against sub-Saharan migrants left one dead and two injured. In Sfax, the climate has become electric.
On Sunday June 25, several hundred people took to the streets of the port city in front of the governorate headquarters to protest against the presence of migrants in the city. The few signs “Live together but live in peace” (“live together but live in peace”) and “No to racism” (“no to racism”) cannot overshadow the chants of the crowd: “Sfax is not for sale ! “, “Close the borders! “, “The people want the expulsion of migrants! “. At the end of the demonstration, some protesters even threw stones at Sudanese migrants living in a nearby park.
“Not in transit to Europe”
Many residents of Sfax opposed to the presence of the latter justify their vehemence by a “visible increase in the number of migrants”, responsible according to them for an “explosion of crime”. One of them brandishes his phone to show the video of what appears to be an intra-community brawl between several migrants, one of whom is carrying a machete. The protesters insist they are not “racist”. They just care, they say, about “their safety.”
“When we see this, we feel rejected, we say that Tunisia does not want us. That’s why a lot of people left,” laments Loïc Oyono, who spent seven years in Sfax. Sitting at a cafe, this 29-year-old Cameroonian entrepreneur with a smooth voice, neat style, sunglasses on his head despite the ambient night, appears “in solidarity with other migrants”. But he makes it clear that behind the globalizing categories of “Africans” or “Sub-Saharans” there is actually a plurality of backgrounds.
The students and trainees make up a first group. Loïc Oyono is one of them. Nearly 8,000 of them have chosen to come and continue their studies in Tunisia. Alongside them are workers who have come – usually by air – from West Africa to fill neglected jobs in the domestic work, agriculture, manufacturing and construction sectors. “Many of them are not in transit [to Europe]. They have found a little cocoon, they are earning a little money and they are able to live,” reports Mr. Oyono.
Then, more recently, “there’s been a change,” he adds. “We have noted an increase in sub-Saharan migrants from different trajectories, in particular those arriving via the borders of Libya and Algeria”, notes the Cameroonian. Sfax, hitherto a home port for many citizens of the continent who came to seek an academic or professional future there, has become a departure platform for Europe, an alternative to the Libyan embarkation bases, under increasing pressure from the guards. -coasts of the Tripolitan littoral. Tunisia has supplanted its neighbor as the first point of departure to the Old Continent: since the beginning of the year, 30,000 people have already reached the Italian coasts, the vast majority of them from the northern coast of Sfax. This is six times more than in the same period of 2022.
“The city to be in”
Sfaxiens and migrants from all walks of life rub shoulders at the city market. Fatima, 29, a factory worker, takes advantage of Saturday to stock up for the week with her 8-year-old daughter Aïcha. “The situation is much better here than in my country, Sierra Leone, she says, I make mattresses, I am well paid, I have accommodation with my family, I have no worries. »
Opposite, Edith, 20, sells Ivorian products. Backed by a scooter covered with bags of attiéké, Maggi Cubes and dried fish, the young woman arrived four years ago as part of her studies before being forced to abandon them to work. “With my sister, we do odd jobs like that to bring in money, to pay for the house, the shopping,” she says. Neither of them plans to leave the country.
Near the market, in an uncrowded park, new migrants have recently appeared: several dozen Sudanese who arrived following the outbreak of war in their country in mid-April. Precarious among the precarious, they await a crossing for Europe. Some have already attempted the journey several times, but have been caught offshore by the Maritime National Guard and brought back to the port of Sfax.
If the variety of migratory trajectories can produce confusion among the population, maintained at the top of the State, local employers know everything they owe to a population of workers they do not want to see slip away. “It is true that today we have difficulty finding labour,” admits Slim Marrakchi, spokesman for the Sfax branch of the Tunisian Union of Industry, Trade and crafts (Utica). “What we are proposing is the regularization of these migrants,” he calls out to the authorities.
The organization’s proposals are specific: temporary residence permits for three or six months, which would be extended “if they manage to find a job”. The position may surprise in the current context but it remains pragmatic. Because Sfax is an industrial city, often described as the economic heart of Tunisia. And it needs arms, especially in unskilled jobs that Tunisians tend to neglect, despite unemployment.
“Sfax is the city where you have to be, because there is this soul of work”, abounds Loïc Oyono, whose entrepreneurial spirit has found something to flourish here. It is a pity, he laments, that many residents see “migration only through something harmful, negative”. Because, he points out, many of the newcomers “bring something positive” with their journey “as entrepreneurs, members of civil society and brilliant students”, all profiles who “are a strength for the country” .