November · This Day in Africa
November 7
1987 — Ben Ali Seizes Power in Tunisia
On November 7, 1987, Prime Minister Zine El Abidine Ben Ali took power in Tunisia after doctors declared the 84-year-old President Habib Bourguiba, the country's independence hero, medically unfit to govern. Ben Ali called it a peaceful constitutional transition. Others gave it a sharper name: the medical coup. The change at the top came without bloodshed, and for a moment it could be presented, at home and abroad, as order rather than upheaval.
Ben Ali promised democracy. What he built instead was one of Africa's most entrenched police states. He ruled for 23 years, until Tunisia's 2011 revolution forced him into exile and ended the order he had imposed.
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