OBITUARY / Béchir Ben Yahmed

BBY (centre) as a young minister in 1957, with Habib Bourguiba (left) and Ahmed Mestiri (right)

STUDIO KAHIA VINCENT FOURNIER/JA

BÉCHIR BEN YAHMED

1928-2021

The founder of Jeune Afrique and La Revue and publisher of The Africa Report, Béchir Ben Yahmed was a sharp observer and committed editorialist who provided deep insight into the continent’s major upheavals of the 20th century. He passed away on 3 May 2021 in Paris

Perfectionist and self-critic that he was, Béchir Ben Yahmed (BBY) admitted that he had to give something of himselfawayin hismemoirs, which he workedonfor more than adecade.But committing his own view of himself to paper was a rare and undoubtedly difficult exercise for him.

Hedescribedhimselfas a journalist, a businessman, a man of theleft. Some said hewas stubborn;“persevering”,he corrected them. Authoritarian? “It’s a myth,” he said, explaining that in his youth he had been“sickly shy”and that this character trait perhaps explained his sometimes abrupt approach.

From a generation of young proindependence activists, he followed a different path from most of his comrades, which he said left him with no regrets. Many who knew him as a promising young minister in Tunisia’s first government asked what had happened to turn him away from politics. BBY replied without hesitation: “I did not want it. There is a price to pay. I don’t want to do what politicians do to get votes: beg, make sacrifices, compromise. I don’t have it in me.”

JeuneAfrique, he said,was his life’s work. Béchir Ben Yahmed dedicated more than six decades to journalism, first as a reporter and then as the director of a media company. The French president, Emmanuel Macron, described to him as “a man of the press and of conviction, who both contributed to and shed light on the African independence movements”. For HervéBourges,theformer head of French broadcasting, BBY was “a confidante, a daily interlocutor, a

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partner [to theleaders of the continent] in building a new African narrative. They sometimes banned his magazine; then they allowed it again, they fell out with him, they loved him or hated him. They have always valued him.”

According toBourges, “JeuneAfrique came to represent a form of collective consciousness for an entire continent, which the international press had difficulty understanding. It was a demanding and impossible role. And yet, he didn’t just meet the challenge – he nailed it.”

On 7 October 1961, Ben Yahmed wrote an editorial in the magazine he had founded in Tunis, AfriqueAction, on ‘personal power’. It provoked the ire of hisformer boss,President Habib Bourguiba. The magazine was not banned, but the ‘supreme combatant’ made it known that he considered himself the owner of Afrique Action.

Forcedto change its title,BBYopted – without much conviction, he later confessed – for JeuneAfrique. A name that would become synonymous with that of Béchir Ben Yahmed.

From 1976 to 1994,JeuneAfriqueenjoyed its most prosperous period, with a staff of nearly 150 people.BBY added new titles: Afrique Magazine, Jeune Afrique Économie, Telex Confidentiel (a daily insider newsletter), and Les Éditions du Jaguar (travel guides). The

‘[African leaders] loved him or hated him. They have always valued him’

period was not without its problems. In 1990, Ben Yahmed faced a long legal battle after he sold JeuneAfrique Économie to Blaise Pascal Talla, a sales agent for JeuneAfrique, without demanding a change of title.

Another misstep was to purchase a travel agency, TMV, which turned out to be loss-making. JeuneAfrique was already in financial trouble following the devaluation of the CFA franc in 1994. Overnight, the magazine lost half its revenue.

“I had foreseen that the CFA franc would be devalued, but I didn’t take enough precautions,” admitted Ben Yahmed. “I racked up debts. I sold everything. We couldn’t even pay the rent and salaries anymore.”

The commercial court sent several warnings, designed to encourage BBY to accept a receivership or even a sale. There was no shortage of offers: Elf, Havas, Vincent Bolloré... BBY refused to look at them.

He didn’t hide the assistance he received, invariousforms, from heads of state such as Senegal’s Abdou Diouf, Tunisia’s Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali, Gabon’s Omar Bongo Ondimba and Mauritania’s Maaouya Ould Taya, not to mention France’s President François Mitterrand. Not all were friends - not by a long shot. After a seven-year struggle, Jeune Afrique finally regained its footing, having laid off three quarters of its staff.

At the age of 80, as Jeune Afrique reached its half-century mark, BBY handed the reins to his sons, Amir and Marwane, and editorial director François Soudan.Continuing todeliver his weekly editorials, ‘CeQueJeCrois’ (‘What I believe’), he launched his final project: the monthly French-language generalist magazine La Revue.

“My sons Amir and Marwane now have all the power,” he said. “Another Jeune Afrique will be born.” He did offer them a final piece of advice, adapted from the Serenity Prayer of US theologian Reinhold Neibuhr: ‘Have the will to change all that you can change,the wisdom to accept what you cannot change, the intelligence to distinguish between what you can change and what you must accept.’