Habib Bourguiba
Habib Bourguiba led Tunisia to independence and then spent thirty years modernising it by decree. He was born in 1903 in a coastal town, the eighth child of a former army officer, took a law degree in Paris and married a Frenchwoman, and came home to find the nationalist movement dominated by conservatives whose programme was religious and elite. He broke away in 1934 to found the Neo-Destour party and built it on the young, the provincial and the trade unions. He spent about ten of the following twenty years in French prisons and exile, and refused an Axis offer to support him during the war on the argument that Germany would lose. Independence was negotiated in 1956 rather than fought for, which he defended against critics who wanted a war and which produced a state with its administration intact. What he did with it was the part that distinguishes Tunisia. The Personal Status Code of 1956, promulgated within months, abolished polygamy outright, replaced repudiation with judicial divorce, set a minimum age for marriage and required the woman's consent — the most far-reaching family legislation in the Arab world, and still is. Education took a fifth of the budget, girls included; the religious university was absorbed into the state system; and he suggested publicly that fasting in Ramadan might be suspended for the sake of production, which was not accepted. He also banned opposition, jailed his rivals and became president for life. He was deposed on medical grounds in 1987. The code he pushed through in 1956 is why Tunisia had the region's only genuine argument about women's rights when the Arab Spring began there in 2010. The constitution written in 2014 is the one substantial democratic outcome of that year.
- Lived: 1903 CE – 2000 CE
- Nationality: Tunisian
- Roles: Founder and leader of the Neo Destour party (1934-1987), Prime Minister of Tunisia (1956-1957), First President of Tunisia (1957-1987)
