A quarter of a century of managing cultural affairs in Morocco. Moroccan intellectuals present their testimonies on what has been achieved and the challenges that are expected to be faced, in statements obtained by the electronic newspaper Hespress.
Steps to progress
Academic, novelist and cultural official Mubarak Rabie said that the past twenty-five years since King Mohammed VI assumed power in the country have witnessed “many achievements in all social, economic, diplomatic and cultural fields, of course.” He also listed the ambitions that are expected to be achieved and evaluated their effectiveness in the coming years.
The speaker believes that “one of the positive indicators is the expansion of the educational system at all levels, and in the number of those affiliated with it from all academic and university levels; because this is a nursery for producing intellectuals, writers, creators, poets, novelists and visual artists; and as the broad base of educational institutions expands, the opportunities for producing and prominence of these creative figures in all fields increase.” Then he added, saying: “This is a nursery for producing readers of books and cultural material, and those concerned and interested in artistic and theatrical performances, and all of this contributes to spreading culture. We notice in Morocco, in all Arab forums, meetings, awards and exhibitions, that Moroccan names always occupy prestigious positions.”
Among what the Quarter Century Station represents is “an opportunity for review as well, for official and unofficial institutions, concerned individuals and consumers as well; because in this field there is no ceiling for what should be achieved, and there are many indicators of not reaching what Morocco should be in many considerations and productions,” according to the same writer, and he continued:
“We can look critically; when we say that there is an abundance of institutions producing for the cultural consumer, in terms of quality and quantity for the specialized consumer, this does not inspire great optimism. When we look at the outputs of the educational system from primary to university, there is a decrease in the number of readers, despite the abundance of titles compared to what was published during a quarter of a century; which is accompanied by a confusion of values such as intellectual property rights, the relationship between the publisher and the author at the level of the book, and the policy of incentive through support.”
Mubarak Rabie believes that the policy of supporting books and arts should be evaluated to see if the consumption of cultural products has changed positively, and whether it can be dispensed with for the independence of the book industry or not. He then added: “The current situation is better than before, but the thresholds of progress remain, and there is no ceiling. Among what should be evaluated is the phenomenon of cultural festivals and conferences, some of which have become formal, and are organized to be included in the year’s achievements of an official or civil institution, and in terms of impact they leave nothing behind.”
Among the things that require a pause for evaluation and “stepping forward” for the statement are “cultural clubs and cafes, to know whether they are superficial, passing phenomena, or whether they leave an impact, in addition to the poor state of the Moroccan Writers’ Union institution; as if corruption is created by itself and no one bears responsibility, while the intellectual should have been a model of self-criticism and progress.”
The speaker added: “There are achievements at all levels, in general scientific and social culture, but the ambition should be at the level of Morocco, and the field needs more attention, care, organization and focus of work, and why not have political parties participate in it, with our appreciation for their role and the democratic front they represent from the liberation stage until today, as their wonderful pluralism is not reflected in cultural programs, and everyone knows the level of what the cultural vision takes in political programs. All this is for a new start towards another prosperous quarter century, at the level of Morocco and what it achieves in other fronts.”
Developments and challenges
Historian and publisher Amhamed Jabroun said that Morocco has witnessed “a very significant cultural development” in recent years, which should be understood as “after independence, culture was not a priority for Morocco, and it did not receive its due political consideration until the 1970s. The state’s cultural initiative and cultural policy were very late, which made the country, in a number of cultural fields, less than some countries that gained independence in the same period.”
The spokesman added: “Despite this delay, the cultural sector has witnessed very significant progress, at various levels, especially in fields that have recently emerged in Morocco, such as cinema, visual arts, theatre, printing and publishing; however, the major challenge that Morocco still faces from a cultural perspective is the challenge of the cultural market, which is still elitist on the one hand, and marginal, from the needs and requirements of the Moroccan person. Cultural expenditures for the Moroccan citizen constitute only a very small percentage, almost negligible. What the Moroccan person and family spend on books, cinema and culture in general is very weak; which affects cultural production, the prosperity and development of culture.”
The second challenge, according to Jabroun, is that “in recent years, due to the digital transformation linked to the transformation of the world, unfortunately the traditional cultural material associated with books, screens, theatre, and productions of this kind has witnessed a deterioration, which calls on the state and actors to restore consideration for culture, in the digital age, and to try to make up for some aspects of deficiency as much as possible, especially in cultural expenditures, especially at the government level, because what it allocates to culture is very weak.”
Reform projects
Badiaa Al-Radi, President of the Moroccan and African Women Writers Association, said, “The transformation that the new era has witnessed has placed culture at the heart of the development battle; and evaluating two and a half decades of the Moroccan experience in the economic, political and societal development fields cannot be right without recalling the cultural role and its areas of work, and the mechanisms that have enhanced the effectiveness of this role in the aforementioned period of time.” Then she continued, “The transformation that began with the new era in looking at the cultural issue and placing it at the heart of the development battle is in itself a significant and strategic beginning in the concept of change, by taking culture from a land for accomplishing action to a strong factor for accomplishing action, while linking the cultural factor to productivity in society.” From the position of cultural and intellectual diversity in Moroccan society, the bet on management was present in the public policy of our country, but implementing this management within more effective and clear maps and expressing it in public policy began with the new era in which major files were opened that revealed a different and bold cultural burden, considering culture to be factors acquired through science and knowledge, and awareness in the relationships of individuals and groups, and in the relationship between them and institutions, and then the relationship between the institutions themselves.”
Al-Radhi continued, explaining that “since His Majesty’s accession to the throne, he has made the cultural and linguistic issue the heart of the cultural battle, which we hope will become a factor for productivity, through changing minds capable of making the cognitive, scientific, urban and artistic heritage accomplish the action in the space of economic, cultural and societal development, and for culture to become the space that leads to growth in various fields of civilizational and intellectual giving and creating structures that work on opening up to other cultures from a strong and established identity position, and a meeting place for all cultures and civilizations with an advanced, open and influential methodology that markets its history and memory with renewal, and expansion across continents and fields, with poetry, novels, theater, art, cinema, dance, arts, fashion shows, photography, intellectual and urban heritage, and with all other aspects of clothing, cuisine and different ways of life in all parts of the Kingdom, which abound with patterns that should be developed and marketed in a thoughtful and purposeful aesthetic and artistic mold.”
“At these stages, there were obstacles that the new era was keen to confront by launching important and strategic reform projects, whether related to the cultural or linguistic issue, based on developing the cultural commonality and preserving diversity in the Moroccan identity, and preserving and rehabilitating the intangible cultural heritage. Important projects were also launched in the field of publishing and supporting writers and theatre, but we still have not risen to the level of our aspirations in public policy regarding dealing with culture as a fertile field and an important space for working on the development aspect,” the same speaker added.
Badiaa Al-Radi explained this issue by saying that “public cultural policy is not just buildings made of bricks and cement; rather, it is a work on human resources capable of carrying the torch of change, and a work on the environment that embraces future visions for this trend in the new bold and advanced era in dealing with cultural action and actors; Moroccan culture is rich in its Arabic, Amazigh, and historical influences in its African and Mediterranean fields, and these influences are capable of creating areas for development and growth.”
The speaker concluded by saying that “the projects launched by the new era, which were reinforced by the 2011 Constitution, which stipulated that ‘the Kingdom of Morocco is a fully sovereign Islamic state, committed to its national and territorial unity, and to preserving the cohesion and diversity of the components of its national identity’, and enumerated the tributaries of the ‘Moroccan personality’ that was unified by the fusion of ‘all its components, Arab-Islamic, Amazigh, and Sahrawi Hassani’, and enriched by ‘its African, Andalusian, Hebrew, and Mediterranean tributaries’, (are likely) to call for the need to establish a public policy that works to activate it in a way that is based on studied maps, through practicing the culture of proximity to create growth throughout the national territory.”
The need for a cultural policy
Critic and poet Salah Bousrif, who managed the magazine “Moroccan Culture” issued by the Ministry of Culture, believes that “the basic condition for any cultural dynamism, action and movement in Morocco is linked to the existence of a cultural policy. Morocco does not have a cultural policy at the official level, and this is not a sentence that appears in a statement or declaration by a Minister of Culture, but rather it is adopted by the state. Before it is adopted by the Moroccan state, there is a discussion among intellectuals, papers, concepts and visions, then it is placed before the Prime Minister who proposes it on the basis that it is the policy that contains constants concerning Moroccan identity, Moroccan cultural security and our cultural specificities as Moroccans. These constants are linked to the existence of variables, which is what each Minister of Culture can do in terms of suggestions and additions that cannot affect the constants of the policy.”
“But Bousrif says that the reality is that “every Minister of Culture who comes to the ministry starts from scratch, and cancels everything, while preserving a few of the gains, as if the accumulations that occurred before him had no role at all, to the point that ministers have disrupted everything and the ministry has not moved in any direction,” adding: “Every minister comes from a party, and this is a reality that cannot be avoided, so he works according to the logic of the party, while I have written repeatedly that the Ministry of Culture should be independent from the rest of the ministries, and we return to what it was before when it was productive, and it should be a Ministry of Sovereignty, because the cultural issue does not concern a party or a group, but rather concerns the culture of a nation, a people, a civilization, history and a Moroccan identity, and it cannot be left in the hands of a minister who drags it into ideological or cultural affiliation or the group that gathers around him, and this has not been achieved during the past twenty-five years.”
The spokesman continued: “The current Ministry of Culture, for example, has centralized culture in Rabat (…) Have we returned to centralization again? Policies are put in the hands of employees who do not consult intellectuals, and I do not mean those surrounded by cultural associations and institutions, but rather intellectuals who have a real relationship with cultural affairs, their management, and their follow-up, over different decades. When the file is in the hands of the employee, he deals with it administratively, and with administrative procedures, and does not understand the changes and transformations that require a review of the concepts, perceptions, and cultural meaning related to Moroccan identity, with openness to Africa, the Arab world, the Mediterranean, and the global dimension. But we must also open up to all these environments around us within our Moroccan cultural context and our Moroccan identity, and we do not find this in what is happening, including the freezing of cultural magazines (issued by the Ministry of Culture) without any reason or explanation.”
Bousrif continued: “The issue of support is unfortunately weak, and does not meet the condition of abundant publishing, writing, and Moroccan publications, not only in Morocco but also in the Arab world. There are also problems with support committees that are often not objective, and their administrative handling of specifications; and the ruling not to support a poetry collection, for example, because it does not have titles or footnotes, as if it were a book… Marcel Proust published a book about reading, without footnotes, and if he had suggested it to the committee, it would have rejected it, because of its administrative dependence on specifications.”
Therefore, Salah Bousrif’s assessment is that the last two decades “have seen many fluctuations and changes, in a negative direction, not a positive one,” adding: “I am not interested in the ministers’ statistics on book fair visitors, but rather what I find in the libraries where I only meet people I know. There is a real reading crisis; also, the proposed reading project with the Ministry of Education and the issue of supporting school libraries in it is something that has not been implemented and has been kept quiet about. What exists is interest in new entertainment and folklore, while at the book fair, for example, the minister did not pay attention to the great Moroccan intellectuals and thinkers, and he had other priorities.”
The speaker summed up his statement by saying: “Culture in Morocco is still in place and has not moved. What is achieved is thanks to the individual and personal efforts of writers, their personal work and personal publications, as well as their representation of Morocco. As for the Ministry of Culture, they are an accessory, and it does not care about them, even though their contribution to culture is much more important than what the ministry does. The ministry must exist independently on its own, and transform into (what it was) the Ministry of Cultural Affairs. It does not produce culture, but its responsibility is to manage cultural affairs. Culture has writers, thinkers, creators, and artists, and the minister in charge of managing the sector manages this affair with a budget allocated by the state.”
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2024-08-03 21:24:02