Mawazine 2009: Festival L’Fouda

An investigation has been initiated to determine the causes of the human maelstrom that left the stadium littered with shoes and tattered clothes and led to the dramatic death of eleven people and the injury of over forty others in Hay Nahda stadium in Rabat. The tragedy struck when spectators attending the gratis Setati concert were exiting the stadium. The head shaking, sexdactyl Setati, being one of the most popular singers of Aita and cha’bi (Moroccan country music if you will) to come from ouled Hriz, drew, by official account, over seventy-thousand people to Hay Nahda stadium.

The concert was one of many organized within the framework of Mawazin, a music festival organized by the Moroccan government. The festival serves to put the country in an international spotlight by inviting iconic performers such as Alicia Keys, Kylie Minogue, Steve Wonder, Sergio Mendes, and others, and as a diversionary tactic by entertaining the Moroccan masses at a time when our national soccer and athletic teams, subsequent to an ongoing losing streak, failed to do the bidding of the leadership. Mawazine, to quote Marquis de Sade’s “L’Histoire de Juliette,” is this “opium you feed your people, so that, drugged, they do not feel their hurts, inflicted by you.”

The Mawazin organizers and government officials must have assessed that the residents of Hay Nahda, one of the most densely populated and impoverished neighborhoods in Rabat, would come in droves to enjoy the complementary popular singer’s concert. The officials who failed to control the flow of spectators into the stadium and allowed the total capacity of the venue to be exceeded need to be held accountable. The capacity of the Hay Nahda stadium is far less than the seventy-thousand people allowed in. Morocco’s largest sports complex, Mohamed V stadium in Casablanca, has a total capacity of sixty-seven thousand.

The Hay Nahda stadium has seven exits. Eyewitnesses interviewed by the local media lamented that only one was opened to allow people to depart the premises at the conclusion of the concert. Some even stated that people, spurred on by police and Mawazine security, rushed toward the sole exit like frantic cattle.

One can not discount Moroccan’s collective propensity to push and shove when in cramped and crowded quarters. Our streets are a constant stochastic flow of unyielding vehicles and pedestrians. We experience it everyday in our public transportation, government administrations, hospitals, and entertainment venues; standing in an orderly and disciplined line is an indicator of a lowly social status in Morocco. Affluent Moroccans, those one often hears saying “kulshi Dyalna” – “it’s all ours,” never stand in line. We laugh about it with family and friends; we complain about it much like we complain about the weather, matter-of-factly, without as much as an expectation that anything should be done to change it. Sadly, we’ve become inured to it. Every now and then, it leads to a tragedy solemnly reminding us that our primeval selves smolder just beneath the surface.

A. T. B. Copyright © 2009