July 5th marks Algerian Independence Day. In 1962, it became the first African country to liberate itself from 132 years of French occupation and colonization, having waged an eight-year-long guerrilla war.
But Algeria wasn’t done fighting imperialism. It poured its energy and resources into helping other colonized countries, positioning itself as the spearhead of Pan-African and internationalist action at the time.
It is widely known that Afro Caribbean psychiatrist Frantz Fanon dedicated himself to the Algerian cause, using his experience with the National Liberation Front to formulate a theory of liberation in his books, The Wretched of the Earth and Toward the African Liberation.
It is less known that in the newly liberated streets of Algiers, you would have bumped intoBlack Panthers, fighters of theAfrican National Congress, and militants from Cape Verde, Angola, Mozambique, the Canary Islands, or Namibia.
“During the War of Independence, Algeria had large support from African countries like Morocco, Tunisia, Egypt, Mali, Ghana, and Congo,” filmmaker Hassane Mezine tells OkayAfrica. “It was part of the essence of the Algerian revolution to support national liberation movements from other countries. The Algerian national project of liberation was not just an Algerian project. It was an African project.”
Once the French had been driven out, around 80 international organizations were invited to mingle in the North African capital of the revolutionary, anti-colonial, and anti-fascist struggle, generously hosted by Ahmed Ben Bella’s nascent regime, which felt a responsibility to popularize its belief that non-violent resistance would never defeat imperialism.Revolutionaries and exiled militants received training in guerrilla-style warfare, financial support, and political education. Nelson Mandela famouslydeclared, “The Algerian army made me a man,” and Guinea’s Amilcar Cabralcalled Algiers the “Mecca of Revolution.”
“This was a time when Algerians met people from other places who had the same struggle with a history linked to colonialism and a need for liberation,” says Mezine. “I think that young people in Algeria are very aware of this up to today.”
When London-based Algerian cultural organizer Dénia Dimsdale wrote her master’s thesis about the 1969 Pan-African Cultural Festival in Algiers, she found that most diasporic Algerians of her generation were unaware of the great role their country played in the post-independence era.
“The festival was a beautiful moment in history where Algerians still had a fractured sense of identity - are we French or are we Arab?” says Dimsdale. “Pan-Africanism just came from the sky, gifting Algerians their African identity. But then the government at the time saw it as the perfect opportunity to hijack it and use it for its own gain.”
One of the comments on Dimsdale’s thesis was that she had arrived at an unfair conclusion, saying that the government had hijacked Pan-Africanism. “This information is so difficult to access. I found nothing [about it] online in French, English, or Arabic,” she says.
Photo by APS/AFP via Getty Images.
Performers from many African countries walk in Algiers streets on July 21, 1969 during the opening parade of the first Pan-African Cultural Festival.
Said Djinnit, a former Algerian diplomat, witnessed post-independence Algiers, where he began his career working with foreign liberation movements. “You can choose to look at the Sahara as dividing or uniting Africa,” he says. “I’m a Pan-Africanist, I think it unites us.”
Djinnit dedicated his life to Pan-African unity, serving in the African department of the Algerian government and becoming a key architect of the ‘African solutions to African problems’ approach. “The position in Addis Ababa, Africa’s capital, is as important for Algeria as New York,” he says, refusing the divide of North and Sub-Saharan Africa and calling it “pure fabrication. Africa is geographical space, a continent. Not history, not mythology, but reality.”
Algeria was one of the founding members of the Organization of African Unity (OAU) in 1963, establishing a Liberation Committee and an African Battalion tasked with coming to the aid of revolutionary and liberation movements in need of weapons, money, or militants.
“Through people like my father and his colleagues, Algeria has kept a key role in continental peace and security architecture in the 21st century,” says Dalil Djinnit, Said’s Algerian Ethiopian son. “Based on their experience and budget, Algeria is perhaps the only country in Africa to have this capacity.”
Unsurprisingly, the post-independence era, which many may consider a revolutionary utopia, was marked by harsh realities. The rapidly changing world order left no time for a continent as vast as Africa to figure out unity while nations were still embroiled in their liberation struggles. The Pan-African spirit dwindled. Algeria was plunged into civil war in the 1990s, which led it to look inward.
“[The younger generation’s] idea of Algeria stops with the Civil War because no one wants to talk about that or anything that happened after,” says Dimsdale. A growing economic and cultural influence from the Gulf brought what Mezine calls “a counterrevolutionary influence” to the country, stirring it away from Pan-African education and towards a stronger Arab and Islamic identity.
In asurveyconducted by OkayAfrica last year, asking North Africans to share the stories they grew up hearing about each other, there was a general impression that Algerians are not interested in inviting non-Algerians to their country. Considering their Pan-African efforts, this might seem counterintuitive.
“I think this can be linked to the traumatic experience of being French,” says Dalil Djinnit. “Algeria is trying to protect itself,” agrees Dimsdale, but also notes that Pan-Africanism has lost its fire across the continent.
“At the OAU’s opening summit in 1963, Ben Bellasaid, ‘Let us all agree to die a little … so that the people still under colonial rule may be free,” says Djinnit. “Are you hearing any such statements from any other African leader today? Now, people are in survival mode; they are not dreaming anymore.”
As Algeria commemorates its triumph over colonial oppression, all Africans and formerly colonized peoples should remember July 5th as a historic milestone and turning point for the project of African self-determination and unity.
Mezine believes that we are once again at a turning point where the fundamentals of the Algerian revolution are seeing a revival. Djinnit actively advocates for this revival.
Algeria plays a big role in the African Union, continuing to be a champion for Western Sahara’s independence from Morocco, issuingdebt forgiveness to other African countries, and providingbillions of dollars to Sahelian countries.
“The [Algerian] government is aware that there is a real need to have people getting back to their relationship with the southern neighboring countries first and then to the rest of the continent,” says Mezine. “Governments know that the African people are the red line of liberation.”
“When I was a young diplomat and attending the OAU meetings, there was a sense that we were together, building our common destiny,” says Djinnit. “I attended the last African Union summit, and honestly, it looked like a panel discussion. We need an African moral rearmament.”