France gave the world the rallying cry of “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity” after its 1790 revolution. Noble ideals, worth dying for. Yet the same nation that championed these principles became one of history’s most brutal colonial powers, treating human life as expendable. The French colonialists were so vicious that renowned African psychiatrist Frantz Fanon, in his 1961 book The Wretched of the Earth, urged his fellow Africans to abandon Europe, writing: “Leave this Europe where they are never done talking of Man, yet murder men everywhere they find them… For centuries they have stifled almost the whole of humanity in the name of a so-called spiritual experience.”
Despite its superpower status, France faced repeated humiliations. On November 18, 1803, Black slaves in Haiti crushed its military and seized independence. More than two centuries later, France still demands reparations from Haiti, nursing its bitterness. During World War II, France fell under Hitler’s Germany and needed its European allies to regain freedom. Yet it returned to the global stage to impose savage rule on its pre-war colonies. Some resisted. In one of its most stinging defeats, Vietnamese forces routed the French at the 1954 Battle of Dien Bien Phu, leaving over 16,000 French soldiers dead.
Perhaps France’s most savage recolonization war was against Algeria. Determined to keep that beautiful African country under its heel, France drowned it in blood, murdering nearly two million Algerians, destroying over 18,000 villages, using chemical weapons, and deploying concentration camps reminiscent of Hitler’s Europe. But France faced a people for whom liberty was worth dying for.
One of the fiercest symbols of Algerian resistance was Zuleikha Al-Shayeb, a fighter for the National Liberation Front (FLN). The French feared Algerian women, knowing that to crush the resistance, they had to break the women first. Fanon, in his 1959 essay Algeria Unveiled, captured the French mindset: “If we want to destroy the structure of the Algerian society, its capacity for resistance, we must first of all conquer the women… This woman who sees without being seen, frustrates the colonizer.” Veiled women became couriers of weapons and grenades.
Zuleikha came from a privileged, educated background. She could have lived in luxury. Instead, she chose armed resistance. Captured by the French, she was denied Prisoner of War status under the 1949 Geneva Convention. Instead, they tortured and brutalized her. On October 15, 1957, the French paraded her through the streets of Algiers, chained to a Land Rover. As her skin peeled off and her body was torn, French soldiers used loudspeakers to warn Algerians that this was the “fate of those who resist French rule.” They declared: “France will show no mercy, not even to women.”
This brutality was consistent with French history. During their revolution, they guillotined King Louis XVI, then beheaded his queen, Marie Antoinette, on October 16, 1793. Despite her agony, Zuleikha never begged for mercy. As the saying goes: “They dragged her body, but could never break her spirit.” Her defiance emboldened the resistance. After ten days of torture, the French threw her into a helicopter and dropped her into a dense forest, where she fell to her death. They never disclosed the location.
Twenty-seven years later, in 1984, an Algerian villager who had found and buried her remains came forward. Zuleikha was positively identified. She stands as a testament to the resilience of African women. As the Zulu proverb says: “You strike a woman, you strike a rock.” Zuleikha was a rock the French struck. Her story underscores why colonial powers must apologize to Africa and pay reparations for the Transatlantic Slave Trade and colonialism.
France did not formally acknowledge its Algerian atrocities until September 13, 2018, when President Emmanuel Macron admitted to some abuses. He announced the opening of archives on disappeared civilians and soldiers. Macron spoke specifically about Maurice Audin, a mathematics professor and independence activist who “died under torture stemming from the system instigated while Algeria was part of France” in 1957. The French had told his widow, Josette, that he escaped during a prison transfer. It took until 2014 for President François Hollande to admit Audin was killed in detention.
Macron also acknowledged that the French Parliament in 1956 gave the military special powers to arrest, detain, and interrogate suspects, which “laid the ground for some terrible acts, including torture which became a weapon considered legitimate.” He added: “The battle of Algiers was the most repressive period of the Algerian War… There were many abuses. It was then that there were the most cases of torture.”
No French president visited Algeria until thirteen years after the war, when Valéry Giscard d’Estaing made an official trip to independent Algeria. Algeria later played a decisive role in African liberation struggles, funding and training fighters like Nelson Mandela. May the souls of Algerian patriots rest in power.
Owei Lakemfa, a former secretary general of African workers, is a human rights activist, journalist, and author.
