Zuleikha Al-Shayeb: French Brutality Against an Algerian Heroine

The French gave us the famous slogan “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity” after their revolution in 1790. These are noble ideals. But the same French were some of the worst colonialists, showing little regard for human life.

The French colonialists were so cruel that the well-known African psychiatrist Franz Fanon studied them. In his 1961 book The Wretched of the Earth, he advised Africans: “Let us waste no time in sterile litanies and nauseating mimicry. Leave this Europe where they are never done talking of Man, yet murder men everywhere they find them, at the corner of every one of their own streets, in all the corners of the globe. For centuries they have stifled almost the whole of humanity in the name of a so-called spiritual experience. Look at them today swaying between atomic and spiritual disintegration.”

Even as a superpower, the French faced defeat often. On 18 November 1803, Black slaves in Haiti defeated their military and gained independence. Even today, 223 years later, France still seeks revenge on Haiti. They remain bitter about this loss.

During the Second World War, France fell under the control of Hitler's Germany. They needed help from other European countries to regain their independence. But after this experience, France went back to oppressing its colonies. Some of these colonies fought back.

A major defeat for the French was in 1954 during the Battle of Dien Bien Phu. In that battle, over 16,000 French soldiers were killed or went missing.

The most brutal conflict the French waged was against the Algerians. They were determined to control Algeria, spilling rivers of blood in the process. They murdered about two million Algerians and destroyed more than eighteen thousand villages. They used chemical weapons and set up concentration camps like those used by Adolf Hitler.

But the Algerian people fought hard for their freedom. One brave fighter was Zuleikha Al-Shayeb, a member of the National Liberation Front, FLN. The French feared Algerian women like her. They knew that breaking the women would help them crush the resistance.

Fanon also wrote about this in his 1959 essay ‘Algeria Unveiled’. He said: “If we want to destroy the structure of the Algerian society, its capacity for resistance, we must first of all conquer the women; we must go and find them behind the veil where they hide themselves and in the houses where the men keep them out of sight.” He described the veiled woman as someone who “sees without being seen” and frustrates the colonizer.

Zuleikha was educated and came from a privileged background. She could have lived a comfortable life but chose to fight against French occupation instead.

The French captured her but did not treat her as a Prisoner of War (POW) according to the Geneva Convention. Instead, they tortured her. On 15 October 1957, they paraded her in the streets of Algiers. Chained to a land rover, they dragged her through the streets. As they did this, they used loudspeakers to warn Algerians of what would happen to anyone who resisted. They said: “France will show no mercy, not even to women.”

This was typical of the French. During their revolution, they guillotined King Louis XVI. Later, on 16 October 1793, they beheaded his wife, Marie Antoinette.

Despite the pain and danger, Zuleikha did not plead for mercy. As someone said: “They dragged her body, but could never break her spirit.” Her bravery inspired many and defeated the French’s plans.

The French tortured her for ten days before putting her in a helicopter and dropping her in a dense forest where she fell to her death. They never revealed where they left her.

In 1984, 27 years later, an Algerian villager found her body and buried it. Zuleikha was finally identified.

She became a symbol of the strength and resistance of African women. As the Zulu proverb goes: “You strike a woman, you strike a rock.” Zuleikha was that rock for the French. She is a reminder of French colonial violence and why we must demand apologies and reparations for the Transatlantic Slave Trade and colonialism.

France did not formally acknowledge its actions in Algeria until 13 September 2018. President Emmanuel Macron admitted to some of the atrocities and promised to open archives about the disappeared civilians and soldiers, both French and Algerian.

Macron spoke about Maurice Audin, a mathematics professor and independence activist who died under torture in 1957. The French had told his widow that he escaped while being moved between jails. It was not until 2014, 57 years later, that then-President François Hollande admitted he had been killed in detention.

Macron also mentioned that in 1956, the French Parliament gave the military special powers to arrest, detain and interrogate suspects. He said these powers led to terrible acts, including torture. He added that: “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 ended when Valéry Giscard d’Estaing made an official visit. Algeria went on to play a key role in liberation struggles across Africa, helping fighters like Nelson Mandela. May the souls of the Algerian patriots rest in peace.