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Fall 1962, on both sides of the Mediterranean. Soldiers lost in a lost war despite the power of arms, exceptional laws, large -scale torture and terrorism, the heads of the OAS never stop ruminating their ” nostalgeria ” and crying the ” lost paradise ”.
Monday, October 15, 1962, to their Dam, independent Algeria for three months, has an appointment with a capital deadline in its history: the start of the school year. Happy and enthusiastic, hundreds of thousands of morning students cross the doors of the schools. This is the first school year at Al Hamdoulilah Mabkach Istiîmar Fi B’ladna.
When the directors of schools bring together students in the courses dedicated to recreation before distributing them through the classes, Generals Salan and Jouhaud are behind bars in the Paris region. Convicted in absentia, the other members of the command of the terrorist organization, the fugitives Jean-Jacques Susini, Pierre Lagallaird and Yves Godard are reduced to clandestine exile between Spain, Italy and a provincial region. After having failed to shatter the course of talks and then negotiations – Evian I, Lugrin, Les Rousses, Evian II -, they decree the “burned earth policy”.
Between daily terrorism and sabotage actions, their terrorist strategy targets the total paralysis of independent Algeria. If their commandos ” Delta ” mourn hundreds of families, fire the university library and pushed a massive departure of Europeans, Salan and its allies of the ” French Algeria ” do not reach the supreme objective: preventing independent Algeria from putting itself in working order.
To their dismay and to the great despair of all those who scrutinize, by calling it of their wishes, the failures of engine ignition, the start of the 1962-1963 classes resonates as the most relentless of the defeats. The ” School Day ‘resonates, above all, like both founder and promising.
This is proof that the story is running and that nothing will be as before. On October 15, 1962, independent Algeria succeeded one of these very first challenges and succeeded one of its first passage exams. Faced with a tightest agenda and an enamelled situation of pitfalls, the Algerian Republic was indeed at the start of the school year.
The kiosks celebrate the first school year
Algiers Républicain, who had just reappeared after a ban by the colonial authorities, and Al Chaâb (the people) – a newly created daily – are happy to embellish the Algerian kiosks of “a” celebrating the first school year of independent Algeria. Collector of prints and old newspapers, Amar Sifi Yassi, a young teacher from Annaba who is preparing for an archivist training, preciously keeps a republican Algiers issue. Buyed in a flea market, this copy reminds him of a school year. An inaugural school year which preceded long years before his return as a student and future teacher.
A few weeks before October 15, 1962, nothing suggested a conclusive start for the 1962-1963 school season. Under the effect of the crisis of summer 1962 and the fratricidal struggles for power, the transition period stretched beyond the initial deadlines, delaying the proclamation of the Algerian Republic and the establishment of institutions. We will have to wait until September 20 and the elections to the National Constituent Assembly to see the institutional process accelerate and lead to the proclamation of the democratic and popular Algerian Republic on September 25.
“We then witness the formation of embryonic ministries in charge of files all more urgent than the other for independent Algeria, recalls historian Malika Rahal in “Algeria 1962. A popular story” (La Découverte Éditions). Emergencies among so many others which imposes itself on the first government, ” organize the start of the school and university, to compensate for the departures of many French officials, to revive industry and agriculture to avoid famine, to define a social care for those who are in need ”.
If the start of the school year is a mission that initiates the entire government, a man finds himself at the heart of the challenge: Abderrahmane Benhamida (1931-2010), Minister of National Education in the first government led by Ahmed Ben Bella (September 27, 1962-18 September 1963). He inherits a wide portfolio which includes all the levels of education: primary, college, high school, technique and university).
Committed to the national liberation struggle a few weeks after its outbreak, it was one of the leading figures in the autonomous area of Algiers led by Yacef Saâdi under the auspices of the first CCE (Coordination and Execution Committee, from the Soummam Congress). His school curriculum-student of the Franco-Muslim high school in Ben Aknoun-made it a political commissioner of the area and the in charge of the ” inner bulletin ”.
Arrested in October 1957 at the height of the great repression of Algiers called ” Battle of Algiers ” and at the height of the ” special powers ”, he was sentenced to death on July 3, 1958 by the permanent court of the armed forces of Algiers. In prisoner in Barberousse (Serkadji), he escaped the guillotine after the moratorium decided by the Fifth Republic followed by presidential pardon for all of the death row inmates.
From Serkadji, he was transferred to Berrouaghia then to the Ile de Ré (Charente Maritime). He will be released after the Evian agreements. Elected as a deputy to the first national constituent assembly, he quickly found himself on the breach as Minister of Education, Ministry of Emergency if any.
The white nights of the Minister of Education
As soon as named and even before being installed, he takes the measure of the difficulty of the mission: preside over the destinies of a ministerial department to be put in place from anything. His ministerial responsibility, he knows, is far from being a sinecure. With a state of mind forged during the years of struggle, he engaged in a real race against the clock.
A confident objective – he will underline it from his first speeches in front of his collaborators and in front of the press -, “win the battle of the first school year”. Between training of his team, set up of the first embryo of the ministry, visits to inspection of reception structures and work meetings, he continues the work days almost to the rhythm of the “H 24”.
Accustomed to white nights at the time of the activities of the autonomous zone of Algiers or during periods of detention and anxiety -provoking expectations of dawn – when the guards of Serkadji come to seek a death row to take him to the courtyard of the guillotine -, Abderrahmane Benhamida lived another period ” Nuits Blanches ”.
Exciting these-from September 27 to October 15, 1962-these two weeks marked by a ‘sleep deficit’ ‘saw him live days among the beautiful of his life and for good reason! With the assistance of state running services, he succeeded what, on the evening of the summer of 1962, held the impossible mission: to avoid schoolchildren, high school students and Algerian students a white year. And provide proof by toddlers that the OAS did not defeat and independent Algeria has not missed its ignition at the start.
By good communicating – he learned the basics of communication to the test of nationalist activism – he adopted a convincing speech towards French teachers who left Algeria between January and July 1962 under the effects of the threats of the OAS. “The suitcase or the coffin” has scared almost all of the French teachers.
On October 12, 1962, in a speech broadcast by radio, Abderrahmane Benhamida launched the teachers who were on the other side of the Mediterranean. Addressing those who started under the threats of the OAS and also those who do not know the country to come or return “to contribute to the magnificent work of education and training of young minds in a climate of freedom and fraternity”. “The time has come to put your energy and competence to the service of new Algeria. You cannot steal this new fight for peace and instruction. ”
Back to school emergency and human resources needs oblige, the Minister of Education also called on Algerian students to stay in the country. “There is no reason to study in a foreign university, since your national university is there.
Your presence within our people is essential. While studying, you will become aware of the Algerian realities and the difficulties which, every day, arise ”. On the evening of October 15, at the time of a first debriefing and a first assessment with his collaborators, Abderrahmane Benhamida to the angels who comments on the indicators: 600,000 children fully educated. An unexpected figure with regard to the context-government formed three months after independence-schools targeted by the OAS and an unfinished 1961-1962 school year due to the threats of lost soldiers.