Welcome readers to todays offering from The Philatelist. So slip on your smoking jacket, fill your pipe, take your first sip of your adult beverage, and sit back in your most comfortable chair. Today we talk about a leader who offered stability, which compared with what went before and afterward seems pretty good.
The stamp today is from Algeria from the late seventies when the post independence socialist pan Arab movements were maturing. A sign of that maturity is that the subject of the stamp, President Bourmedienne, had not appeared on a postage stamp prior to his death in 1978, despite being in charge since 1965.
The stamp today is issue A225, a 60 centimes stamp issued by Algeria on January 7th, 1979. It was a single stamp issue commemorating the death of long serving President Bourmedienne. According to the Scott catalog, the stamp is worth 25 cents used.
Houari Bourmedienne was born in simple circumstances to an Arab only speaking wheat farmer. That part is agreed to. There are alleged birth dates between 1927 -1932 and several possible villages where he might have come from. His birth name is nothing to do with his presidential name. He seems to have taken on a persona rather like a rap star or Joseph Stalin. Stalin really wasn’t a man of steel and Bourmedienne wasn’t really a modern embodiment of ancient heroes after whom his name was fashioned. In 1955 he joined the FLN that was involved in armed struggle against the French forces that were still the colonial power. He rose to the rank of Coronel, the highest rank in the force. The FLN eventually won independence from France.
Bourmedienne was named defence minister under the first independent Algerian President. Foreign owned lands were forcibly seized by the peasants that worked them and there was then the should have been expected drop in farm output. More troubling there was also a major purge with massacres of Algerians who were too closely associated with the old colonial forces or with rival independence groups. The murders even extended in large numbers to the immigrant Algerian community in France. There was also a failed “sand war” fought with neighboring newly independent Morocco.
In 1965, Bourmedienne acted and there was a bloodless coup where the former president was put under gradually less strict house arrest and Bourmedienne led a council of military officers who were his close associates. He nationalized the oil industry and used the revenues to start a massive drive to industrialize the country. The population of the country was rising rapidly and only a tiny fraction of the land of Algeria was arable. This seems a sensible policy, with people not able to be farmers and the oil industry providing revenue but few jobs. The challenge of the fast growing populations seems to be such a common theme in newly independent countries. This is probably why five year plans and state owned enterprises were so common. There were simply so many people that needed to be occupied productively. A fact seemed forgotten in the rush to laisse-faire in the 90s.
There was some success with GDP per capita rising to 30% of the USA by the end of President Bourmedienne’s life. This compares with 7.5 percent today. Algeria also became an important force in the nonaligned movement offering support to many African anti colonial forces, the PLO, and the ANC. Considering where he came from, where ever that was. It is a pretty impressive level of achievement. It is hard to imagine trying to handle yourself on the world stage with such a humble background and the responsibilities of finding things to do for such a big population. In his last year in office there was an election where he was elected president and over the course of his rule democratic institutions were gradually put in place. After instability and an unsuccessful bout with Islamists, one of Bourmedienne’s deputies was made President in 1999. He still is in office today but is getting older so that some critics refer to him as “the living dead”.
Well my drink is empty and I would pour another to toaste President Bourmedienne but I don’t think that is appropriate with an Islamic leader. Come again tomorrow for another story that can be learned from stamp collecting