Five years ago, Louisa Hanoune was being held in solitary confinement in a military prison. Then, aged 65, she was charged with “conspiring against the state” after taking part in protests against an election result. But Hanoune—a left-wing leader and head of the Workers' Party, whose causes included trade unionism and feminism—had been protesting for decades.
She recently announced her candidacy in Algeria’s upcoming presidential election. It will be her fourth run for the country’s highest office, yet she was already famous when she became the first Algerian woman to enter the race back in 2004. After her incarceration and prosecution for refusing to acknowledge the 2019 presidential election outcome (in what became known as the 22 February Movement), few expected her to run again, but she has a history of surprising people.
On the record as saying she is not “personally ambitious”, some analysts say her candidacy in the 7 September election is the only viable option for her Workers’ Party, which has had a spate of recent political problems. Al Majalla looks back at her life in parallel with Algeria's political ebb and flow, as an intriguing crossroads in a long career coincides with an important national moment.
Radical left-winger
Born 70 years ago in a commune in central Algeria, Louise Hanoune was a politically active radical left-winger from an early age, which got her thrown in prison several times before political parties were officially allowed in 1988. Algeria’s move away from being a one-party state prompted a period of political reform and opened the national debate up to figures from the union movement, like her.
A Marxist who had taken part in the 1988 October Riots, Hanoune was now a long way from her simple rural upbringing on the northern slopes of the Babur Mountains. When she moved to the coastal city of Annaba, close to Tunisia, she witnessed the growth of Algeria’s revolutionary and liberation movements, significantly contributing to her political thought formation.
She studied law and entered the realm of trade unionism activism, earning a reputation as a determined advocate for women’s rights and fighting discrimination, racism, and marginalisation. For seeking to unionise colleagues, she was fired from her job at the airport, but she was undeterred. In the early 1980s, she moved to the capital, Algiers, to work for Air Algérie until 1994, then for an Algerian airport management company.
She was the first woman to win the right to run for membership in the country's most established union, the General Union of Algerian Workers (GUAW).
