Twenty-five years have passed since the death of Matoub Lounès, murdered on June 25, 1998, near his home in Beni Douala, in the Tizi-Ouzou Wilaya.
A quarter of a century and the memory of Matoub is still intact. The poet, singer and activist is still revered, even by the new generation that didn’t know him. It is the essence of legends.
His house in the village of Taourirt Moussa in Beni Douala has become a place of pilgrimage. Every day of the year for the past 25 years, people have come from all over the world to meditate in front of his grave and pay homage to his journey as a rebel. “On average, eighty people a day,” testified his sister Malika recently.
In addition to Lounès’ tomb, in the family garden, we also see his bullet-riddled black Mercedes 310, kept for eternity in the garage of the small white house. Exactly seventy-eight impacts. At the wheel of that sedan, Matoub died, arms in hand, on a hot summer’s day in 1998. He was 42 years old.
Lounès was just returning from Tizi-Ouzou when he was ambushed at a place called Thala Bounane, a hamlet on the road that goes up to Beni Douala and overlooks the new town of Tizi-Ouzou. Hidden in the bushes on either side of the road, armed men awaited the arrival of Matoub, who was accompanied by his newly married wife, Nadia, and his two sisters-in-law.
The three women will come out, but not Lounès, who was hit by seven bullets, two of which were fatal. He tried to retaliate with the Kalashnikov he had with him, but the fight was uneven. The attackers were more numerous, well ambushed and acted surprisingly. That means cowardly.
Even without today’s social media, the news spread instantly across Kabylia and the entire region will see unrest for several days.
Matoub Lounès, a life of struggles
It wasn’t the first time the bullets had hit the singer at close range. Ten years earlier, during the riots of October 1988, he had been seriously injured by gendarmes on the road to Ain El Hammam as he was distributing leaflets calling for calm and solidarity.
Four years before his death, in September 1994, he was kidnapped not far from his home by a terrorist group. On his release after a month in captivity, he wrote “Le Rebelle,” an autobiographical testament in which he returned to his kidnapping and reaffirmed his political commitment to Amazigh identity and democracy in Algeria against the ruling Islamist power fundamentalism.
The circumstances of his death made Matoub an icon and a milestone for youth, but the man knew the glory of his life. It was already very popular in the 1980s. Musical success, he knew that when he entered the art world in the late 1970s.
The whole life of Matoub Lounès has been a struggle, be it through his committed songs or his public positions. His subject makes him above all a champion of humanism, a defender of the weak and oppressed. He sang about love, country, identity, misery and oppression.
His mother, with whom he was always very close, was also present in his topic. Na Aldjia came to her son three years ago.
Only the wife Nadia and the sister Malika are left of the family, who fight one last battle for the truth about Matoub’s death.
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