Mahjoubi Aherdane

Biography

In the spring of 1953 the caid of Oulmès refused to back a petition, put forward by Thami El Glaoui, the pasha of Marrakesh, to depose Sultan Mohammed V; the caid was Mahjoubi Aherdane, and the French administration removed him from office for nationalist activity.

After that he commanded a unit of the Moroccan Liberation Army.

His year of birth is given variously as 1921 or 1924. The place is the same in both accounts: Oulmès, in the Middle Atlas. He came from the Berber tribe of Aït Sgougou. He studied at the Berber college in Azrou, then at the military academy in Meknès. According to some accounts he graduated in 1940 as an officer. During the Second World War he served in the French army. From 1949 until his dismissal in 1953 he was caid of his home town. That career was part of the colonial administration’s policy towards the Berbers, yet it was from this position that he moved into the nationalist movement. He was a member of the National Council of the Resistance.

After independence Aherdane briefly served as governor of the prefecture of Rabat (1956–1958). According to some reports, soon after independence he and Abdelkrim al-Khatib were jailed together and released after a short time. In 1957 they founded the Popular Movement. Its core was made up of former fighters of the Liberation Army, and it became a rival to the Istiqlal Party, which then dominated the country’s politics. The party received legal recognition in February 1959, and its first congress was held in June of that year.

In 1962 Aherdane voted for the first constitution of independent Morocco. In the elections of 1963 his party joined the Front for the Defense of Constitutional Institutions, created by Ahmed Réda Guédira, a man close to the king (Hassan II). From 1961 or 1963 (the sources differ) until 1964 Aherdane was Minister of National Defence, then Minister of Agriculture, and in 1966–1967 he again held the defence post. In 1967 al-Khatib left the Popular Movement and founded his own party, the future Justice and Development Party. It was the outcome of a dispute over leadership. From 1967 to 1977 Aherdane was in opposition. In 1977 he joined the government of Ahmed Osman as Minister of State in charge of posts and telecommunications. In the following cabinets he was responsible for cooperation (1981–1983), and in 1983 he became one of the ministers of state in the government of Mohammed Karim Lamrani.

In 1986 an extraordinary congress removed him from the leadership of the Popular Movement, and Mohand Laenser became leader. In 1990 King Hassan II appointed him to the Advisory Council on Human Rights, where he represented the Liberation Army until 2011. In 1991 he founded a new party, the National Popular Movement, and led it until 2006. In 1997 he won in the municipal elections. In 2006 the movements merged, and Aherdane became president of the Popular Movement, with Laenser as secretary-general.

Aherdane spoke publicly about Amazigh culture. He demanded that the Berber language be taught and objected to Arabisation. His opponents accused him of turning the party into an electoral agency serving those in power. He is the author of poetry and books: “Un poème pour étendard” (1991), “Ezzayegh”, and two volumes of memoirs. He also painted, but there is almost nothing in the sources about exhibitions or individual pictures. It seems to me that he was a painter more by inclination than by profession.

Mahjoubi Aherdane died on 15 November 2020 in Rabat, at about the age of one hundred. He was buried in Oulmès.