While older Algerians may take pride in their independence struggle against France, the young view it with disillusion, saying that after 50 years they have yet to taste any benefits.
With unemployment among the under 30s touching 50 percent, young people are deeply opposed to a system that has showered benefits on the independence fighters known as mujahedeen and their heirs, but left them devoid of hope for the future.
November 1, the anniversary of the start of the independence war in 1954, "doesn't mean much for me," said Salima, a 25-year-old bookstore assistant. "The mujahedeen freed the country, but now they should give way to the young."
Salima is well-educated, with a degree in political science, but like many of her contemporaries sees little hope of finding a solid job, which she said required official connections.
"That those who fought against France have greater advantages, that strikes me as normal, but that their children and grandchildren should inherit the same advantages, that seems to be going too far," said one 16-year-old schoolboy who gave his name as Lyes.
"It is time for equality for everyone. The young must be given opportunities, otherwise there won't be many people left here in a few years. All of the young people here dream of nothing else but a visa for abroad."
That view was echoed by one of the original revolutionary leaders, Mohamed Mechati, who told the newspaper Liberte: "The younger generation is disgusted by over-exploitation of the mujahedeen. I think that if we opened our borders, many people would flee Algeria and only the bureaucrats would remain. This country has become unlivable."
Mohamed Zouaoui, an independence fighter, said the Algerian people, who bore the brunt of the struggle and had made immense sacrifices, were quickly disillusioned after independence was achieved in 1962 when "their revered leaders started fighting among themselves to seize power."
That power struggle pitched the fighters of the interior against the National Liberation Front (FLN) commanded from Tunis by Colonel Houari Boumediene. The FLN emerged victorious and morphed into a single ruling party that dished out government jobs to its supporters, as well as the property left behind by fleeing French settlers.
Algerians then discovered to their cost the realities of favoritism, nepotism, clannism, regionalism and their inevitable corollary, corruption.
In 1965, Boumediene overthrew Ahmed Ben Bella, the first president of independent Algeria, and ruled the country with an iron first until 1978, putting the brakes on every kind of freedom but lavishing wealth and privilege on the powerful party bosses.
Although the single party has given way to a multi-party system, the mujahedeen mystique remains. Veterans have the right to several material benefits, including a monthly pension and a permit to import a new car every three years.
Hamza, a student of French literature at Blida, said he was scandalized by the fact that "50 years after the independence war, Algerians are still putting in applications to be given the status of ex-combatant."
Although the country will celebrate the anniversary of the independence struggle with great pomp, "this war doesn't mean very much for young people, in contrast to our parents who lived through it," said Zaki, a 17-year-old high school student in Algiers.
"November 1 is primarily of interest to members of the revolutionary family who have a monopoly on all the social benefits."
While the revolutionary elite has fared well materially from the independence struggle, more than half of Algeria's 31 million people live below the poverty line, according to official figures.
While party cadres and their families were allowed to travel abroad freely, the government handed out exit visas parsimoniously to the rest of the population, often demanding cash in return.
Algerians remember the post-independence period as one of penury, food shortages and adulterated coffee as the state experimented with ill-fated farm "reforms" and Soviet-style industrial projects. The school system declined as the government imposed a poorly considered plan to impose Arabic and drive out French.
After a decade in which the country was torn between terrorism and military repression, political debate is resurfacing, the press is no longer a state monopoly and Algeria is confronting taboos about the independence war.
But, said Ramdane, a former employee of a state enterprise, "We have still not finished paying for all the mistakes of our leaders."
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