Thomas Sankara
Thomas Sankara, the formal military is rarely the breeding ground of original thought, and certainly not revolutionary thought, but Thomas Sankara was a notable exception to this rule.
The French, along with the British, were the major colonizers of Africa, owning between them, at the height of the imperial age, the lion’s share of colonial territory. The French divided their African empire into two federations comprising most of West/Central Africa. Upper Volta was in every respect a backwater of the French West African federation. It was landlocked and comprised mostly the Sahel region of dry, semi-desert savannah. It was stifled by severe Islamic religious conservatism, and a large population of tribalized animists uninfluenced by modern education or conventional religion.
Upper Volta gained independence from France in 1960, along with most of the West African region. Inherent instability, however, resulted in a military coup in 1966, and then another in 1983. This was led by the 34-year-old Captain Thomas Sankara. While the world shook its weary head at this news, Sankara took power with a very different vision for his nation than simply to loot its national resources and impoverish its democratic institutions.
Often called Africa’s Che Guevara, Sankara rejected the corruption of the former regime, and the continuing influence in the country of the French. Upper Volta was renamed Burkina Faso (Land of the Upright Man), and one of the most ambitious programs of social and economic change ever attempted on the African continent began.
Corruption under the previous regime manifests in overwhelming national debt and dependence on foreign aid. Sankara plunged immediately into a program of reducing both. This was followed by land reform and the pursuit of agrarian self-sufficiency, backed up by a determined drive to establish universal health and literacy.
He outlawed female genital mutilation, promoted women’s rights, banned forced marriage and polygamy and appointed women to senior positions in government.
With extraordinary vision, his revolutionary campaign extended to environmental protection and regeneration, with a program to plant over 10 million trees to stem the creeping desertification resulting from overpopulation and poor land use.
All of this was truly revolutionary in the context of one of the most traditional and conservative societies in Africa, and to achieve it, his rule began to grow increasingly authoritarian. Inevitably he ran foul of the strong traditional elements of Burkinabe society, and while he became an icon to the nation’s poor, he also attracted the ire of powerful forces in the military and the establishment.
To live by the sword is to die by the sword, and Thomas Sankara fell to a military coup in October 1987. A week before his assassination, on the day of the coup, one of his most famous utterances was made.
‘While revolutionaries as individuals can be murdered, you cannot kill ideas.’