Thomas Isidore Noël Sankara (French pronunciation:
[tɔma izidɔʁ nɔɛl sɑ̃kaʁa]; 21 December 1949 – 15 October 1987) was a
Burkinabé pro-people
revolutionary,
Marxist,
pan-Africanist and
President of Burkina Faso from 1983 to 1987.
[1][2] Viewed by supporters as a charismatic and iconic figure of revolution, he is sometimes referred to as "Africa's
Che Guevara".
[1][3][4]
A group of revolutionaries seized power on behalf of Sankara (who was under house arrest at the time) in a popularly-supported coup in 1983. Aged just thirty-three, Sankara became the president of the country that still retained its colonial name,
Upper Volta, with the goal of promoting the wellbeing of the poorest people in the country by, among other things, eliminating corruption and the dominance of the former
French colonial power.
[1][5][6] He immediately launched one of the most ambitious programmes for social, ecological, gender and economic change ever attempted on the
African continent.
[5] To symbolise this new autonomy and rebirth, he renamed the country from the French colonial
Upper Volta to
Burkina Faso ("Land of Upright Man").
[5] His foreign policies were centred on
anti-imperialism, with his government eschewing all foreign
aid, pushing for
odious debt reduction, nationalising all land and mineral wealth and averting the power and influence of the
International Monetary Fund (IMF) and
World Bank. His domestic policies were focused on preventing famine with agrarian self-sufficiency and land reform, prioritising education with a nationwide literacy campaign and promoting public health by vaccinating 2,500,000 children against
meningitis,
yellow fever and
measles.
[7]
Other components of his national agenda included planting over 10,000,000 trees to halt the growing
desertification of the
Sahel, doubling wheat production by redistributing land from
feudal landlords to peasants, suspending rural
poll taxes and domestic rents and establishing an ambitious road and railway construction programme to "tie the nation together".
[5] On the localised level, Sankara also called on every village to build a medical dispensary, and had over 350 communities build schools with their own labour. Moreover, his commitment to
women's rights led him to outlaw
female genital mutilation,
forced marriages and
polygamy, while appointing women to high governmental positions and encouraging them to work outside the home and stay in school, even if pregnant.
[5]
In order to achieve this radical transformation of society, Sankara increasingly exerted authoritarian control over the nation. He eventually banned unions and a free press, which he believed could stand in the way of his plans.
[5] To counter his opposition in towns and workplaces around the country, he also prosecuted corrupt officials, alleged
counter-revolutionaries, and "lazy workers" in
Popular Revolutionary Tribunals.
[5] Additionally, as an admirer of
Fidel Castro's
Cuban Revolution, Sankara set up Cuban-style
Committees for the Defense of the Revolution (CDRs).
[1]
His revolutionary programs for African self-reliance made him an icon to many of Africa's poor.
[5] Sankara remained popular with most of his country's citizens. However his policies alienated and antagonised the vested interests of several groups, which included the small, but powerful Burkinabé middle-class, the
tribal leaders whom he stripped of the long-held traditional right to
forced labour and
tribute payments, and France and its ally the
Ivory Coast.
[1][8] On 15 October 1987, Sankara was assassinated by troops led by
Blaise Compaoré, who took Sankara's office shortly after. A week before his assassination, he declared: "While revolutionaries as individuals can be murdered, you cannot kill ideas."
[1]
Thomas Sankara
Reply With Quote