Thomas Sankara
Thomas Sankara (1949-1987) was a revolutionary leader and the President of Burkina Faso (formerly known as Upper Volta) from 1983 to 1987. He is often referred to as the "Che Guevara of Africa" because of his Marxist beliefs and his commitment to rapid and profound changes in society.
Thomas Sankara regarded himself as one of Africa's leading revolutionaries and an example for young African officers to emulate. He admired Ghana's nationalist leader, Jerry Rawlings - with whom he probably identified — and the two maintained regular contact. Sankara was intelligent and charismatic, and prideed himself as a hero to African youth. He publicly stressed hard work, honesty, and discipline as the most important qualities for his government and people.
One of Sankara's first acts as a leader was to change the country's name from Upper Volta to Burkina Faso, which means "Land of the Upright Man." Sankara implemented ambitious socio-economic reforms, including land redistribution, promotion of women's rights, mass vaccinations, and public health campaigns. He also took steps towards reducing government corruption, improving education, and promoting local consumption of goods to reduce dependence on imports. Sankara was known for his staunch anti-imperialist stance. He criticized foreign aid and instead focused on self-reliance, sustainability, and breaking free from neocolonial influences. One of Sankara's remarkable stances was on gender equality. He condemned practices like female genital mutilation and forced marriages and promoted women's participation in governance and public life.
In order to achieve this radical transformation of society, he increasingly exerted authoritarian control over the nation, eventually banning unions and a free press, which he believed could stand in the way of his plans. To counter his opposition in towns and workplaces around the country, he also tried corrupt officials, “counter-revolutionaries” and “lazy workers” in Popular Revolutionary Tribunals. Additionally, as an admirer of Fidel Castro’s Cuban Revolution, Sankara set up Cuban-style Committees for the Defense of the Revolution (CDRs). He required public servants to wear a traditional tunic, woven from Burkinabe cotton and sewn by Burkinabe craftsmen. (The reason being to rely upon local industry and identity rather than foreign industry and identity).
- Sankara's government vaccinated 2.5 million children against meningitis, yellow fever and measles in a matter of weeks.
- Sankara's government initiated a nation-wide literacy campaign, increasing the literacy rate from 13% in 1983 to 73% in 1987.
- Sankara's government planted over 10 million trees to prevent desertification
- Sankara's government built roads and a railway to tie the nation together, without foreign aid
- Sankara's government appointed females to high governmental positions, encouraged them to work, recruited them into the military, and granted pregnancy leave during education.
- Sankara's government outlawed female genital mutilation, forced marriages and polygamy in support of Women’s rights
- Sankara's government sold off the government fleet of Mercedes cars and made the Renault 5 (the cheapest car sold in Burkina Faso at that time) the official service car of the ministers.
- Sankara's government reduced the salaries of all public servants, including his own, and forbade the use of government chauffeurs and 1st class airline tickets.
- Sankara's government redistributed land from the feudal landlords and gave it directly to the peasants. Wheat production rose in three years from 1700 kg per hectare to 3800 kg per hectare, making the country food self-sufficient.
- Sankara's government opposed foreign aid, saying that “he who feeds you, controls you.”
Thomas Sankara was born on 21 December 1949 in Yako, a northern town in the Upper Volta (today Burkina Faso) of French West Africa. He was the son of a Mossi mother and a Peul father, and personified the diversity of the Burkinabè people of the area. In his adolescence, Sankara witnessed the country’s independence from France in 1960 and the repressive and volatile nature of the regimes that ruled throughout the 1960s and 1970s.
Sankara received military training in Madagascar and France. He earned a reputation as a war hero during the 1974 border conflict with Mali. Sankara then studied in France and later in Morocco, where he met Blaise Compaoré and other civilian students from Upper Volta who later organized leftist organizations in the country. While commanding the Commando Training Center in the city of Pô in 1976, Thomas Sankara grew in popularity by urging his soldiers to help civilians with their work tasks. He additionally played guitar at community gatherings with a local band, Pô Missiles. During the late 1970s he served on the Army's General Staff, and in 1981 served briefly as Minister for Information in the conservative Zerbo administration.
Capt. Sankara began his rise to power in November 1982, when as an Army Captain and key garrison commander he helped to install Maj. Jean-Baptise Ouedraogo as President. In January 1983 Ouedraogo appointed Sankara Prime Minister, but friction between the two developed quickly as Sankara sought alliances with Libya and Ghana, while Ouedraogo preferred to maintain traditional links to France and Ivory Coast. In a desperate attempt to curb Sankara's influence, in May 1983 Ouedraogo placed him under arrest for a few weeks.
Backed by key military personnel, leftist trade union-ists and intellectuals, Sankara toppled Ouedraogo in August 1983. Troops loyal to Sankara, armed with weapons provided by Libya, met little resistance from disorganized government forces.
Sankara said he seized power to end widespread government corruption. Sankara quickly consolidated his rule by purging the civil service and officer corps of suspected disloyal members. Launching an ostensibly nonaligned foreign policy, he forged close ties to Libya and established diplomatic relations with Cuba. In 1983 and 1984, he repeatedly accused France of plotting to engineer his ouster. In August 1984, Sankara changed the name of his country from Upper Volta to Burkina Faso, as part of the "decolonization" process. The name roughly translates as "Land of Upright People".
Sankara's words and deeds reveal his unorthodox national and world views. His proclaimed design for Burkina envisioned a society in which wealth is equitably distributed, women have equal rights, and social justice prevails. The regime's sole theoretical tract — a vague political document, "Treatise of Orientation," issued shortly after the coup - promised a "populardemocratic revolution" leading to a classless society, and called for economic self-sufficiency. Sankara's vision for domestic change, however, appeared to have little substance beyond these captions.
He was often impulsive and unpredictable, and could get carried away with his own rhetoric, rarely considering the consequences of his acts. For example, in 1984 he suspended for one year rent and mortgage payments, which are taxable, failing to realize the consequences of the loss in badly needed government revenues.
Fiercely nationalistic, Sankara publicly rejected both Eastern and Western political models and claimed his regime would become the new example of Third World development. Sankara's world view is shaped by his obsession with power and by somewhat irrational fears that domestic and foreign opposition - including the Vatican - were bent on toppling him. This mind-set may account for his habit of publicly lashing out at France, the United States, the USSR, and Libya for their failure to provide substantial economic aid and for their "imperialist" aggressions.
Desite Sankara's proclivity to attack the West verbally, he nevertheless proved willing at times to compromise his views to achieve practical results. In an effort to generate additional Western foreign aid, he implemented a financial austerity program established in 1985 and made no effort to collectivize or redistribute land or nationalize the private sector. Although Sankara publicly emphasized solidarity with African and Third World movements, such as the South-West Africa People's Organization and the Palestine Liberation Organization, and established closer ties to such states as North Korea and Cuba, he also tried privately to reassure traditional Western donors that he valued their friendship and assistance.
The country has nine million ha of arable soil, but currently exploits only 3.5 million ha. Aince its independence from France in 1960 until the 1984, only two laws were passed -- in 1960 and 1963 -- regulating private landholdings. During that time, access to private land titles in rural areas remained limited; only 19 land titles (less than 140 ha), were granted between 1952 and 1980. In many parts of the country, land tenure was directed by the local custom of clan ownership and controlled by male heads of households. This process traditionally excluded young people, women, and farmers in impoverished regions, from land ownership.
In 1984 a major land reform law, the Agrarian and Land Tenure Reform (RAF), was passed during the "Burkina Faso Revolution" of then President Thomas Sankara. Article 1 of the RAF made an historical break with customary Burkinabe land rights by stating that "the land belongs to the State." By making all land State property, the Sankara government hoped to facilitate universal access to natural resources. In reality, diversity of customs, the verbal nature of most agreements, and persistence of other traditional land transactions limited the RAF's effectiveness. In the long run, this law created a sense of insecurity over land tenure matters and discouraged economic investment.
Sankara had the support of the urban poor and probably of the peasantry. But he alienated Burkina's civilian elite, composed of civil servants, trade unionists, and businessmen. The peasantry benefited somewhat from his emphasis on rural development, and the urban poor realized some small gains from government efforts to provide improved health care and better housing. However, Sankara angered government workers in 1984 by cutting wages and threatening to fire them if they did not work hard enough or demanded higher salaries. Moreover, many businessmen complained about high taxes and lack of incentives for the private sector, while many former government managers fled to Ivory Coast and France.
Sankara ruthlessly repressed the traditionally powerful trade unions - composed of more than 10,000 civil servants and urban workers — which had played an instrumental role in every change of government since independence. Massive strikes forced Burkina's first president to abdicate in 1966; pressured the next ruler, President Lamizana, to form a civilian government a decade later; and weakened that government so drastically by 1980 that the Army seized power. Sankara imprisoned some union leaders, intimidated most others, and banned strikes.
The populist regime of President Sankara appeared to be firmly in control by mid-1986, but faced increasing challenges from both the extreme left and the military. As public frustration with the country's economic plight grew, radicals had new opportuni-ties to press their policies, which included a close alignment with Libya and the Soviet Union.
Sankara's most serious threat seemed to come from the Patriotic League for Development (LIPAD), a small pro-Soviet party that helped him come to power and had some support among students, civil servants, trade unions, and certain sectors of the military. Although Sankara ousted members of LIPAD from the government in 1984, he reappointed a few in 1986, apparently believing they had renounced their revolutionary objectives,
There were growing signs that the 7,600-man armed forces were dissatisfied with what they viewed as Sankara's lackluster leadership and were likely to challenge his policiesr. Both officers and enlisted men were frustrated with Sankara's refusal to upgrade military capabilities, his frequent purges of the officer corps, and the insertion of "political watchdogs" to spy on potential military malcontents. Moreover, many officers remained angry over Sankara's reluctance to avenge Burkina's military defeat by neighboring Mali in the so-called Christmas war of December 1987.
Sankara's ineffectual leadership during the border war with Mali probably damaged his standing with the armed forces. Malian President Traore increasingly viewed Sankara as naive and immature, while Sankara publicly depicted Traore as "inept”, “senile", and "corrupt." Sankara committed a number of tactical errors, such as refusing to mobilize key military units, failing to send reinforcements to the north, and relying on armed civilians to do some of the fighting. Some of his officers believed he underestimated the scope of the Malian offensive and they were criticizing him for not wanting to avenge Burkina's defeat.
Still another source of discontent is the presence of Committees for the Defense of the Revolution [CDRs] in the military's ranks, serving as political "watchdogs." Every military unit contained such a committee, probably composed of no more than six persons led by a junior or noncommissioned officer who oversees political education and conformity to “revolutionary principles." Some officers regard CDR personnel as government spies who occasionally undercut the authority of commanding officers and ignore the military chain of command. Officers resented lower ranking per-sonnel monitoring their activities and challengingtheir orders.
Burkina's economic decline also continued to undermine Sankara's ability to rule. Despite two years of austerity and some positive social welfare programs, living standards in Burkina remained among the lowest in the world, and unfulfilled public expectations were further reducing the limited popular support Sankara enjoyed. Two decades of drought and the continued spread of the desert eroded any potential for a substantial increase in agricultural production and have left unfulfilled the pledge Sankara made in 1983 to make Burkina self-sufficient in food. Burkina's own swelling population, increased by a rising pool of migrants from more severely affected Sahelian countries, further strained the country's limited resources.
A mix of chronic poverty and ill-conceived government projects undermined Sankara's efforts to implement austerity measures needed to stem Burkina's economic deterioration. Sankara introduced a number of pragmatic economic reforms to help preserve scarce financial resources. He imposed stiff austerity budgets and since 1983 workers' real take-home pay had been slashed by some 40 percent as a result of a wage freeze. Sankara also reduced the overstaffed civil service to cut the budget deficit.
Burkina's relations with the West fluctuated as Sankara attempted to balance his need for Western economic assistance with his desire to demonstrate his revolutionary credentials. Sankara continued to lash out against the United States and France on occasion, while privately reassuring Paris - Burkina's largest aid donor and trading partner - that his rhetoric was designed only for internal public consumption. France tolerated Sankara's posturing as long as it believed he was holding to his pledge not to export his "revolution" or permit the Libyans or the Soviets to use Burkina as a base from which to subvert French interests in the region, such as Burkina's moderate neighbors—IvoryCoast, Togo, and Niger.
Thomas Sankara's tenure was short-lived. He was assassinated in a coup on October 15, 1987, a coup believed to be orchestrated by his close friend and associate, Blaise Compaoré, who then took over as president. Sankara and a dozen other leaders were shot dead by a hit squad at a meeting of the ruling National Revolutionary Council. The killings took place on the same day that Compaore seized power. He went on to rule for 27 years – during which Sankara’s killing was a strict taboo – until 2014, when he was forced to resign in the face of mass protests against an attempt to extend his nearly 30-year rule. After Compaore’s downfall, the 13 bodies were exhumed in 2015 from a cemetery on the outskirts of the city for an investigation. It led to a lengthy trial that culminated in April 2022 with life terms in absentia for Compaore and the suspected hit squad leader, and a similar term for a detained general who had been army commander at the time. Compaore, who lived in Ivory Coast, always denied involvement in Sankara’s assassination.
On 23 February 2023 the body of Burkina Faso’s revolutionary and charismatic leader Thomas Sankara was reburied alongside 12 comrades at the spot of their assassination nearly 30 years earlier. Soldiers and community leaders paid tribute during a ceremony at the site in the capital, Ouagadougou, which has since become a memorial for the former leader featuring a life-size statue of him pumping his fist in the air.
Sankara remains a symbol of resistance against imperialism and a beacon for pan-Africanism and progressive leadership in Africa. Many of his policies, especially on sustainability and self-reliance, are cited by modern activists and leaders as visionary. Thomas Sankara's life and leadership, though short-lived, left an indelible mark on Burkina Faso and the broader African continent. He remains celebrated for his principles, his commitment to the people, and his unyielding stance against oppression and imperialism.
A week before his murder, he declared: “While revolutionaries as individuals can be murdered, you cannot kill ideas.”
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