Thomas Sankara: The great Revolutionary Nigerians would have desired to have. Thomas Isidore Noël Sankara(December 21, 1949 – October 15, 1987) was a Burkinabé military captain, Marxist revolutionary, Pan-Africanist theorist, and President of Burkina Faso from 1983 to 1987. Viewed as a charismatic and iconic figure of revolution, he is commonly referred to as Africas Che Guevara. Sankara seized power in a 1983 popularly supported coup at the age of 33, with the goal of eliminating corruption and the dominance of the former French colonial power. He immediately launched the most ambitious program for social and economic change ever attempted on the African continent. To symbolize this new autonomy and rebirth, he even renamed the country from the French colonial Upper Volta to Burkina Faso (Land of Upright Men). His foreign policies were centered on anti-imperialism, with his government eschewing all foreign aid, pushing for odious debt reduction, nationalizing 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, prioritizing education with a nation-wide literacy campaign, and promoting public health by vaccinating 2.5 million children against meningitis, yellow fever and measles. Other components of his national agenda included planting over ten million 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 rail construction program to tie the nation together. On the localized level, Sankara also called on every village to build a medical dispensary and had over 350 communities construct schools with their own labour. Moreover, his commitment to womens rights led him to outlaw female genital mutilation, forced marriages and polygamy, while appointing females to high governmental positions and encouraging them to work outside the home and stay in school even if pregnant. 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 work places around the country, he also tried corrupt officials, counter- revolutionaries and lazy workers in peoples revolutionary tribunals.Additionally, as an admirer of Fidel Castros Cuban Revolution, Sankara set up Cuban-style Committees for the Defense of the Revolution (CDRs). His revolutionary programs for African self-reliance made him an icon to many of Africas poor.Sankara remained popular with most of his countrys impoverished citizens. However his policies alienated and antagonised the vested interests of an array of 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. *Like Che Guevara like Thomas Sankara Sankara, who is often referred to as Africas Che Guevara, emulated Guevara (1928–1967) in both style and substance. Stylistically, Sankara emulated Guevara by preferring to wear a starred beret and military fatigues, living ascetically with few possessions, and keeping a minimal salary once assuming power. Both men also considered themselves allies of Fidel Castro (Sankara was visited by Castro in 1987), are well known for having ridden motorcycles, and are often cited as effectively utilizing their charisma to motivate their followers. Substantively, Guevara and Sankara were both Marxist revolutionaries, who believed in armed revolution against imperialism and monopoly capitalism, denounced financial neo-colonialism before the United Nations, held up agrarian land reform and literacy campaigns as key parts of their agenda, and utilized revolutionary tribunals and CDRs against counter-revolutionaries. Both men were also murdered in their late thirties (Guevara 39 / Sankara 38) by opponents, with Sankara coincidentally giving a speech marking and honoring the 20th anniversary of Che Guevaras October 9, 1967 execution, one week before his own assassination on October 15, 1987. *Achievements and Landmarks Accompanying his personal charisma, Sankara had an array of original initiatives that contributed to his popularity and brought some international media attention to the Burkinabé revolution: * He 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. * He reduced the salaries of well-off public servants, including his own, and forbade the use of government chauffeurs and 1st class airline tickets. * He redistributed land from the feudal landlords to the peasants. Wheat production increased from 1700 kg per hectare to 3800 kg per hectare, making the country food self-sufficient. * He opposed foreign aid, saying that, he who feeds you, controls you. * He spoke in forums like the Organization of African Unity against continued neo-colonialist penetration of Africa through Western trade and finance. * He called for a united front of African nations to repudiate their foreign debt. He argued that the poor and exploited did not have an obligation to repay money to the rich and exploiting. * In Ouagadougou, Sankara converted the armys provisioning store into a state-owned supermarket open to everyone (the first supermarket in the country). * He forced well-off civil servants to pay one months salary to public projects. * He refused to use the air conditioning in his office on the grounds that such luxury was not available to anyone but a handful of Burkinabes. * As President, he lowered his salary to $450 a month and limited his possessions to a car, four bikes, three guitars, a fridge and a broken freezer. * Sankara also promoted contraception and encouraged husbands to go to market and prepare meals to experience for themselves the conditions faced by women. Furthermore, Sankara was the first African leader to appoint women to major cabinet positions and to recruit them actively for the military. * Sankaras administration was also the first African government to publicly recognize the AIDS epidemic as a major threat to Africa. * LIFESTYLE * A motorcyclist himself, he formed an all-women motorcycle personal guard. * He required public servants to wear a traditional tunic, woven from Burkinabe cotton and sewn by Burkinabe craftsmen. * He was known for jogging unaccompanied through Ouagadougou in his track suit and posing in his tailored military fatigues, with his mother-of-pearl pistol. * When asked why he didnt want his portrait hung in public places, as was the norm for other African leaders, Sankara replied, There are seven million Thomas Sankaras. * An accomplished guitarist, he wrote the new national anthem himself. *ASSASINATION Sankara’s assassins were guided by imperialism, which could not allow a man with the ideas and actions of Sankara to lead a country on a continent so exploited for hundreds of years by international imperialism, colonialism, and neocolonial governments that do their bidding. Sankara’s political ideas will endure, like those of Patrice Lumumba of Congo and Amílcar Cabral of Guinea-Bissau, also assassinated by traitors at the behest of the empire. — Ulises Estrada, a key organizer of Che Guevaras 1966-67 guerrilla mission to Bolivia. On October 15, 1987 Sankara was killed by an armed gang with twelve other officials in a coup détat organised by his former colleague, Blaise Compaoré. Deterioration in relations with neighbouring countries was one of the reasons given, with Compaoré stating that Sankara jeopardised foreign relations with former colonial power France and neighbouring Ivory Coast. Prince Johnson, a former Liberian warlord allied to Charles Taylor, told Liberias Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) that it was engineered by Charles Taylor. After the coup and although Sankara was known to be dead, some CDRs mounted an armed resistance to the army for several days. Sankaras body was dismembered and he was quickly buried in an unmarked grave, while his widow and two children fled the nation. Compaoré immediately reversed the nationalizations, overturned nearly all of Sankaras policies, rejoined the International Monetary Fund and World Bank to bring in desperately needed funds to restore the “shattered” economy, and ultimately spurned most of Sankaras legacy. A week prior to his death Sankara gave what would become his own epitaph, remarking that, while revolutionaries as individuals can be murdered, you cannot kill ideas.
Posted on: Sat, 19 Oct 2013 19:26:49 +0000
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