By Staff
Thomas Sankara, the Marxist revolutionary who served as President of Burkina Faso from 1983-1987, is a figure who has recently been largely forgotten. This is for many reasons, one of which being Euro-centrism, an ideology (while in some cases unspoken) that suggests what happens in Europe and Western civilization is more important than what happens in other parts of the world. Euro-centrism often undermines the impact of African heroes like Sankara. There are many other reasons for why Sankara has been forgotten, as well as many reasons to celebrate him.
Sankara’s tenure began with the 1983 Upper Voltan coup d’état, which ousted the incumbent President Jean-Baptiste Ouédraogo, who was initially allied with Sankara and was believed to hold similar views. The two were jokingly referred to as “Siamese twins”. However, eventually Ouédraogo was appearing to shift to the right and people were starting to criticize him for being sympathetic to the French colonialists.
What actually happened was the CSP (Conseil de Salut du Peuple), a group of military officials that brought Ouédraogo to power, started to grow extremely polarized between its left wing and right wing factions. In their polarization, it became clear that it was truly the CSP who was in charge and using Ouédraogo as a figurehead as he was basically refusing to take a stance on any topic of political debate in order to accommodate both sides of the CSP.
The unpopularity of Ouédraogo’s presidency eventually culminated in the 1983 Upper Voltan coup d’état as mentioned earlier. This coup was organized by Blaise Compaoré (remember that name, it’s extremely important later, trust me), and placed Thomas Sankara as the new Prime Minister of Burkina Faso.
One thing to keep in mind is that coup d’états were really common in Africa at the time. Like they happened a lot. The late 20th century was a time of great instability in the continent and political upheaval was very common to the point where this particular coup wasn’t anything surprising or unprecedented. The coup was not violent and Ouédraogo was offered “much humanitarianism” as requested by Sankara. Ouédraogo has said himself in an autobiography released in 2020 that “there were only political grievances between us (referring to him and Sankara), no animosity”.
So a Marxist revolutionary, inspired by Fidel Castro, became president of a nation after a coup d’état. That must end awfully, right? Well, interestingly enough, Sankara was actually extremely popular and is nowadays viewed as a hero in Burkina Faso.
His first priority while taking office was providing housing and health care to the nation’s people who were in great need of it. He launched a massive program to vaccinate the population and protect them from diseases that were very common in Africa at the time, such as meningitis, polio, and measles. He was the first African president to recognize HIV/AIDS as a threat and took great measures to minimize the effect of the AIDS epidemic. He was the one who changed the name of the country, which was then called Upper Volta by the French colonizers, to what is now called “Burkina Faso”, which means “Land of Incorruptible People” in the native languages of Mossi and Dioula. He created a system of courts called the “People’s Revolutionary Trials” where the civilians, workers, and peasants of Burkina Faso would be able to try former government officials and have a fair say in the matter. He was also a pioneer for women’s rights, including a large unprecedented number of women in his government. He banned forced marriages and polygamy (which was often used to put men in positions of power over multiple spouses in some parts of Africa back then), promoted the women’s right to use contraception, and was the first African leader to recruit women in the military.
He was also well known for his populism, showing solidarity with the people and making sure the government knew that neither Sankara nor any other government official were above the people. He reduced his own salary, as well as the salaries of plenty of government officials who were doing perfectly fine financially. Before Sankara, the government had a “fleet” of high-end Mercedes cars that the ministers and other government officials would drive. He got rid of these cars and replaced them with Renault-5’s, which were the most common and least expensive car in Burkina Faso at the time. He preferred not to have his portrait put up in public, as according to him, “there are seven million Thomas Sankara’s”. He gave all of his things away except for the following: four bikes, a car, a fridge, a broken freezer, and three guitars. Oh yeah, that’s another thing. He was a crazy good guitarist and got rid of the old national anthem, which was really an anthem of French colonialism, and wrote the new national anthem himself.
There are many reasons why Sankara is not commemorated as he should be. For one, Euro-centrism is a huge problem nowadays. Euro-centrism is basically the under exaggeration of the cultures, achievements, politics, and history of any continent that isn’t Europe. The continent that is without a doubt the biggest victim of Euro-centrism is Africa, and so many of the heroes of Africa have gone under the historical radar and haven’t been as celebrated as much as they should be. Another thing to note about Sankara is that he was a Marxist socialist inspired by figures like Fidel Castro in Cuba and Che Guevara in Argentina. So much so that he was actually called “the African Che Guevara” by many. These Marxist revolutionaries (particularly Castro) are extremely controversial in American culture because of the USA’s rocky history with the communists, in particular the Soviet Union. However, this reveals another flaw in the thinking of Western civilization. While you can argue that a system like Marxism did not work whatsoever for Cuba and wouldn’t work for America, that doesn’t mean that there are no places where Marxism wouldn’t work. The truth is that Sankara’s policies, while politically influenced by revolutionaries who were arguably extremely unsuccessful as leaders, were extremely beneficial for Burkina Faso and temporarily saved it from a period of great instability, with emphasis on the word temporarily. A great deal of the benefits of Sankara’s administration were arguably short-lived, but not because they didn’t have merit.
It’s because in 1987, there was another coup d’état that overthrew the Sankara administration. The biggest difference between this coup and Sankara’s coup in 1983? It was a bloody coup d’état that ended in Sankara’s assassination, in contrast to 1983’s non-violent and more or less respectful coup. The biggest similarity between this coup and Sankara’s coup in 1983? The man who organized the two coups; Blaise Compaoré (told you). That’s right, Sankara was assassinated in a coup that was orchestrated by the same man who orchestrated his own coup. There are many theories behind this betrayal, one of them being that the conservative Blaise Compaoré wanted to become president, but the unpopular and moderately conservative Ouédraogo administration did not provide a good backdrop for a conservative-led coup d’état, so he orchestrated a Marxist coup d’état in hopes of the new leader becoming so unpopular as many Marxist leaders were at the time, which would set a better backdrop for a conservative coup d’état that would seat Compaoré as the new president. However, Sankara’s overwhelming popularity took Compaoré by surprise, so he had to go to more desperate measures to get rid of him.
At the end of the day, Sankara’s tragic assassination ended an administration that was extremely helpful for the people of Burkina Faso and was a beacon of hope and inspiration for other great leaders of Africa, and Sankara should be celebrated way more than he is.
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