Thomas Sankara

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Thomas Isidore Noël Sankara
5th President of Upper Volta
In office
August 4, 1983 – August 4, 1984
Preceded by Jean-Baptiste Ouédraogo
None (country renamed to Burkina
Succeeded by
Faso)
1st President of Burkina Faso
In office
August 4, 1984 – October 15, 1987
None (country renamed from Upper
Preceded by
Volta)
Succeeded by Blaise Compaoré
December 21, 1949
Born Yako, Upper Volta (now Burkina Faso),
French West Africa
October 15, 1987 (aged 37)
Died
Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso
Nationality Burkinabé
Political party none (military)
Spouse Mariam Sankara[1]
Religion Roman Catholic

Captain Thomas Isidore Noël Sankara (December 21, 1949 – October 15, 1987) was the leader
of Burkina Faso (formerly known as Upper Volta) from 1983 to 1987. While noted for his
personal charisma and praised for promoting health and women's rights, he also antagonised
many vested interests in the country.[2] He was overthrown and assassinated in a coup d'état led
by Blaise Compaoré on October 15, 1987, sometimes believed to have been at the instruction of
France.

Contents
[hide]

• 1 Early life
• 2 Military career
• 3 Government posts
• 4 President
 • 5 Abolition of chiefs' privileges
• 6 Women's rights
• 7 Second Agacher strip war
• 8 Assassination
• 9 Writings by Thomas Sankara
• 10 Quotes
• 11 Notes and references
• 12 Further reading

• 13 External links

[edit] Early life

Thomas Sankara was the son of Marguerite Sankara (died March 6, 2000) and Sambo Joseph
Sankara (1919 – August 4, 2006), a gendarme.[3] Born into a Roman Catholic family,
"Thom'Sank" was a Silmi-Mossi, an ethnic group that originated with marriage between Mossi
men and women of the pastoralist Fulani people. The Silmi-Mossi are among the least
advantaged in the Mossi caste system. He attended primary school in Gaoua and high school in
Bobo-Dioulasso, the country's second city.

His father fought in the French army during World War II and was detained by the Nazis.
Sankara's family wanted him to become a Catholic priest. According to some sources,[4] he never
lost his Catholic faith despite his Marxist tendencies. Fittingly for a country with a large Muslim
population, he was also familiar with the Qur'an.

[edit] Military career

After basic military training in secondary school in 1966, Sankara began his military career at the
age of 19, and a year later he was sent to Madagascar for officer training at Antsirabe where he
witnessed popular uprisings in 1971 and 1972. Returning to Upper Volta in 1972, in 1974 he
fought in a border war between Upper Volta and Mali.

He became a popular figure in the capital of Ouagadougou. The fact that he was a decent
guitarist (he played in a band named "Tout-à-Coup Jazz") and liked motorbikes may have
contributed to his charisma.

In 1976 he became commander of the Commando Training Centre in Pô. In the same year he met
Blaise Compaoré in Morocco. During the presidency of Colonel Saye Zerbo a group of young
officers formed a secret organisation "Communist Officers' Group" (Regroupement des officiers
communistes, or ROC) the best-known members being Henri Zongo, Jean-Baptiste Boukary
Lingani, Compaoré and Sankara.

[edit] Government posts

Sankara was appointed Secretary of State for Information in the military government in
September 1981, journeying to his first cabinet meeting on a bicycle, but he resigned on April
21, 1982 in opposition to what he saw as the regime's anti-labour drift, declaring "Misfortune to
those who gag the people!" ("Malheur à ceux qui baillonnent le peuple!")

After another coup (November 7, 1982) brought to power Major-Doctor Jean-Baptiste

Ouédraogo, Sankara became prime minister in January 1983, but he was dismissed (May 17) and
placed under house arrest after a visit by the French president's son and African affairs adviser
Jean-Christophe Mitterrand. Henri Zongo and Jean-Baptiste Boukary Lingani were also placed
under arrest; this caused a popular uprising.

[edit] President
A coup d'état organised by Blaise Compaoré made Sankara President on August 4, 1983,[5] at the
age of 33. The coup d'état was supported by Libya which was, at the time, on the verge of war
with France in Chad[6] (see History of Chad).

Sankara saw himself as a revolutionary and was inspired by the examples of Cuba and Ghana's
military leader, Flight Lt. Jerry Rawlings. As President, he promoted the "Democratic and
Popular Revolution" (Révolution démocratique et populaire, or RDP).

The ideology of the Revolution was defined by Sankara as anti-imperialist in a speech of

October 2, 1983, the Discours d'orientation politique (DOP), written by his close associate
Valère Somé. His policy was oriented toward fighting corruption, promoting reforestation,
averting famine, and making education and health real priorities.

[edit] Abolition of chiefs' privileges

The government suppressed many of the powers held by tribal chiefs such as their right to
receive tribute payment and obligatory labour. The CDRs (Comités de Défense de la Révolution)
were formed as popular mass organizations and armed. In some areas they deteriorated into
gangs of armed thugs. Sankara's government also initiated a form of military conscription with
the SERNAPO (Service National et Populaire). Both were a counterweight to the power of the
army.

In 1984, on the first anniversary of his accession, he renamed the country Burkina Faso, meaning
"the land of upright people" in Mossi and Djula, the two major languages of the country. He also
gave it a new flag and wrote a new national anthem (Une Seule Nuit).

[edit] Women's rights

Sankara's government included a large number of women. Improving women's status was one of
Sankara's explicit goals, an unprecedented policy priority in West Africa. His government
banned female genital cutting, condemned polygamy, and promoted contraception. The
Burkinabé government was also the first African government to publicly recognize AIDS as a
major threat to Africa[citation needed].

Sankara had some original initiatives that contributed to his popularity and brought some
international media attention to the Burkinabé revolution:

• He sold most of 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 formed an all-women motorcycle personal guard.
• In Ouagadougou, Sankara converted the army's provisioning store into a state-owned
supermarket open to everyone (the first supermarket in the country).

[edit] Second Agacher strip war

In 1985 Burkina Faso organised a general population census. During the census some Fula
camps in Mali were visited by mistake by Burkinabé census agents. The Malian government
claimed that it was an act of sovereignty on the Agacher strip and on Christmas Day 1985,
tensions with Mali erupted in a war that lasted five days and killed about 100 people (most
victims were civilians killed by a bomb dropped on the marketplace in Ouahigouya by a Malian
MiG plane). The conflict is known as the "Christmas war" in Burkina Faso.

[edit] Assassination
On October 15, 1987 Sankara was killed with twelve other officials in a coup d'état organised by
his former colleague, Compaoré. Deterioration in relations with neighbouring countries was one
of the reasons given by Compaoré for his action. Prince Johnson, a former Liberian warlord
allied to Charles Taylor, told Liberia's Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) that it was
engineered by Charles Taylor.[7] After the coup and although Sankara was known to be dead,
some CDRs mounted an armed resistance to the army for several days.

Sankara was quickly buried in an unmarked grave. A week prior to his death Sankara addressed
people and said that "while revolutionaries as individuals can be murdered, you cannot kill
ideas."

[edit] Writings by Thomas Sankara

• L'émancipation des femmes et la lutte de libération de l'Afrique (Women's Liberation and
the African Freedom Struggle),
• We Are Heirs of the World's Revolutions
• Thomas Sankara Speaks, the Burkina Faso Revolution, 1983-87[8], a 448-page collection
of Sankara's speeches
[edit] Quotes
"We hope and believe that the best way of limiting the usurpation of power by individuals,
military or otherwise, is to put the people in charge. Between fractions, between clans, plots and
coups d'etats can be perpetrated. Against the people, a durable coup d'état cannot be perpetrated.
Therefore, the best way of preventing the army from confiscating power for itself and for itself
alone is to make this power shared by the voltaic people from the outset. That's what we are
aiming for.."

August 21, 1983 press conference.

Source: [3]

"It's really a pity that there are observers who view political events like comic strips. There has to
be a Zorro, there has to be a star. No, the problem of Upper Volta is more serious than that. It
was a grave mistake to have looked for a man, a star, at all costs, to the point of creating one, that
is, to the point of attributing the ownership of the event to captain Sankara, who must have been
the brains, etc."

August 21, 1983 press conference.

Source: [4]

"That is the hidden side of November 7 revealed. Mysteries still remain under the cover. History
will perhaps be able to speak about it at greater length and to assign responsibilities more
clearly."

August 21, 1983 press conference.

Source: [5]

"As for our relationship with the political class, what relations would you have liked us to
weave? We explained face to face, directly with the leaders, the former leaders of the former
political parties because, for us, these parties do not exist any more, they have been dissolved.
And that is very clear. The relationship that we have with them is simply the relationship we
have with voltaic citizens, or, if they so wish, the relationship between revolutionaries, if they
wish to become revolutionaries. Beyond that, nothing remains but the relationship between
revolutionaries and counter-revolutionaries."

August 21, 1983 press conference.

Source: [6]

"I would like to leave behind me the conviction that if we maintain a certain amount of caution
and organization we deserve victory[....] You cannot carry out fundamental change without a
certain amount of madness. In this case, it comes from nonconformity, the courage to turn your
back on the old formulas, the courage to invent the future. It took the madmen of yesterday for us
to be able to act with extreme clarity today. I want to be one of those madmen. [...] We must dare
to invent the future."

1985

Source: (Excerpt from interviews with Swiss Journalist Jean-Philippe Rapp, translated from
Sankara: Un nouveau pouvoir africain by Jean Ziegler. Lausanne, Switzerland: Editions Pierre-
Marcel Favre, 1986. Used by permission in following source:) Sankara, Thomas. Thomas
Sankara Speaks: The Burkina Faso Revolution 1983-87. trans. Samantha Anderson. New York:
Pathfinder, 1988. pp. 141-144.

"A military without political training is a potential criminal."

[edit] Notes and references

1. ^ Defining the scope of "adequate and effective remedies" under the International
Covenant on Civil and Political Rights: Sankara v. Burkina Faso 1159/2003
2. ^ BBC NEWS | Africa | Burkina commemorates slain leader
3. ^ [1] [2]
4. ^ Bruno Jaffré
5. ^ The date may have been chosen for a symbolic purpose as the 194th anniversary of the
Abolition of Feudal Privileges in France, but there is no evidence.
6. ^ Chad was at war with Libya. France was providing air support to Chad. According to
some witnesses some French troops were involved in ground operations.
7. ^ [ http://www.mg.co.za/article/2008-08-27-us-freed-taylor-to-overthrow-doe-liberias-
trc-hears US freed Taylor to overthrow Doe, Liberia's TRC hears]
8. ^ http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0873489861

[edit] Further reading

• Thomas Sankara Speaks: The Burkina Faso Revolution, 1983-87, by Thomas Sankara,
Pathfinder Press, 1988, ISBN 0873485270
• We Are the Heirs of the World's Revolutions: Speeches from the Burkina Faso Revolution
1983-87, by Thomas Sankara, Pathfinder Press, 2007, ISBN 0873489896
• Women's Liberation and the African Freedom Struggle, by Thomas Sankara, Pathfinder
Press, 1990, ISBN 0873485858

[edit] External links

• African Revolutionary Thomas Sankara's Example Lives on by Demba Moussa Dembélé,
International Journal of Socialist Renewal
• A Grisly Assassination That Will Not Stay Buried by Howard French, The New York
Times, March 10 1997
• Burkina Faso Salutes "Africa's Che" Thomas Sankara Reuters UK, October 17 2007
• Interview With Aziz Fall On the Assassination of Thomas Sankara October 17 2007