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Given the extent of chiefly collaboration with the French authorities, it was little surprise that the chiefs found themselves at odds with the country’s new rulers. In 1962, Maurice Yaméogo, Upper Volta’s first president, cancelled state payments to chiefs and forbade their replacement in case of death or removal from office; the following year, his government abolished the cantons, placing chefs de canton on the same level as the previously subordinate village chiefs.

Sankara was no democrat. He had come to power in a military coup, and was unforgiving towards those he considered to be counter-revolutionaries. His government banned political parties and trade unions, and fired striking teachers. Seven people linked to a plot to overthrow him were executed in 1984. The cdrs (Comités de Défense de la Révolution), which had been set up to mobilize the population behind Sankara’s revolutionary agenda, were widely accused of abuses against those who got in their way. Naturally, the president was unpopular with those whose privileges he attacked, especially the chiefs, whose role he denounced as feudal, ‘retrograde and obscurantist’. [12]

He tried to get Burkina Faso’s donors to co-operate with one another and to fund parts of his programme. The donors, more used to dictating conditions themselves, boycotted his regime—although they would come back for Compaoré.

The Reagan administration had asked to see his un speech in advance, and insisted that certain passages be deleted; when Sankara refused, and declared his solidarity with the Palestinians and with the Sandinista revolution in Nicaragua, he was denied permission to visit Atlanta at the invitation of its African-American mayor Andrew Young. [15] Harsch, Thomas Sankara, pp. 113–5. He also attacked Mitterrand for his complicity with the apartheid regime in South Africa.

Compaoré dismissed his old friend in blunt terms: ‘His success in the international press had so spoiled him that he found it dishonourable to pull back. He preferred to get rid of us. He played the game. He lost.’ [18]

Then as before, there were widespread complaints of fraud, with three-quarters of the population illiterate, and 13 per cent of ballots spoiled. Some voters had been told they were taking part in a test to identify the incumbent. [25] ‘Disbelief Suspended’, Africa Confidential, 18 November 2005. But foreign observers applauded the lack of violence, and La Francophonie, the African Union and the Economic Community of West African States (ecowas) all endorsed the outcome. In an open letter to Compaoré, Chirac praised the ‘dynamism’ of his campaign and expressed his hope for ‘the enrichment, with your help, of the strong and amicable partnership that unites our two countries’. [26]

Compaoré had no such inhibitions: the first loan agreement was signed in 1991. Liberalization and privatization proceeded apace, while social expenditure was pared back; the maternal mortality rate for women registered at health clinics rose from 350 per 100,000 live births in 1990 to 492 in 1995.

His allegory, in which the heron was decked out in borrowed ‘democratic finery’, suggested that a façade of democracy could be more pernicious than none at all. The tale was equally damning about the heron’s sycophantic friends, who approved of him because he appeared to look like them. In the end, the friends betray the heron, taking back their loans and leaving him naked ‘before the eyes of the entire world, a hideous spectacle of brutality and cruelty’. [35] Zongo in Wise, ed., The Desert Shore, p. 166. In the light of recent events, Zongo’s story now seems most prophetic.

The crisis of 2011 differed from that of 1998–99 in two important ways. First, it was less concentrated, in both political and geographical terms. Discontent was not channeled by any organization; the protests developed spontaneously, without leaders or demands; moreover, ‘demonstrations began in the periphery and not the centre’. [45]

This drove a wedge between the rsp and the army; the fact that rsp mutineers escaped punishment, while hundreds of regular soldiers were imprisoned, did nothing to ease tensions. This would prove to be a factor of some importance when the President finally overreached himself.

Africa Confidential suggested that much of the rsp’s anger was directed towards Zida, Diendéré’s former deputy: Diendéré had—wrongly—calculated that Zida would be the instrument by which he could get the transitional government to do his bidding. However, Zida turned out to have a mind of his own and began arguing for the rsp to be dismantled. The coup was, first and foremost, a settling of scores between Zida and his former comrades-in-arms, who felt betrayed by their old second-in-command. [48] ‘The people take on the putschists’, Africa Confidential, 25 September 2015.

The immediate political winners from the uprising had been (very) late arrivals to the party. Kaboré and his ally Salif Diallo had been part of Compaoré’s inner circle until shortly before his ouster. Kaboré, a former banker, served as president of the National Assembly, prime minister and cdp chairman under the old regime; Diallo also held several prestigious portfolios. Their break with Compaoré was triggered by his plan to change the constitution, of which Kaboré had been openly critical for a long time.

An academic (and former Sankara ally), Valère Somé, had published a book charging Diallo with complicity in acts of torture on himself and other prisoners.

Diallo naturally denied everything. The real question, he insisted, was how much Somé had been paid to write such ‘insanities’; it was best not to pay any attention to a man who deserved the ‘Nobel Prize for lying’. [56]

He has recently become an Ivorian citizen in order to stave off the threat of extradition. [58] ‘Burkina Faso ex-leader Blaise Compaoré becomes Ivorian’, bbc News, 24 February 2016. The Abidjan villa where Blaise and Chantal live belongs to the Ivorian Interior Minister Hamed Bakayoko—also, among other things, a good friend of Roch Kaboré. [59]

The ugeb advanced similar criticisms, emphasizing the importance of activism and dissent in creating social change. Four days before the election, they released a statement urging their members to free themselves from ‘electoral illusions’ and remain organized to press demands on the government. The students’ union pointed out that no candidate had proposed a break with the Bretton Woods institutions and the ‘criminal policies of structural adjustment’—indeed, Diallo and Kaboré were ‘the very people who were in business when structural adjustment programmes were introduced’—and warned that ‘students have nothing to hope for from the elections of 29 November 2015.’ [62]

‘Democracy is what happens between elections,’ says Aziz Sana, national co-ordinator of the Mouvement Ça Suffit. ‘It’s the manner of governing and using power. To be always with the people.’ [64]

While Burkinabè trade unions have historically been central players in the country’s politics, they were divided on the overthrow of Compaoré; instead, young people mobilized by musicians like Smockey, as well as social movements and even politicians from the official opposition, played a leading role.

Civil servants and public-sector workers are the most important social base for trade unionism in Burkina Faso, as in many African states. The elimination of public-sector jobs as a result of imf programmes has weakened unions, which now often rely on government subventions and ilo support in order to survive. Furthermore, the unions remain a predominantly urban and middle-class phenomenon, in a country where the vast majority of the workforce earns its living either through subsistence farming or the informal economy: recent estimates suggest that just 2 per cent of informal-sector workers have been unionized. [72]

The year before that album came out, huge protests had stopped Senegal’s President Abdoulaye Wade from extending his twelve-year reign. Awadi and his fellow musicians were instrumental in leading the charge against Wade. A movement of younger rappers and journalists called Y en a Marre gathered momentum, and helped bring thousands of young people onto the streets of Dakar. In March 2012, Wade was defeated at the ballot box; it was a triumph in the face of entrenched power. Next came the victory in Ouagadougou. Like Y en a Marre, Balai was founded by musicians, and initially relied upon their financial support—though the organization soon had its own self-financing branches throughout the country. [74]

It is clear that the space for change which emerged in 2014–15 is already beginning to contract. In his investiture speech, Kaboré cast himself as spokesman for ‘the nation’: ‘the nation is grateful to the brave sons and daughters, fighters for freedom and democracy these past years and especially during the popular uprising.’ He led a minute’s silence for the deceased, saluting Burkina Faso’s young people and the victory of democracy over dictatorship. But the new president went on to rail against ‘incivility, the undermining of the authority of the state’, and insisted that ‘order and discipline must prevail’—‘I am the first to know that the return to normality won’t be easy, but it’s the price we must pay if we don’t want to continue living in a Burkina Faso that runs at different speeds, with an uncertain future, where the gap is widening every day between a dwindling number of the wealthy, who have rights, and the broader masses doomed to poverty and exclusion.’ It sounded as if Kaboré was worried that too much unrest would put off the foreign investors

There is every reason to be wary of this characterization of state power as an individual, a man, an elder, someone who knows better than the Burkinabè people themselves—and of the framing of ‘normality’ as a time when ‘order’ and ‘unity’ must prevail, given that the most forceful expressions of popular sovereignty in Burkinabè politics have come when dissent has managed to hold its head above the parapet.

Sankara was again appointed Prime Minister in another military in January 1983 but dismissed in May 1983 because of revolutionary rhetoric which the French were uncomfortable with.

On 18 September 1989, Jean-Baptiste Boukary Lingani, Henri Zongo and two other officers were arrested, alleged to be plotting to overthrow the regime, and were executed.

When Sankara was overthrown, the usurpers tried to placate all forces alleging the breaking of relations with those who not long before were friends and in this case they listed trade unionists and militant workers as well as relations with neighbouring Cote d’Ivoire and former colonial power – France. Gradually, Compaore reversed all the pro-people policies which were developed during the Thomas Sankara era. Blaise Compaore became a major ally of USA and France in the West African sub-region. He became a peace broker and facilitated peace, being the mediator in the Inter-Togolese Dialogue in 2006, in the crisis of Cote d’Ivoire in 2007 and between representatives of Malian coup d’etat and other regional leaders in 2012. He is also known to have had a hand in the brutal wars in Liberia and Sierra Leone as such being like a double edged knife.

The masses' uprising started on 29 October 2014. On 30 October, tens of thousands of people gathered in the streets and burnt government buildings, including the city hall, the ruling Congress of Democracy and Progress (CDP) party headquarters, and parts of the National Assembly. The state radio and television station was also stormed. A number of people died in the violence as police and soldiers tried to stop the uprising.

In this short but bold message to mark 27 years since the assassination of revolutionary President Thomas Sankara on October 15, his widow outlines some of the challenges facing Burkinabes under the failed Compaore regime and urges continued resistance.

Faced with this new challenge, the Burkinabé people have decided, in their overwhelming majority, to resist by marches which are the expression of the rejection of the policy put in place, disapproval of both the installing of a Senate and the modification of article 37 of the Constitution.

To conclude, I call for a gathering of Sankarists and of all progressive forces that aspire to change for the well-being of all Burkinabés. The fatherland or death, we will win! Madame Mariam SANKARA Montpellier, 14 October 2014

Thomas Sankara’s strategy was defined in his ‘Political Orientation Speech’[1] . It was a defiant alternative to neo-liberal development strategies. In contrast, it aimed to eliminate corruption, avert famine, make education and health real priorities (with a nation-wide literacy campaign and vaccination of 2.5 million children). It launched the most ambitious program for social and economic change ever attempted in Africa[2] .

Sankara and his allies were committed to achieving their egalitarian ideals, but these were imposed rather than being won through collective action of the workers and mass of the poor people. Despite its many significant achievements, this was socialism from above, not the self-emancipation of the working class and popular masses. This approach was to lead to the regime coming into conflict with sections of the working class and its organisations.

A union front was set up in January 1985 against the decline in democratic and trade union freedoms. This was to stay active throughout the “revolutionary” Sankara, period even though the trade unions and independent organisations were considerably weakened as a result of repression (including dismissal of civil servants, arrests and torture, etc).

Sankara was more than a visionary national leader - perhaps of most interest to us today is the way he used international conferences as platforms to demand leaders stand up against the deep structural injustices faced by countries like Burkina Faso. In the mid 1980s, that meant speaking out on the question of debt.

Of course not everything Sankara tried worked. Most controversially was his response to a teachers strike, when he sacked thousands of teachers, replacing them with an army of citizens teachers who were often completely unqualified. Sankara’s system of revolutionary courts were abused by those with personal grievances. He banned trade unions as well as political parties.

But in general, welfare and aid policies have only ended up disorganizing us, subjugating us, and robbing us of a sense of responsibility for our own economic, political, and cultural affairs. We chose to risk new paths to achieve greater well-being.”

“Those who led us into debt were gambling, as if they were in a casino.. there is talk of a crisis. No. They gambled. They lost... We cannot repay the debt because we have nothing to pay it with. We cannot repay the debt because it is not our responsibility.”