Burkina Faso Exploitation-Resistance

We look on with puzzlement as Burkina Faso exports high quality vegetables and potatoes and strawberries to France.We take refuge only in our belief that we have a democracy and Mr Compaore, for all his peace-making and sophisticated outlook, was presiding over a fragile state.

When he built an impressive beachfront estate in the central region of our country, some of us wondered if Mr Compaore could possibly have been making retirement plans.Unfortunately he had obviously come to believe he was so much smarter than his neighbours; he had seen off three Ghanaian presidents - Mr Rawlings, John Kufuor and John Atta Mills. So why would he not outlast the incumbent, John Dramani Mahama? But the Burkinabe people had had enough, they intervened dramatically and the smooth operator had to flee to Ivory Coast; dishevelled and ruffled.I wish I could see the photo.

Back then our leader, Flight Lieutenant Jerry Rawlings was best friends with Thomas Sankara, and the suspicions made it difficult for relations to be warm between the two soldiers.

In the early 1990s, Mr Compaore, our neighbour, always seemed to manage to get the best of both worlds.I remember Captain Valentine Strasser telling me soon after he had overthrown Sierra Leone's President Joseph Momoh in 1992 that his inspiration was Mr Rawlings.

From the perspective of themasses it was a democratic reform, while from the point of view of imperialism it was only a change in the form of domination and exploitation of our people.

In alliance with the reactionary forces of traditional society, the petty bourgeois intellectuals of the time, in total disregard of the fundamental masses who had served as a springboard fortheir rise to power, began to organize political and economic foundations of new forms of imperialist domination and exploitation.

Driven by their own selfish interests, they will stop now before more ways the most dishonest, developing large-scale corruption, misappropriation of funds andpublic thing, influence-peddling and real estate speculation, practicing favoritism and nepotism.

In the vast majority of employees, despite the fact that they are assured of a steady income suffer constraints and pitfalls of the capitalist consumer society. All have seen their wages consumed before it has touched. And the cycle continues without end, without any prospect of failure. Within their respective unions, employees engage Struggles for improving their living conditions. The magnitude of these struggles sometimes forced neocolonial powers in place to make concessions. But they do give a hand to recover immediately from another.

Gambian President Yahya Jammeh, Blaise Compaoré, Thomas Sankara, Domingo Guengeré, and ... Foday Sankoh, as well as the man from Chad, whose name I can’t recall, had all been trained in Libya and were all friends. They are the ones who actually organised the Burkina revolution and installed Sankara as president. Once in power, he set about putting in place his plans. The next thing you know, the US had infiltrated the liberation movements and set about overthrowing Sankara, who was leaning too far left. The Americans were not happy with Sankara. He was talking of nationalising his country’s resources to benefit his people. He was a socialist so he had to go.

But the spectre of external debt racked up by past corrupt governments loomed. Sankara was fighting on the global stage against this new debt-slavery.

We must speak in one voice, saying this debt cannot be paid. And since I am the lone voice, I will be assassinated. We must say together, we cannot pay, because we have to work to build a future for our people. If only Burkina Faso refuses to pay, I will not be here at the next conference.

My boss told me to approach Sankara for help in taking power in Liberia. In return, he offered lucrative business opportunities. Thomas Sankara told him he was not interested and asked him to leave the country. He told him that he would not help and asked him to find another staging point for his rebellion. Guengere, who is currently Burkina Faso’s minister of defence, Blaise Compaoré, Charles Taylor, and Chad’s current president … you know who he is?

Ghanaian political scientist Eboe Hutchful who serves as the executive director of the Accra-based NGO, African Security Dialogue and Research, has suggested that his Ghanaian informants dispute the idea that Ghana released Taylor to Compaore; rather they contend that he was taken to the Ivorian border and released there. From Ivory Coast he is said to have made his way to Burkina Faso, “where the Libyans introduced him to Compaore,” rather than the other way around. Moreover, Hutchful suggests that Sankara may have already been killed by the time the Ghanaian authorities released Taylor.

Burkinabe built for the first time scores of schools, health centers, water reservoirs, and nearly 100 km of rail, with little or no external assistance. Total cereal production rose by 75% between 1983 and 1986. In 1984, his government, defying skepticism from the donor agencies, organized the vaccination of 2 million children in a little over two weeks. He also championed environmental conservation with tree-planting campaigns and greening projects.

Harsch quotes a former aide describing Sankara as “an idealist, demanding, rigorous, an organizer.” This discipline and seriousness started with himself. He had been first among top leadership to voluntary declare his modest assets and hand over to the treasury cash and gifts received during trips.