Burkina Faso Exploitation-Resistance

A civilian interim president, Michel Kafando, was appointed this week to guide the country on the southern fringes of the Sahara desert through to an election next year.

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).

Basically, Thomas Sankara’s only motivation was a formidable desire to make his country progress, to put it back on the map, improve the living conditions of the poor and give his people back their dignity. He and his comrades endeavoured to put in place original policies, within the political context of the time, which would enable them to attain their objectives.

With eyes filled with fear, the Burkinabe intellectual who offered to act as tour guide begged that his name not be mentioned in connection with Thomas Sankara. ‘It is forbidden to talk about him in this country,’ he emphasized repeatedly.

The infrastructural legacy he left behind pales into insignificance when compared with the fact that by the fourth and final year of his reign, Burkina Faso had risen from a net importer of food to being self-sufficient in food production.

‘We are looking for the cemetery,’ the tour guide asks two elderly Burkinabe men lounging under the shade of a tree, one of the ten million planted by Thomas Sankara, which now gives Ouagadougou an earthy, relaxed and welcoming feel, despite the scorching heat and dust.

Standing beside the dilapidation that is Captain Thomas Sankara’s grave, eyes, heart and mind search for answers. Is this really where lies Thomas Noel Isidore Sankara? The president who insisted on riding a bicycle to work for a long time and who would not even use the air conditioner in his office because it was only a few of his countrymen who could afford it? In opposition to foreign aid, he told his country that ‘he who feeds you, controls you.’ Thomas Sankara dared the feudal landlords of his country by redistributing land to peasants and in less than two years, production of wheat jumped from 1700 kg per hectare to 3800 kg, launching Burkina Faso into food self-sufficiency.

After four years of being the president of a mineral-rich country, Captain Sankara, in death, had only about $400 in cash to his name, three guitars, four bikes, a fridge and a broken down freezer as his most valuable assets.

Thomas Sankara was one of the few French-speaking African leaders to stand up to France. Some have said that that was his undoing; a weak nobody fighting a powerful, age old establishment with full frontal force. Thomas Sankara should have fought to live, in order to keep fighting, many say. When he spoke, during the OAU summit, urging fellow African leaders to shun debt and dependency and negotiate with the West as equals, he thumb-printed his assassination declaration. Like DR Congo’s Patrice Lumumba did with the speech during Congo’s independence ceremony.

Sankara made no secret of his Marxist leanings, which were not shared by many of his associates. To surround himself with competent, motivated people, he built up a group of 150 carefully selected presidential aides who, with a few political ideologists, became the best-educated administrators.

For Sankara, the revolution meant practical improvement of living conditions. It was a break with the past in all areas: transformation of the administration; redistribution of wealth; women’s liberation; abolition of the powers of the tribal chiefs, who were held responsible for rural backwardness; the attempt to turn the peasantry into a revolutionary social class; transformation of the army, which was placed at the service of the people and assigned production tasks; decentralisation and the introduction of direct democracy via local Committees for the Defence of the Revolution (CDR). They all combined with the fight against corruption. On 4 August 1984 Upper Volta was renamed Burkina Faso, ‘land of the righteous.’

he aim was to promote autonomous economic development that did not depend on outside aid. Sankara said: ‘Food aid... becomes embedded in our brains. Enough of reacting like beggars living on handouts. We have to produce, produce more, because he who feeds you will also impose his will on you.’

As a spokesman for the Third World, Sankara criticised the international order. His themes – the injustice inflicted by globalisation and the international financial system, the omnipresence of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, the vicious circle of third world debt – were similar to the modern alternative world movement. Sankara argued that third world debt was caused by the ‘alluring proposals of technical assassins’ from financial institutions. Debt was the means for ‘the deliberately organised re-conquest of Africa, a way of ensuring that its growth and development conform to stages and standards entirely alien to us.’ Burkina Faso decided not to seek any loans from the IMF, which wanted to impose its own conditions.

The CDRs, set up so rapidly, were responsible for exercising power in the name of the people. Their work went beyond public security: political education, sanitation, development of production and participation in budget control in the ministries. They discussed and rejected several national projects. But they were also responsible for many excesses and acts of repression. They spearheaded attacks on the unions, which they considered dangerous because unions were controlled by such organisations as the PAI, which went into opposition in August 1984, and the Revolutionary Communist Party of Volta. Sankara was the first to denounce the excesses and shortcomings of the CDRs, which were often due to in-fighting among organisations supporting the revolution.

According to Jeune Afrique (2 June 1988), which published the writing of Jacques Foccart (1), ‘number two in a revolution in which he no longer believed… Blaise met his French counterpart Jacques Chirac, then prime minister, through the offices of the president of Ivory Coast, Felix Houphouët-Boigny, and Jacques Foccart, who introduced him to the general staff of the French right, especially Charles Pasqua.’ François Xavier Verschave claims: ‘Muammar Gadafy and Françafrique (2) had more and more causes in common, cemented by anti-Americanism and enlightened self-interest. The elimination of Sankara was probably the founding rite in their alliance. In 1987 Foccart and the people round Gadafy agreed to replace the exasperatingly honest and independent leader by the infinitely more amenable Blaise Compaoré.’ (3).

Compaoré’s takeover as president had consequences beyond Burkina Faso’s borders. The emerging Françafrique alliance drew in politicians, military leaders and entrepreneurs from Ivory Coast, France, Libya and Burkina Faso. It supported Charles Taylor, now being tried by the Special Court for Sierra Leone in The Hague. Compaoré is portrayed as a man of peace who is sponsoring reconciliation between the warring factions.

The first Popular Development Plan (PPD), from October 1984 to December 1985 was adopted after a participatory and democratic process including the most remote villages. The financing of the plan was 100 percent Burkinabe. It must be noted that from 1985 to 1988, during Sankara’s presidency, Burkina Faso did not receive any foreign ‘aid’ from the West, including France, nor the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). He had relied entirely on his own strength and the solidarity of friendly countries sharing the same vision and ideals. Popular mobilisation, mainly through the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution (CDR), and the spirit of relying on one’s own forces saw 85 percent of the PPD’s objectives realised. In one year, 250 reservoirs were built and 3000 wells drilled. This does not even take into account the other achievements in the fields of health, housing, education, agricultural production, etc.

Relying on one’s own strength also means accepting to live within one’s means and make the best use of available resources. This guarantees dignity and freedom. President Sékou Touré of Guinea had the audacity and temerity to state this in front of General de Gaulle in 1958 in his famous phrase: ‘We prefer freedom in poverty to slavery in opulence.’

Living free also means to avoid the pitfalls and humiliations of the supposed ‘development aid’ which has contributed to the under-development of Africa and its dependency. As Sankara states: ‘Of course, we encourage everyone to help us eliminate aid. But in general, aid policies leave us disorganised, by undermining our sense of responsibility for our own economic, political and cultural affairs. We have taken the risk of borrowing new ways to realise our own well-being.’

for him, the state must be central in the process of economic, social and cultural transformation. It was under the leadership of the state and its institutions that the masses were mobilised to participate in the first PPD. But, after his assassination, when Burkina Faso knelt before the World Bank and the IMF, the state was vilified and stripped of its basic functions for the benefit of foreign capital, with consequences which we well know. The decline of the state led to the deterioration of living standards, as is common in other African countries. The failures of structural adjustment programs (SAP) and the collapse of market fundamentalism requires the re-emergence of the state. It is in this context that Cea (2011) and UNCTAD (2007) urged African countries to build developmental states in order to become active agents in development, like the Asian ‘Tigers’ or ‘Dragons’ and the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa).

Always connected to the external debt of the continent, Thomas Sankara was one of the few African leaders, if not the only, to have criticised and rejected the adjustment policies of the World Bank and IMF, which have increased the debt burden and impoverished African countries. His government refused any form of collaboration with these institutions and rejected their ‘help.’ He developed and implemented his own self-adjustment program, which had been supported by the people who understood the merits of his policies and the sacrifices required of all, both citizens and leaders.

Today, whilst both South Africa and Namibia are formally independent and ruled by African majorities, the people of the Western Sahara continue to remain under occupation by Morocco. Today, which African leader publicly sides with the Palestinian and Saharaoui peoples and demands the withdrawal of Morocco and Israel from the land of the Saharaoui and Palestinian people?

Similarly, Sankara’s internationalism extended to his visit to Grenada where he met the then Prime Minister Maurice Bishop before he was tragically assassinated by the forces of imperialism. In his address to the Harriet Tubman School in Harlem in October 1984, Sankara mentioned his meeting with Bishop and how they gave each other ‘some mutual advice.’ He also watched a ballet at the school and told the crowd: ‘As I watched your ballet, I really thought I was in Africa’ – to which he received an applause that was prolonged when he added: ‘That is why, as I have always said – and I’ll say it again – that our White House is in black Harlem.’ [12]

he reiterated his stand with the peoples of Afghanistan, Ireland, Grenada, East Timor, Western Sahara, South Africa, and Ireland at a time when all these peoples confronted political and economic domination. He specifically condemned foreign aggression against the island of Grenada an

Back in 1986 he correctly denounced ‘fallacious Malthusian arguments’ that Africa was overpopulated and made a radical proposal that ‘at least 1 percent of the colossal sums of money sacrificed to the search for cohabitation with other planets be used by way of compensation to finance the fight to save our trees and life.’ To cite him at some length, Sankara eloquently declared: ‘While we have not abandoned hope that a dialogue with the Martians could result in the reconquest of Eden, we believe that in the meantime, as earthlings, we also have the right to reject an alternative limited to simply a choice between hell or purgatory.

The height at which he always refused, despite strong pressure from his entourage, to eliminate his opponent who was also his best friend, is enough to place him among the rank of great men of modern history. One rests in peace with himself, while the other has to live with his conscience.

His popularity derived from the qualities that he used while in power: in his energy, his intelligence, his creativity, his resolution, the scope of work that he was able to accomplish, his ability to lead his entourage and his people, but also in his integrity and his moral rectitude.

Is it only a dream to want to build a society in which this minimum can be realized? Certainly even the richest countries such as France or the United States have not managed to meet these needs for everyone. It is not because they lack the means but rather with globalization, now the motor of society is based on the search for profitability rather than the satisfaction of basic human needs. The word revolution is henceforth absent from political debate, as it has been so totally perverted. How can we make the satisfaction of basic human needs of primary importance again?

The only real criticisms that could be leveled against him is that he took power when he was too young; that he wanted to move very quickly in a very difficult situation with respect to the objectives of the revolution and the available means to achieve them. In the end, Sankara can be reproached for having been too human, too sensitive. It is his humanity that forced him to push his entourage to tackle a task that many thought inhumane because it was too ambitious.

Here we come to the limits of the action of a man facing the objective realities in a specific historical context. Productive forces were hardly developed in Upper Volta. The revolution did not consist of seizing the property of the middle-class owners of the means of production which were quasi non-existent, to put them in the hands of the people, but rather to create a national industry. This cannot be done in four years.

The revolution was focused above all on developing a truly national economy, on trying to break free from political and economic external pressures and on resisting efforts at destabilization. We showed (on this subject) all the obstacles from the donors that Burkina Faso faced. Finally, Upper Volta has very little mineral resources; a large part of its territory suffers from drought. It is in this context that the revolution broke out. Upon what forces could it rely in the absence of a working class or a politically aware peasantry? On the urban petit bourgeoisie made up essentially of salaried civil servants or intellectuals, on a part of the army whose commitment is necessarily limited, on young academics and on the numerous unemployed. As for organized political forces, capable of leading the process, they were weak and the best structured were dismissed in the first year. Others were lost to internal fighting. It is in this context that the army gained so much weight in seizing power then in the leadership of the revolution and finally in the tragic outcome of the crisis.

The journey of Thomas Sankara from childhood to the presidency of the republic did not make him a hero. Although he had a good disposition and lived, despite the difficulties that he knew, a privileged childhood compared to most of his fellow countrymen of his generation. But for the rest, the key to his rising were, work, observation, study, perseverance, resolution, listening, curiosity, a thirst for knowledge, loyalty.

In reviewing the different stages of his life it appears as though he was constantly on the alert and that he knew how to maximize each one of his experiences to get the best out of them. From his childhood he remembers how unacceptable injustice was; from his religious education he retains the lessons of humility from Jesus and a certain humanism; from his adolescence he recalls his classical training and assuredly lessons about the French revolution; from his encounters with Marxism the rigor of the analysis of social relations and the prospects of change; from his stay in Madagascar, valuable lessons about the economy but also a real-life experience of a revolution; and from the war with Mali, a horror of blood spilt needlessly. Is it necessary to continue?

Cameroonian gay rights activist Eric Ohena Lembembe wrote in his last blog post: ‘Unfortunately, a climate of hatred and bigotry in Cameroon, which extends to high levels in government, reassures homophobes that they can get away with these crimes.’ This July, his body was found in his home, covered with iron burns, his hands and feet broken.

He continued, asserting that homosexuality was imported from the West during colonization and as a weapon to control African governments since. The ties between sexuality and power in African politics resound, alternating between claims that politicians sexually devour women or undergo homosexual rites of passage to achieve political statue. This reaches the highest echelons including, for example, the rumour that Cameroonian President Paul Biya subsumed the office only after being ritually sodomozed by the former President Ahmadou Ahidjo.

The key ideas of the political ideology of Thomas Sankara - including warmth and compassion towards other humans, dignity for peasants, self-sufficiency for all Burkinabes, women’s emancipation (“l’emancipation de la femme burkinabé”), and a politics of anti-imperialism - along with his thoughtful considerations of Burkinabe traditions and histories assert Pan-African alternatives to the discourse and practices of homophobia that are based on supposedly anti-imperialist ideologies. The great irony is, of course, the importation of homophobic discourse and law to Africa from the West, namely US evangelical groups.

Dynamic African leaders such as Ft. Lt. Jerry John Rawlings of Ghana, Yoweri Musevini of Uganda, Paul Kagame of Rwanda, Meles Zenawi of Ethiopia, Isaias Aferworki of Eritrea and several others, followed in the footsteps of Africa’s founding fathers, and sought to reverse the decline of the continent and build progressive nations in which people’s rights are respected, in which different ethnic groups lived together in peace and harmony and a world in which Africans were respected on equal terms with others. ‘Developmentalism’ became the new ideology of the day. Future generations will judge them but for now, let us celebrate their good intentions.

It should be noted that Burkina Faso and its capital Ouagadougou is one of the most historic places in West Africa. It was the scene to intellectual and cultural renaissance before colonialism desecrated this land.