Burkina Faso Exploitation-Resistance

Deterioration in relations with neighbouring countries was one of the reasons given, with Compaoré stating that Sankara jeopardised foreign relations with former colonial power France and neighbouring Ivory Coast. 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

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.”

In his betrayal like Mobutu’s betrayal of Patrice Lumumba, Compaoré donned the "white mask" and returned the Burkinabe people and Burkina Faso to a neo-colonialist state.

At a recent, exhilarating and triumphant concert in Memphis by the Afrobeat star Seun Kuti, son of the late Fela and leader of his father’s band Egypt 80, the concert organizers felt compelled to apologize for his politics. Though “IMF,” a standout song from Kuti’s latest album, A Long Way to the Beginning, stands for “International motherfuckers,” it was his good-natured, often funny, but sincere bantering between songs, mostly about poverty and corruption and a few times laced with a swear word or two, which offended the venue management.

Like the Greek “no” voters, however, the audience responded to her with loud boos and later insulted Levitt Shell, the concert venue, on its Facebook page (One of my favorites was the comment describing the giant electronic message as “Orwellian”).

There are no official restrictions on print news. I can't speak for other press'why there is a conspiracy of silence. There are no official restrictions on L'Independant. Unofficially, they tried to bribe me in the first year of operations. I worked for one press where they did bribe the editors so I left and created L'Independant. They came and offered me 50 million CFA (US$ 20,000 [8]) 'just to help you' they said, with the understanding that you won't be critical of the government. One man came, I don't know his name, he said, 'I agree with your writing and President Compaore does too. We want to help you.' But there was an understanding of self-censorship. It was clear the man worked for the government.

Zongo: There are over 200 mining companies operating in Burkina Faso now, all multinationals into gold mining. Many American, Canadian, U.K. and other companies. Multinationals have been heavy here for at least five years; most came with the new government. The situation today is that it is obvious the government has clear links with mining companies. Each company has its own links. There are no restrictions on these companies or other multinationals.

a country which cannot feed itself inevitably risks losing its independence and dignity. Sankara famously questioned: ‘Where is imperialism? Look at your plates when you eat. The imported rice, maize and millet; that is imperialism.’ To avoid this, Sankara insisted: ‘Let us try to eat what we control ourselves.’

Today, at the United Nations, the most conservative states are loudly celebrated for their ‘liberation’ of women, a liberation which is often more illusory than real. The struggle for the liberation of women has become a common one, with the creation of UN Women, parity laws and other measures aimed at women’s economic, social and political emancipation or empowerment. Once again, history demonstrates the prescience and strategic vision of Sankara, who was far ahead of his time.

This kind of movement is alien to the revolutionary ideal of August and those who display it demonstrate their flaws as petty bourgeois opportunists and dangerous counter-revolutionaries.

It is true that Sankara tried to instill a different mentality in the petty intellectual bourgeoisie. Unfortunately, they were quicker to repeat revolutionary slogans than to change their behaviour and lifestyle. In fact, this is one of the major challenges to any economic and socially transformative movement in African countries. Indeed, a number of intellectual ‘revolutionaries,’ once in power, tend to turn their backs on people and almost everywhere, they engage in the pursuit of money and privilege at the expense of the struggle for the decolonisation of the mind and the transformation of economic and social structures inherited from colonialism.

Sankara was a communist and had a great admiration for socialist regimes, including Cuba, which filled him with respect and pride. He recognised that the state was central to successful transformations in these countries. He also knew that a state just emerging from the long and terrible colonial darkness could not rebuild without active and committed leadership. So, 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.

That is why Sankara, participating in his last summit in Addis Ababa in July 1987, had shouted at African leaders asking them to form a united front to demand the cancellation of illegitimate African debt. Because, he said, ‘debt in its current form is a cleverly organised re-conquest of Africa, that its’ growth and development conform to standards and levels which are totally foreign. It ensures that each of us becomes a financial slave, meaning a slave for those who had the opportunity, cunning, and deceit to invest their funds in us with the obligation that we repay. The debt can never be repaid since if we refuse to pay it our lenders will not die. Of that we can be certain. Yet if we do pay it is us who will die. Of that we can be equally certain.’

Sankara embraced the ideas and struggles of his illustrious predecessors, while others are in the process of adopting his ideas and struggles, which are more relevant than ever, since, ‘you cannot kill ideas,’ as he said in a speech in memory of Che Guevara, a week before his assassination.

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.

One of the pre-eminent theoreticians of endogenous development, Professor Joseph Ki-Zerbo, states, ‘If we develop ourselves, it is by drawing from the elements of our own development.’ To put it in another manner, ‘We do not develop. We develop ourselves.’

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.’

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.’

This is the fundamental objective of Thomas Sankara. But he encountered the forces of inertia, such as the Westernised petty bourgeoisie, which constitutes an obstacle to any political rupture aimed at changing society, and the structures inherited from colonialism. It is this inertial force which explains in part the failure of the leftist parties in Africa, notably in ‘francophone’ countries. It is this obstacle which finally undermined the revolution in Burkina Faso and helped to create the conditions which led to the assassination of Thomas Sankara on 15 October, 1987.

In his historic speech of 2 October 1983, he explained that these goals would be achieved through the destruction of the neo-colonial state and the transformation of all socio-economic structures and institutions inherited from colonialism, including the army.

The pursuit of this objective required extraordinary efforts to emancipate mentalities, raise consciousness and mobilise the masses in the Committees for the Defence of the Revolution (CDR) and other revolutionary structures. Despite some of the excesses of the CDR and the other revolutionary structures, there is no doubt that one of the major objectives of the revolution under Sankara was to create the possibility for the people to speak and express themselves freely and in so doing build their self-confidence. In this, the revolution was profoundly democratic and popular. Sankara once stated: ‘Misfortune will befall those who silence their people.’ This warning reflected the importance he placed on freedom of expression, an indispensable condition for encouraging Burkinabés at all levels of society to speak their mind.

One of the weaknesses of the revolution was related to the fact that the social forces that had a stake in its success—peasants and workers (both manual and intellectual)—may not have had the ideological tools that would have enabled them to better understand and support the pace of revolutionary change.

One of the lessons is the difficulty of building a sustainable and victorious relationship between the army and progressive intellectuals.

Another lesson relates to the destiny of military coups: can a coup d’état truly serve as the basis for sustainable revolutionary change or is it condemned to be a flash in the pan? This question surely begs others. The point is that African revolutionary forces must study the lessons that can be learned form this experience in order to better pursue current and future struggles.