Burkina Faso Exploitation-Resistance

The Burkina Faso leader had certain distinct blind spots: his rule was by no means unimpeachable and had an authoritarian bite. Sankara replaced political parties with “committees”, which he saw as a more direct form of public participation. He didn’t care for the unions, and after a general strike in 1985, he fired 1,300 civil servants and replaced them with often under-qualified loyalists. He instituted a type of public justice in the form of “revolutionary tribunals”, where people were punished for corruption but apparently also far vaguer crimes like being a lazy worker, or a “counter-revolutionary”. Sankara also increasingly clamped down on media freedom – somewhat ironically, since during his stint as Information Minister in the previous government, he reportedly resigned with the words “Misfortune to those who gag the people!”

Compaoré soon won back the support of Western powers by re-liberalising the economy and immediately re-joining the IMF and the World Bank. Today Burkina Faso remains one of the least developed countries in the world.

In other words, Sankara didn’t simply rail against violence against women or pay lip service to the need for gender parity. He was, to quote writer Sokari Ekrine, “meticulous in explaining class relations and the everyday ways in which African masculinities work in collaboration with capital in exploiting women’s labour and abuse of their dignity”.

Sankara showed already at an early stage of the revolution that he took global interconnectivities into account in the country’s political orientation. This becomes apparent when he points at the activities of capitalist forces in Burkina Faso and when one recognizes his awareness of international political power and economic dynamics. Moreover, Sankara stresses the importance of the peasantry and that the people of Burkina Faso have to thank these peasants for the country’s wealth.[24] By the time of the revolution, approximately 90 percent of the population were subsistence farmers or cattle herders.[25]

Look on your plates when you eat imported rice, wheat, and millet – it is as close as that. We can produce enough to feed ourselves, but because of our lack of organization, we are required to hold our hands for food aid, food aid that blocks us and instills in us the reflex of beggars. We have to make this aid unnecessary by our own production.[27]

While there were still 658.786 MT of Sorghum produced in 1981, five years later the production of the same commodity had already increased to 1.010.919 MT.[30] With that, Burkina Faso could report an over-production. These years marked the period when the country could for the first time guarantee a sufficient food production for its people. However, all these efforts to reach an increase in agricultural production were directly connected to the protection and conservation of land suitable for cultivation. Especially against the background of advancing desertification, Sankara recognized the importance of conservationist initiatives. This was done by fighting illegal clearance of the forests, against bush fires and against the illegal unregulated wood trade.[31] Besides that, a vast number of trees were planted by the masses for reforestation purposes.[32]

This included improving the conditions for agricultural production like irrigation systems, natural fertilizer provision as well as the creation of a local demand for the locally produced food products. Furthermore, improving the health care situation as well as the educational sector was of main importance.

Therefore, large schooling and vaccination campaigns were initiated although against the reservations of international institutions such as IMF or World Bank.[33]

Sankara always stressed that anyone could participate in the ongoing revolutionary changes as long as this participation would go on in accordance with the will of the people of Burkina Faso. Particularly in regard to the country’s level of indebtedness and the involvement of the IMF in Burkina Faso’s national budget, Minister of Financial Resources Damo Baro is quoted saying: We don’t have any particular problem with the IMF, but we prefer to prepare ourselves very carefully before we approach it, which is what we are currently doing. If we do strike a deal with the IMF, the main purpose will be to allow us to reschedule our debts, as most of the loans that were contracted with a 10-year grace period are now falling due.[34]

Particularly in the financial sector, the administration realized that it would be crucial for further national development to guarantee as much independence from foreign capital as possible. Measures were undertaken in order to prevent foreign multinational companies from making profits from economic sectors such as the cotton industry without participation of the population.

The increasing importance of global interconnectivities on both political and economic levels was among the issues that shaped initiatives during the revolution. The efforts of the revolutionary government to achieve the goal of sustainable and sovereign food security had local as well as regional/global dimensions. As has been shown, actions that were undertaken all aimed at the well-being of the people of Burkina Faso while positioning the country and its economy in the wider context of external markets and power structures.