Dear Editor,
On the 21st of December, 2024, Thomas Sankara would have celebrated his 75th birthday had he been alive and other things being equal. But as fate would have it Sankara – who oversaw the renaming of the then French west African republic of Upper Volta to Burkina Faso – was assassinated in a military coup on the 13th of October, 1987. Sankara’s rapid ascension to the pinnacle of political power in Burkina Faso (land of the upright people) was enabled by his Marxist-leaning revolutionary ideas and overwhelming popular support – a result of his anti-imperialist stance and his impassioned determination and commitment to see his people become self-reliant.
Thomas Sankara’s early revolutionary fervour and political consciousness had its genesis in him being exposed to progressive ideas and Marxist narratives while he was attending military academy in Madagascar. An astute and well read military officer, Sankara rose to the rank of Captain, subsequently deposing Jean-Baptiste Ouedraogo to become President of Burkina Faso at age 34. A man of the Burkinabe people, Thomas Sankara became increasingly incensed at what he considered was the pilfering and looting of his country’s relatively limited resources. He witnessed the exploitation of his people by imperialist forces who were in collusion with corrupt public officials and Burkina’s Faso ruling class.
Domestically, radical ecological, social and economic reforms during his presidency were initiated and sincerely intended to reverse the misuse of his country’s nominal natural resources and people. Sankara’s deep resolve and devotion to develop the capacities of his people in pursuit of their self-reliance was influenced by leftist political ideologies and Pan-Africanism. He became a beacon of hope for the disillusioned, poverty-stricken, politically unconscious and exploited masses at home and in the diaspora.
Like Che Guevara, Sankara’s people-oriented visions, his integrity, sincerity and authentic nature were reassuring and trustworthy to the multitudes in Burkina Faso, many of whom sought from him daily motivation to inspire their sense of dread and hopelessness. For the people of Burkina Faso, Sankara became an exemplar of hope, freedom from imperial domination, economic liberation and a stubborn but nevertheless admirable determination to independently chart the course of Burkina Faso.
Assumingly though, Thomas Sankara must have been succinctly if not partially aware that this deep-seated conviction he held of wanting to dismantle the existing spiritually bankrupt political status quo in his homeland would be fiercely and violently resisted. Undoubtedly, Sankara’s revolutionary struggles and eventual assassination have to be understood in the context of the Cold War – the violent ideological battle fought between the communist East and the expansionist, capitalist West for satellite states. His anti-imperialist posture and embrace of Marxist progressive ideas weren’t just angering forces opposed to him at home but he was also ruffling and tinkering with powerful opponents in France and all the way to the corridors of power in Washington.
Thomas Sankara became an unbearable thorn in the sides of his ideological enemies and was eventually marked for death. Assassinated on the 13th of October, 1987, in a military coup, Sankara’s death occurred under the very circumstances – a military coup – which facilitated and catapulted him to the presidency four years earlier on the 4th of August, 1983. Now, 37 years after his death, there has been a resurgence of Thomas Sankara’s revolutionary spirit and anti-imperialist rhetoric in the likes of Captain Ibrahim Traore, and also the wider popular imagination and collective consciousness of the nation of Burkina Faso.
For the people of Burkina Faso, Captain Ibrahim Traore embodies the spirit and vision of Thomas Sankara. A representation of hope for the realization of the ideals of Thomas Sankara, Traore lives in the popular consciousness of the people of Burkina Faso as a reincarnation of Thomas Sankara – a man whose visionary exploits sincerely won the hearts and minds of an entire nation.
Orlando Patterson
