President Museveni of Uganda, Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe, Meles Zenawi of Ethiopia, Isaias Afewerki of Eritrea and John Jerry Rawlings of Ghana are some of the military leaders that emerged on the African continent in 1980s. The same wave, however, brought a man who was president like no other – Capt Thomas Noel Isidore Sankara.
Sankara rose to power in a coup d’état in 1983, assisted by his friend Blaise Compaore, who would betray him just four years later.
The air force captain led a revolution that also changed the name of his country from Upper Volta, a name left for them by the French on attaining Independence, baptising it Burkina Faso (meaning the land of upright people) in 1984.
While Sankara could be said to be an upright leader, his friends, particularly Compaore who allegedly assassinated him on October 15, 1987, may not be mentioned in the same light.
Compaore, who was deposed last week after 27 years in power, murdered Sankara in cold blood, and his men tried to suppress the memory of Sankara in vain. Sankara’s grave, that is unkempt and surrounded by weeds, is not one deserving a hero of such importance. A leader of all time.
The revolution that removed Compaore from power brought back the legacy and memory of Sankara. He is a spirit that inspired protesters who burnt the parliament and other government buildings after Compaore tried to manipulate the constitution to extend his years in power.
Unlike Sankara’s achievements in four years, Compaore’s government has been accused of corruption, ruling with an iron hand, impoverishing the population, among other things.
When Sankara was president, Burkina Faso woke up in four years from a hunger-stricken net importer of food, to a self-sustaining breadbasket.
Sankara’s revolution was realised first and foremost from the plates and stomachs of the citizens.
Young leaders on the African continent searching for role models of leaders need to consider this African son who was selfless. He cut back on poverty, and improved health care, education, women rights, environmental protection and conservation, industrialisation, agricultural modernisation, road and railway constructions, among other things in his country.
The revolution did not please everyone, including superpowers such as France who saw him as a rebellious leader in the former colony.
The elite political class was not happy either, that the youthful president was bulldozing them into stepping out of their privileged lifestyles.
Nevertheless, Sankara’s government enabled the country “to accept the responsibility of its reality and its destiny with human dignity”.
He gave his country and the continent a new socio-political dimension. Sankara’s star shot up at the age of 32 when he was appointed secretary of state for information, and became prime minister in 1983.
The trained pilot and captain in the Upper Volta Airforce was a very popular figure in the capital of Ouagadougou. Sankara was also an excellent guitarist and rode motorbikes on streets which endeared him to the common people.
He was jailed on trumped-up charges, accused of corruption, a move that sparked a popular uprising, like the October revolution that removed Compaore from power on October 31.
Blaise Compaore had organised a coup that installed Sankara president on August 4, 1983, at the age of That was the beginning of the buoyant four years that the Burkinabe look back at with nostalgia.
Their leaders put in place radical programmes, including involving large number of women in government, fought corruption, planted trees to curb desertification, grew more food to avert famine, and made education and health top government priorities.
Sankara’s government made female circumcision illegal, condemned polygamy, and promoted contraception. These were radical programmes ahead of his time.
Sankara’s government was one of the first on the continent to admit that the disease was actually a major threat to the continent.
In countries such as Uganda where the political class and civil servants live a privileged lot, Sankara abolished privileges that would result in a bloated cost of administration. He told civil servants to donate a month’s wage every year into a state fund, and sold off all extravagant official vehicles.
In their places, the Renault 5, the cheapest car sold in Burkina Faso at the time, was made the official vehicle for all civil servants and government personnel, including the president himself. Sankara’s social policy unsettled the middle class and traditional institutions, including chiefs who owned hordes of arable land and real estates. He divided fields among subsistence farmers and government housing estates were constructed in the cities. He even declared the year 1985 rent free.
He also denounce imperialism. In his second liberation efforts, Sankara showed he was his own man, telling off France, which wanted puppets in former colonies for presidents in French speaking Africa. He wanted mutual partnerships, not one sided master-servant relationships.
Sankara became a marked man for his closeness with the Soviet Union and Cuba, the countries that were on the opposite axis with Western powers.
The captain despised development aid, telling both his countrymen and African presidents at the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) that aid was leading to neo-colonialism and dependence.
In 1987 under the auspices of the OAU, Sankara tried to convince his peers to turn their backs on the debt owed to Western nations.
“Debt is a cleverly managed re-conquest of Africa. It is a re-conquest that turns each one of us into a financial slave,” he argued.
“…welfare and aid policies have only ended up disorganising 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.”
Sankara didn’t drink wine and preach water. The four year revolution in Burkina Faso turned around the economy, created a local industrial base, compelled public servants to wear locally made clothes during office hours and established economic zones in a bid to improve the infrastructure of the country.
Sankara fished Burkina Faso from being the country with the highest rate of infant mortality globally, 280 deaths for every 1,000 births, carried out massive immunisation efforts during the first 18 months of his administration that saw infant mortality in Burkina Faso sliced to 145 deaths per 1,000 births.
School attendance also improved from as low as 12 per cent to a modest 22 per cent.
Sakara’s belief in self-sustenance had him announce, “he who feeds you, controls you.” Under two years, production of wheat went from 1,700kg per hectare to 3,800kg, launching Burkina Faso into food self-sufficiency.
Here was a leader of integrity that even when his accusers implicated him in embezzlement of government funds, at the time of his death, Sankara’s assets were a brick house, a bank account with $400 (Shs1m) in cash to his name, three guitars, four bikes, a fridge and a broken down freezer as his most valuable assets.
Critics say Sankara and his supporters did not succeed in getting the population to internalise the ideals of the revolution.
“He didn’t understand that you cannot force a revolution on a population. You have to educate the population politically before you can start a revolution,” said a critic.
But John Jerry Rawlings, the former president of Ghana and friend of Sankara, told interviewers that “Sankara was an impatient man”. But he defended him thus, with poverty and suffering in Burkina Faso of his time, there was no time for patience.
Sankara was adored in the leftist circles for bashing imperialists. He was a hero of the pan-African movement. However, he also clashed with the neighbouring countries which he called “kleptocratic” and “subservient to French political interests”.
His reputation for incorruptibility in a poor continent of fabulously rich presidents, make him a darling for today’s idealists.
Foretelling his death, Sankara said, “While revolutionaries as individuals can be murdered, you cannot kill ideas.” How right he was!
The Daily Monitor
UM– USEKE.RW
