Murder of Thomas Sankara:

Alexandros Scurr
5 min readJun 16, 2022

imperialism let off the hook

On 6 April 2022, a military tribunal in Burkina Faso found former president Blaise Compaoré and 11 other men guilty of ‘attacks on state security, complicity in murder and concealment of a corpse.’ The trial that began on 11 October 2021 was centered around the assassination of the revolutionary leader Thomas Sankara in 1987. Compaoré and his closest lieutenant, Hyacinthe Kafando, were tried in absentia as they were both living in exile in Côte d’Ivoire. 34 years after the murder of Burkina Faso’s socialist leader, the incontrovertible evidence presented throughout the case has been instrumental in keeping the narrative on the ‘internal plot’ to rid Africa of its ‘Che Guevara’, with no mention of the role of French and US imperialism.

When the people stand up, imperialism trembles — Thomas Sankara

The coup

On 15 October 1987, on the way to a cabinet meeting, Sankara, alongside 12 other government officials, were ruthlessly murdered. Gunshots, described like heavy rain on a tin roof, shook the halls of the presidential palace in which they were sat. The sole survivor recounted the moment in vivid detail, explaining that president Sankara stood up immediately, stating that it was him that they wanted, and began to walk outside with his hands held high in the air. The autopsy report found that he was left ‘riddled with more than a dozen bullets’.

The coup followed a period of intense crack down on governmental privileges
and corruption: Sankara sold off an entire fleet of government Mercedes cars and replaced them with the ‘official service car of the ministers’, the humble Renault 5. He reduced the salaries of all public servants — including his own — and implemented policy of civil servants having to pay one month salary to public projects.

Whoever feeds you, owns you

The real threat Sankara posed however, was the anti-imperialist politics he espoused and implemented throughout the country. On 4 August 1984, one year after his accession, he re- named Upper Volta, the colonial label bestowed upon the nation by France, to Burkina Faso, translating into: ‘the land of the upright people’. In the same year, Burkina Faso’s aggregate food production was 25% below the annual average for 1979–83, along with six other African
countries at the time.
Sankara showed this was the result of imperialist exploitation that not only comes with ruthless violent conquest in the form of the gun, but often rears its ugly head in more subtle ways, through loans or ‘food-aid’. What laid at stake was the survival of the people and economy of the country, as debt further drained the life from the working class and the poor — a renewed form of imperialist control. In the ten years from 1980 to 1990, the total culmination of debt from Burkina Faso owed to the IMF was at CFAF94 billion, or £128 million. Alongside refusing aid packages from the IMF, Sankara called upon other African nations to refuse to pay their debts previously placed on them by their former colonisers. Throughout the entirety of his presidency, payment towards all foreign debt was frozen. Only
8% of land in Upper Volta in 1979 was used for cultivation, with 15% of this land being devoted purely to producing cotton — SOFITEX — a French multinational — had large ownership of cotton production at the time, with 45% of shares in the country.
Under newly implemented land re-distribution policy , feudal landlords were stripped of their land-ownership, placing it directly into the hands of the peasants. In three years wheat production increased from 1,700kg per hectare to 3,800kg per hectare, giving the whole
country full food self-sufficiency. No longer would Burkina Faso have to export crops to finance France’ and the International Monetary Funds’ (IMF) debts. No more would the people rely on western companies to manufacture the clothes they wear.

Further domestic policies prioritised the people’s needs, with a nationwide literacy campaign, raising literacy rates from 13% to 73%, and promoting public health. Within the first weeks of his Presidency more than two million children were vaccinated for the first time, against measles, yellow fever and meningitis — saving the lives of 20,000 to 50,000 children each year.

Women and Cuba

‘The revolution and women’s liberation go together. We do not talk of women’s emancipation as an act of charity or because of a surge of human compassion. It is a basic necessity for the triumph of the revolution. Women hold up half of the sky.’ — Thomas Sankara, Women’s liberation and the African freedom struggle.

The banning of female genital mutilation, polygamy and forced marriages ensued under the direct goals of the government. Appointing women to high governmental positions and heavily promoting contraception to families within both urban and rural areas. Sankara was deeply inspired by the example of socialist Cuba. In 1986 600 young people, mainly from
orphaned backgrounds, were sent to the island for schooling and to further their professional training. On their return they were to serve their communities as doctors, engineers and scientists. Sankara’s Burkina Faso threatened imperialist rule in Africa. That is why France orchestrated, and the US supported, his murder using Sankara’s former comrade, Blaise Compaoré. On 15 October 1987 Compaoré assassinated Sankara and became President of
Burkina Faso. Under Compaoré and the Burkinabe bourgeoisie, public policies were reversed. Natural resources were privatised. A United Nations university study in 2014 stated that one of the main causes of poverty in Burkina Faso today is directly linked to the lack of rural productivity previously being confronted by Sankaras land re-distribution policy. The US built a military base in the country. Burkina Faso rejoined the IMF, with evermore foreign debt continuing to pile high. National debt currently sits at $9.96bn and is
set to rise to $12.93bn by 2026.
42% of teenage girls are out of school, higher than any other country in West Africa. Only 14% of the population has access to electricity, a figure that is 36% lower than any other country in the region. A harsh struggle for resources has lead multiple extremist groups in the
area to seek control. Since 2015, it’s estimated that thousands of people have been killed and around 1.5 million displaced due to fear of attacks. The overdrawn narrative of ‘internal affairs’ surrounding the guilty verdict of Blaise Compaoré and his accomplices should not be regarded as a victory in the eyes of any anti-imperialist. A victory will be breaking the chains of imperialism in Africa.

Long live Burkina Faso’s upright man!

Alex Scurr

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