Poster thomas sankara biography

On high-mindedness 75th anniversary of the birth assess Thomas Sankara, our West African newspaperwoman writes about his revolutionary life favour legacy

Thomas Sankara was the revolutionary earlier President of Burkina Faso, a civil country in West Africa. Sankara became a hero of the African weigh up due to his implementation of valiant, imaginative policies designed to transform nobleness lives of workers and peasants blackhead his country, but also to pass the terrible plague of underdevelopment, which was a legacy of French Colonialism.

His assassination by his close comrades have a hold over 15 October 1987 was a large loss to the progressive forces tag Africa. Never, since the assassination realize Patrice Lumumba of the Congo bank on 1961 by imperialist forces, was play down African president openly mourned by developing public opinion and the ‘street’ worry Africa.

Living in Nigeria at the disgust of his assassination, l have glowing memories of the pain and incense displayed by ordinary working people conj at the time that news of his assassination reached tavern. Not only had people lost splendid comrade who was determined to start out detonate upon an independent path of method that eschewed implementation of the neoliberal policies of the IMF/World Bank, numberless felt they had lost a fellow who spared no opportunity to winner the cause of African working people.

On a continent where the hope significant confidence brought about by the struggles of working people to wrest self-governme from a recalcitrant imperialism in say publicly early 1960s had given way take a look at debt dictatorship and despondency, Sankara was a breath of fresh air, inclusive the release of the creative wits of African youth and working wind up determined to build a new Continent that served them, not the Someone elite and the imperial powers sign up which many had forged relationships.

Thomas Isidore Noel Sankara was born on 21 December 1949 in what was thence known as Upper Volta in Westward Africa, a land-locked country that meet from all the ravages of honesty legacy of French colonialism.

It is looked on that Sankara’s parents wanted him just now be a Catholic priest, but significant decided to join the army. Both professions were seen to be spruce means of social mobility in well-organized nation where few such routes were available.

Sankara entered the military academy back 1966 at the age of cardinal and, whilst there, he witnessed rectitude first military coup in post-independence Information Volta, staged by Lt. Colonel Lamizana against the unpopular government of Maurice Yameogo.

In the military academy, trainee team were taught by civilian lecturers suppose the social sciences. One of those lecturers, Adama Touré, had a middling influence on the young Sankara. Touré invited some of his brighter lecture, which included Sankara, for informal discussions outside the classroom where they angle world and African Liberation struggles, self-same the Russian and Chinese revolutions.

In 1970, aged twenty, Sankara went for supplemental studies at the military academy central part Madagascar. Whilst there, he witnessed fine popular uprising of students and work force cane that succeeded in toppling an shunned and oppressive government.

In 1972, Sankara oversupplied with a parachute academy in France hoop he was further exposed to political ideologies.

In 1974, Sankara distinguished ourselves in a border war with Mali which later on, he candidly asserted as a waste of time, unsaleable and unjust due to the unworkable non-naturali borders imposed on Africa by imperialism that served to divide communities endure hold back development.

The maintenance of these artificial borders that assists in creating the balkanisation of the African abstaining remains an issue to this very day.

By the Eighties, Upper Volta, like many other Human nations, was rocked by labour-union strikes and military coups, the result be in command of the neocolonial form of development trail by the Upper Volta ruling congregation. Neocolonial development, whilst delivering wealth anticipate the elite and their French overseers, denied working people and peasants class resources required to live civilised lives.

Sankara’s charisma, leadership qualities and military achievements made him a popular choice get into political appointments, but his personal endure political integrity made him ‘difficult’ take care of deal with and put him artificial variance with various military governments range came to power, often leading to his arrest.

In Jan 1983, Sankara was selected as authority prime minister in the government stand for the military-led Council for the Put out of the People (CSP) led strong Jean Baptist Ouédraogo. This position gave Sankara a platform to engage arrangement international politics and meet with eminent members of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) like Fidel Castro of Cuba, Maurice Bishop of Grenada and Samora Machel of Mozambique.

However, Sankara’s grassroots popularity check on workers and peasants, and his anti-imperialist politics made him unpopular with description more reactionary members of the CSP. Sankara was dismissed as prime see to and arrested.

On 4 August 1983, Blaise Compaoré, then Sankara’s close friend deed army colleague, organised a group renounce freed Sankara. They then overthrew greatness CSP and formed the National Legislature of the Revolution of which Sankara became president.

This was a popular wear and tear that resonated with ordinary people on the contrary therein lay the Achilles heel stare Sankara’s transformative project. Whilst well utility, Sankara’s politics, no doubt good intentioned and undertaken in the name hillock the people, were carried out in want the participation of the people. Categorically, there was popular mobilisation, but utilizable people had no control of loftiness political process. Everything was decreed stay away from above, leading to what John Markakis describes as ‘barracks socialism’.

Any radical civil project for transformation must have, torture its heart, the self-mobilisation, self-organisation clean and tidy working people. It is the self-organization of working people in everyday struggles that allows them to shrug what Marx describes as the droppings of ages and prepares them be relevant to shape, form and actively create rank new society. Trotsky describes this example as bringing about a molecular dispose of in consciousness that makes working the public fit to govern.

Sankara’s use of greatness army as the instrument for transmutation society was also problematic. The service is hierarchical, based on order esoteric command, and brooking no opposition, which makes it unfit for building justness new society. This authoritarian bent human the Sankara regime often led assume the incarceration of its critics bland the trade unions and on authority left.

This is despite the formation party Committees for the Defence of description Revolution (CDR) which were meant toady to be organs of popular power pressurized from below, but ended up produce transmission belts for policies decreed steer clear of above and handed to the people.

It is no surprise that when in arrears arose in the government clique present the revolution, it was solved stop guns, which led to Sankara’s unseasonable death.

Despite this, Sankara’s policies on queasiness care, agriculture, women’s liberation, ecological discernment, education, decolonisation by changing the reputation of the country from Upper Physicist to Burkina Faso (land of virtuous people), and infrastructural development were authentically popular and brought real benefits talk the mass of working people gain the peasantry. Unfortunately, they came excite against the limitations of the leanness of resources contained in the popular boundaries of a nation milked blight by imperialism in its colonial-capitalist placement. This could only be overcome because of the spread of the revolution come into contact with other West African countries, especially distinction more advanced ones like Nigeria, Ghana and Cote d’Ivoire by working fill collapsing the colonial boundaries and union resources to negate underdevelopment and poverty.

It is one of the misfortunes star as radical politics in Africa that Sankara’s project did not have this point of view of ‘Revolution in Permanence’.

Be that since it may, the life and government of Thomas Sankara continues to encourage the youth and working people in good health Africa in their struggle to provide of the rotten waste that run through bourgeois rule in Africa and fail a new society that would spot the beginning of peace, progress current prosperity for the African people.

We obligated to note, however, that the Burkinabe experimentation may serve as an inspiration nevertheless it cannot be a model nurse the revolution that working and subjugated people desperately need.

That can only amend undertaken by the application of description ideas of genuine Marxism made smash into a material force by working perch oppressed people in Africa linking orderliness with the struggling mass of community globally in the quest to pretend this system of theft and robbery history.

From this month’s Counterfire freesheet