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'Africa's
Che Guevara': The Thomas Sankara cult remains strong, 30 years after his
assassination. Lean and good-looking, Sankara broke dramatically with the
stereotypical image of Africa's post-colonial rulers
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Thirty years ago, the
leader of Burkina Faso's revolution, Thomas Sankara, was cut down in a hail of
bullets -- a bloody end to a turbulent yet charismatic life that today has
gained cult status in Africa.
AFP
report continues:
The
young army captain who took power in the deeply poor nation in 1983 has been
nicknamed "Africa's Che Guevara," a monicker that reflects his
anti-imperialist convictions almost as much as the way he died.
"Kill
Sankara and thousands of Sankaras shall be born," he is said to have
declared in 1987. Just a few months later he would be assassinated as he headed
to a government meeting.
Born
on December 21, 1949, at Yako in the dusty north of what was then Upper Volta,
the future officer was 12 when his homeland attained independence from France.
Once
in power after an August 1983 coup, Sankara would rebaptize the country Burkina
Faso, or "land of upright men", and introduce progressist policies
that distanced his regime from other former colonies in what France regarded as
its backyard in Africa.
His
first taste of military action came during a conflict with neighbouring Mali in
1974-75.
But
he was already nursing ideas that, along with popularity, brought a shadowy
side to his rule.
After
a successful coup in November 1980, the new head of state, Colonel Saye Zerbo,
appointed Sankara junior minister of information. But his radical outlook led
him to quit the government a year and a half later.
By
the next coup in January 1983, Sankara was back in favour and became prime
minister, but a power struggle erupted within military ranks.
- Breaking with colonial
ways -
Initially
arrested in May 1983, Sankara made his comeback in August, following a coup led
by his close friend Captain Blaise Compaoré and associates who put him in
charge of the country.
Just
turned 33, Sankara cast himself as the symbol of a proud, young Africa.
The
image was a stunning break from that of the paunchy corrupt leaders who emerged
from the end of colonial rule.
The
new head of state was lean and good-looking, with a ready smile, a love of
football and other sports and an accomplished jazz guitarist who liked nothing
more than to jam with other musicians.
But
he was also a hard-working authoritarian who slept little and always wore
battledress, with a mother-of-pearl pistol tucked into his belt -- a gift from
North Korean leader Kim Il Sung.
He
lived with his wife and two sons in a rundown presidential palace and his main
worldly goods were a guitar and a second-hand Renault 5.
He
ordered government ministers to use similar cars and forsake their limousines
-- a demand that cemented his huge popularity among the poor, especially in the
countryside.
- 'Decolonize
mentalities' -
Sankara's
priority policies were to clean up public finances and trim a bloated civil
service, to bring improvements in health, to increase access to education and
to take rural measures to meet the aspirations of peasant farmers.
His
programme revealed Sankara's iron-fisted side.
"We
have to decolonize mentalities," Sankara said.
Committees
for the Defence of the Revolution (CDR) were formed to keep watch on the
people, while People's Tribunals of the Revolution (TPR) dispensed justice.
Sankara
dealt with a teachers' strike by sacking them, while the political opposition
and trade unions were kept in check by arrests.
Burkina's
relations with other countries were never easy.
Sankara
kept close ties with the radical rulers of Libya and Ghana, Moamer Kadhafi and
Flight-Lieutenant Jerry Rawlings, which roused strong enmity elsewhere, notably
in neighbouring Ivory Coast and in Togo.
After
France's president of the day, the Socialist Francois Mitterrand, gave official
welcomes to Angolan anti-Marxist rebel Jonas Savimbi and South Africa's
apartheid leader P.W. Botha, Sankara publicly gave Mitterrand a lesson in human
rights when he visited Ouagadougou.
Sankara
urged struggling African nations to stop paying their debt to the West.
"The debt cannot be reimbursed because if we don't pay, our creditors
won't die. But if we pay, it's us who will die. Be sure of it," he argued.
The
Sankarist spell in Burkina lasted only four years. On October 15, 1987, on his
way to a special cabinet meeting, Sankara was assassinated in a putsch that
left his buddy Compaoré alone in power -- some say he was behind the coup --
and blaming Sankara for poor relations with France and Ivory Coast.
When
people today lay claim to the heritage of a revolutionary killed at 37, they
remember his ideas and his courage more than his record in power.
The
Sankarist spirit swelled in the civil unrest that ironically ended Compaoré’s
27-year rule in 2015. Young protestors wore T-shirts that read: "Sankara
-- he still provokes."
"(Sankara)
is someone who reflects ideals of hope for all youth," Franco-Burkinabe
rapper Humanist told AFP.
"For
me, he's a character with a universal dimension because of his values and
principles. He's somebody who crosses time."
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