table in the neighbourhood where they live or work, on the cover of a book of his speeches, edited, printed, and distributed by working people who look to Sankara as a revolutionary leader. Reading Sankara is an important part of broadening the historical and cultural horizons of those who have been born or lived for years in the imperialist centres.
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From the very beginning, one of the hallmarks of the revolutionary course Sankara fought for was the mobilisation of women to fight for their emancipation. As he says in one of the speeches published here, an October 1983 talk that presents the programme of the government he headed, “The revolution and women’s liberation go together. We do not talk of women’s emancipation as an act of charity or out of a surge of human compassion. It is a basic necessity for the revolution to triumph. Women hold up the other half of the sky”.
Before top dignitaries of the French imperialist government, Sankara affirmed:
The battle against the encroachment of the desert is a battle to establish a balance between man, nature, and society. As such, it is a political battle above all, and not an act of fate… .
As Karl Marx said, those who live in a palace do not think about the same things, nor in the same way, as those who live in a hut. This struggle to defend the trees and forests is above all a struggle against imperialism. Imperialism is the arsonist setting fire to our forests and our savannas.
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To end, I want to point to the depth of Sankara’s internationalism so evident in these pages. For him, the popular, democratic, revolutionary struggle of the people of Burkina Faso was one with the struggles to bring down the apartheid regime of South Africa; it was one with the anti-imperialist struggles of the people of Angola, Namibia, Palestine, Western Sahara, and Nicaragua; it was one with the people of Harlem who so warmly welcomed him there in 1984; it was one with the working people of France, the United States, and across the imperialist world.
It was in Managua in 1986 that I had the pleasure of meeting and coming to know Sankara as a leader. We were both delegates to an international conference marking the twenty-fifth anniversary of the founding of the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) and the tenth anniversary of the fall in combat of founding FSLN leader Carlos Fonseca. Sankara was chosen to speak at the rally on behalf of the 180 international delegations present there.
When he learned that a delegation from the Socialist Workers Party in the United States was present, he made a point of heading straight to our table to greet us. It was not just as an act of diplomacy; he came to talk politics with fellow revolutionists. He knew that the Militant newsweekly was one of the few papers outside Africa that regularly wrote about the revolutionary course unfolding in Burkina Faso, carrying interviews and speeches by Sankara whenever we could get them.
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The presentation of Somos herederos de las revoluciones del mundo here in Cuba is especially appropriate because of the final selection it contains, Sankara’s tribute to Che on 8 October 1987. That twentieth anniversary of Che’s fall in combat was barely a week before the counter-revolutionary coup d’état that ended Sankara’s own life.
It is only because of a fortunate combination of circumstances that Sankara’s words at that memorable event are available to us today. The exhibition focusing on Che’s revolutionary course and example, inaugurated that day by Sankara, coincided with the opening of an international anti-apartheid conference in Ouagadougou attended by delegations from some twenty-nine countries. Among them were compañeros from the United States and Canada, supporters of the Militant newspaper. They were looking at the displays when Sankara arrived together with Che’s son Camilo and a number of other Cuban compañeros. When Sankara began his impromptu remarks, one of the Canadian compañeras pulled out a tape recorder she had in her backpack and recorded them. The Militant transcribed and published them shortly afterward, and they are included here.
Che taught us “we could dare to have confidence in ourselves and our abilities”, Sankara pointed out on that occasion. Che instilled in us the conviction that “struggle is our only recourse”.
Che, Sankara insisted, was “a citizen of the free world – the free world that we’re building together. That’s why we say that Che Guevara is also African and Burkinabè.”
What more appropriate place to end?
10 February 2005
Introduction
MICHEL PRAIRIE
On 4 August 1983, a popular uprising in the West African nation then known as Upper Volta initiated one of the most profound revolutions in Africa’s history. A former colony of France, Upper Volta, with more than seven million inhabitants, was among the world’s poorest countries. The central leader of the revolution was Thomas Sankara, who became president of the new government at the age of thirty-three. A year later the people of Upper Volta adopted the name Burkina Faso – the Land of Upright Men.
Thomas Sankara was born in December 1949 in Yako in the centre of the country. His father was an assistant policeman, at that time one of the country’s few inhabitants to work for the colonial administration. His family moved to Gaoua near the border with Côte d’Ivoire (Ivory Coast) in the country’s southwest, where Sankara attended elementary school and was among the tiny handful of African youth fortunate enough to gain a high school education in Bobo-Dioulasso. He then entered the Kadiogo military school in Kamboinsé – one of the few avenues for young people of his generation in sub-Saharan Africa to receive a higher education.
While Sankara was continuing his training in Madagascar, tens of thousands of workers and students organised mass demonstrations and strikes in 1972 that toppled the government. The scope and character of the popular mobilisation had a deep impact on him. It was also in Madagascar that Sankara first became acquainted with Marxism, through study groups and discussions with students from France who had been part of the May 1968 pre-revolutionary upsurge there. During a subsequent stay in France in the late 1970s, taking training as a paratrooper, Sankara scoured bookstores for revolutionary literature, studying, among other things, works by communist leaders Karl Marx and VI Lenin.
A lieutenant in Upper Volta’s army, Sankara came to prominence as a military leader during a border conflict with Mali in December 1974 and January 1975, a war he later denounced as “useless and unjust”. Over the next several years, he linked up with other junior officers and soldiers dissatisfied with the oppressive conditions in Upper Volta perpetuated by the imperialist rulers in Paris and elsewhere, with the support of landlords, businessmen, tribal chieftains, and politicians at home.
Jailed briefly in 1982 after resigning a government post to protest the regime’s repressive policies, Sankara was appointed prime minister in January 1983 in the wake of a coup that made Jean-Baptiste Ouédraogo the president of the country. Sankara used that platform to urge the people of Upper Volta and elsewhere in Africa to advance their interests against the propertied exploiters at home and abroad. This uncompromising course led to growing conflict with pro-imperialist forces in the government. In May Ouédraogo had Sankara and some of his supporters arrested. But, in face of street protests by thousands, Ouédraogo transferred Sankara from prison to house arrest. In the following months, social tensions deepened across the country, heading toward a political showdown.
On 4 August 1983, some 250 soldiers led by Captain Blaise Compaoré marched from an insurgent military base in Pô to the capital of Ouagadougou. The regime of Jean-Baptiste Ouédraogo was overthrown in a popular uprising. Sankara became president of the new National Council of the Revolution. Over the next four years the popular revolutionary government under Sankara’s leadership organised the
