The training of a progressive soldier

Born during the colonization in Upper Volta (former name of Burkina Faso) in 1949 of a skirmisher father in the French army, Thomas Sankara escaped the ordinary extreme poverty of the colonized, but lived side by side with poverty and its humiliations to which he would always be very sensitive. He grew up under the dual influence of military and Catholic cultures and then embarked on a military career in the army of the now independent country. At the age of seventeen he met a Voltaic Marxist leader: he was strongly influenced by revolutionary and anti-imperialist theories. He continued his military training in Madagascar where he witnessed the 1972 revolution, which showed him what an insurgent people were capable of. He continues his training in France. Back in the army of his country, he was entrusted with the training of young recruits, in which he included a civic training that seemed essential to him; he would later say that “a soldier without political and ideological training is a potential criminal”. He took part in a war against Mali where he made a feat of arms that made him popular, but declared that it was a “useless war”. He was then appointed as a commandos trainer and in this context did an internship in Morocco and another in France. Aware of the revolt that is roaring in his country, he took advantage of his stays abroad to establish contacts with the African left and perfect his revolutionary political formation. In 1980, back in Upper Volta, he participated in the organization of young officers of popular origin influenced by Marxism who denounced the military hierarchy through clandestine leaflets and called for a rapprochement between the army and the people.

The accession to power of a revolutionary

During a coup in 1980, this group of young officers stood aside, but the new government appointed Sankara as Secretary of State for Information to neutralize him. He resigned after a few months following the ban on the right to strike and the resulting protest strike. As he vigorously and publicly denounced the violations of freedoms, he was arrested, degraded and deported. In November 1982, against a backdrop of popular discontent, a new coup d’état took place and a People’s Salvation Council took power. Due to his great popularity and despite his young age, Sankara was appointed Prime Minister of this military government in January 1983, whose social and foreign policy orientations were not unanimous. On May 17, following a new armed coup, he was dismissed and arrested, after having delivered two speeches with radical and anti-imperialist orientations. After a third military coup on August 4, 1984, in a context of strong popular mobilization, he was appointed president by the immediately created National Committee of the Revolution (CNR). He remained so until his assassination in October 1987: he was therefore only president for four years. It should be noted that his assassination was part of a long series of bloody eliminations of African independence fighters and radical nationalists (for example Félix Moumié, Patrice Lumumba, Modibo Keita, Mehdi Ben Barka, Samora Machel, Amilcar Cabral, etc.), inspired or executed by the imperialist countries, including France.

He wanted to lead a democratic and popular revolution, starting by changing the name of the country, inherited from colonization, from Upper Volta to Burkina Faso: “the country of honest men”. Its main axis of action is independence from political and economic neo-colonialism, including Françafrique, by also fighting against its national political relays (high military, state bureaucracy and corrupt politicians, the great bourgeoisie). His action is largely Marxist-inspired, rather in a Castro form, trying to adapt the lessons of the other revolutions to his country, which is very poor and essentially rural. It associates the parties of the radical left with the new government, except one that refuses.

His actions and proposals for emancipating his country

Politically, it dismantles neo-colonial power, fighting against the installed powers and bureaucracy, as well as against the residual political influence of traditional leaders; it also wants to limit the weight of religious people. He immediately sought to build a popular relay for government action by setting up Revolutionary Defence Committees (RDC) to promote public support for the new regime, popular expression, direct democracy and grassroots management. Quickly it also set up People’s Courts of the Revolution (TPR) against corruption. The priority is to discredit socially and politically the politicians and bureaucrats who have abused their power to enrich themselves, by involving the population to a large extent in the judgments.

On the economic level, it rejects the liberal therapies of neoliberal economists and their structural adjustment plans against the peoples. It seeks the country’s autonomy, particularly in terms of food, by promoting the increase in local agricultural yields and the local processing of agricultural products. It aims to promote the consumption of local food and textile products, as a substitute for the consumption habits of Western products imported by the wealthiest, by overtaxing or banning them (the watchword is: “Let us consume Burkina Faso”).

To this end, it seeks to rely primarily on peasantry (90% of the population) by promoting agrarian reform, to give land to those who cultivate it by confiscating it from traditional leaders, even if the application of this measure is limited. It obtains more direct support from farmers by raising agricultural prices and eliminating taxes that tax the poorest without distinction (capitation, livestock tax). It relies heavily on farmers to improve the land (popularization of composting) and develop irrigation (creation of many small dams). It is driving a vast programme to improve cereal production, particularly in the region known as “Burkina Faso’s breadbasket”. (by an ambitious irrigation project). It promotes the transport of food from another region known as the “Burkina Faso orchard” which is poorly connected to the rest of the country (construction of an airport). The objective of providing two meals a day to the entire population has been achieved overall in two years. In a context of famine in the northern Sahel, he organizes the emergency transfer of food. It undertakes an intensive fight against desertification, in particular through a vast campaign of ten million tree plantations, in parallel with the regulation of timber harvesting and the development of the use of low-fuel consumption fireplaces; it also fights the devastating practice of bushfires and the divagation of livestock.

It also takes care of the poorest urban dwellers by lowering rents, then freezing them for a year, which meets with the hostility of rental landlords. It also distributes land in the capital for housing for the needy. It is developing an urban and inter-urban transport network by purchasing sixty buses from India. At the same time, one of its first measures is to reduce the State’s standard of living, in particular its central bureaucracy, by reducing and capping its revenues and benefits (sale of luxury cars for the purchase of small vehicles). Public servants are heavily involved, whether in terms of increasing the intensity and seriousness of their work, reducing their salaries or increasing payroll taxes. For him, it is a question of redirecting the State’s resources and action towards the most disadvantaged.

It is promoting the establishment of health clinics, training qualified staff to provide them with routine care; it is organizing a commando vaccination campaign for three million children (benefiting many families from neighbouring countries). It also stimulates the construction of schools and colleges and mobilizes young people who have received education to teach literacy to villagers (largely illiterate because of the lack of schooling opportunities). In the absence of external funding, it encourages the construction, by the population itself, of a railway to serve a gold-producing region. These achievements, as well as those of the dams, can be carried out in a voluntary popular momentum of free work, stimulated by the CDRs, because the people are seeing their material conditions improve and also because the leaders and officials set an example of sobriety.

It also works to free women: promoting participation in local and national political life, prohibiting FGC, regulating polygamy, drafting a progressive family code, combating prostitution, promoting their schooling, involving men in purchasing to find out the cost, paying part of their civil servants’ salaries directly to their wives to increase their financial autonomy (even if the latter measure is not implemented, due to strong opposition). Finally, it calls on women to make their liberation from their oppression the fruit of their own mobilizations.

To decolonize mentalities, in parallel with the rejection of imported Western and elitist models of life, development and consumption, it seeks to regenerate national cultural values to rekindle the people’s self-confidence, but not merely to celebrate the past (it promotes a nuanced assessment of it).

His actions and international anti-colonial proposals

He is acutely aware of the need to extend his country’s struggle to the entire continent to bring about a free and united Africa. For example, it proposes African economic cooperation against the weight of capitalist monopolies and the fall in commodity prices (but it is not applicable due to a lack of partners). He pleads for a concerted active struggle against the imperialists’ armed attacks on certain African countries and against apartheid (in practice, this is limited to more or less virulent political statements depending on the country). It also supports the cause of the Sahrawis, Palestinians and the Kanak people. He seeks to place this struggle within the general framework of the Third World by visiting Cuba and Nicaragua, calling for support against the contras (and systematically voting with that country on the UN Security Council). He recognizes these two countries as key points of resistance against US imperialism. In return, Cuba helps the revolutionary Burkina Faso: in the field of health and social affairs (staff training), education (sending students to Cuba), public works and construction (carrying out technical studies for rail transport or for the construction of prefabricated buildings), and also a little in the field of the security forces. Other countries also provide immediate assistance: Libya (money, food, weapons), Algeria (agriculture, urbanization, education).

The culminating and final stage of its international action: the refusal of the debt against which it proposes a united front to decree its cancellation (OAU Summit in Addis Ababa on 29 July 1987). He knows that he is directly attacking the interests of financial groups and Western capitalist states. Clearly, however, he declares that he is not in opposition to the peoples of the dominant countries, affirming that all peoples have a common enemy: those who exploit Africa and at the same time Europe. This proposal also has no application, as he was assassinated shortly afterwards.

The limits of Sankara’s thinking and action

Sankara’s thought and action have been a breath of hope for African emancipatory struggles, thirty years after her murder they remain of burning relevance. Indeed, unfortunately, the situation of the Burkinabe people, and that of other African peoples, has not significantly improved. Also the rebellious young Burkinabe people are taking up his thoughts to a large extent. However, some African revolutionaries and supporters of revolutionary Burkina Faso have criticized, and are still criticizing, its action and propose an evaluation so that it can still serve as a guide for the mobilizations of peoples struggling for a better future.

In terms of the political organization of the revolution: to begin with, the CDRs, the pivotal structures of the revolutionary movement, were not always exemplary (Sankara himself acknowledges this in a speech given at one of their rallies). There have been local excesses and abuses of power over the population or administrations, sometimes using their structures to obtain material benefits or to act as a channel of influence for the feudal leaders that the committees were supposed to fight. In addition, their national structure was organized in a top-down manner, with a military officer appointed at their head from above. In general, the revolutionary process was managed mainly from the top down, with a strong charisma of Sankara in a central role, but this did not prevent him from receiving real popular support. But the very conditions of the arrival at the head of state of the CNR and Sankara, as well as the country’s history since independence, punctuated by five previous military coups de force, probably partly explain this aspect of Sankara’s management of power, despite a rich history of political and, more particularly, previous trade union mobilizations, which have often preceded, or accompanied, these coups de force, among others.

On the social level: Sankara has resolutely chosen to favour the poor, even miserable peasantry, which represented, and still represents, the overwhelming majority of the population. In doing so, it has reduced the standard of living of urban workers, who were in absolute terms a tiny proportion of the people at work, either directly or through the effect of higher agricultural prices (they would have lost up to 30% of their purchasing power between 1982 and 1987). Most of them were civil servants, the aim was to create a financial margin of manoeuvre for the State to redirect towards the countryside, in a particularly constrained budget. Thus, an increasing proportion of urban dwellers and their organizations, sectors that had played a key role in mobilizations against the former regimes and at the beginning of the revolution, have been alienated. He has also been criticised for his restrictions on freedom of expression and trade union action (dismissal of 1380 teachers accused of participating in a strike with supposedly political objectives, arrests of trade union leaders). That said, Burkina Faso’s socio-economic structure and debt burden made it difficult to manage the urban-rural gap, a subject that any revolution in socially highly rural and low-return countries had to face, with varying degrees of difficulty.

Economically, the self-sufficient line did not prevent some form of trade and manufacturing recession; thus, due to a lack of solvent outlets and logistics, not all the agricultural surpluses of recent years could be sold. These elements, and import restrictions, have led to growing opposition from business circles, which have a strong influence on the Muslim community, a large part of the population. In addition, the peasantry remained relatively suspicious and the petty bourgeoisie was turned away by austerity. The popular social foundations of the regime began to falter and Sankara himself felt the need to take a break from the revolution to consolidate its foundations, even as dissensions were emerging within the CNR.

Nevertheless, the experience initiated by Thomas Sankara is rich in inspiration for all peoples. Without deifying his person or elevating his ideas to the level of an untouchable dogma, his thoughts and actions can be re-examined and still serve as a guide to African emancipation movements today, as indeed they are today.