Who was Thomas Sankara, the revolutionary anti-colonist who gave his life fighting neocolonialism?

Compaoré ruled for nearly three decades, being ousted in 2014. After his ouster, authorities exhumed Sankara’s remains in 2015 to identify them and help with investigations into Sankara’s murder. Last year, Compaoré was handed a sentence in absentia to life imprisonment for complicity in Sankara’s murder. Two of his aides received the same sentence in 2021.

Sankara’s reburial at the scene of his murder, after the completion of the investigation, brought closure to some but the scars from his untimely death run deep.

“It is emotional to find myself here again,” Mayamba Malick Sawadogo told Reuters, holding back tears. “It is true that more than 30 years have passed… but it is not easy.” Sawadogo was an ally of Sankara and spent time in prison during the 1987 coup.

A brave leader who stood against neocolonialism

Sankara came to power after a coup in 1983. At the time, the Republic of Upper Volta was one of Africa’s poorest countries which officially attained independence in 1958 but remained afflicted by the dark legacy of French colonialism and heavily dependent on western aid and corporate interests.

Sankara understood that true independence was more than a new flag and currency — it meant political and economic independence, too. Thus, upon coming to power, Sankara gave his country a new name, Burkina Faso or “Land of Upright Men”, indicating a radical new vision of self-reliance for the country.

According to The Jacobin, “Sankara’s leadership was characterised by nationalisation, land redistribution, and expansive railway building programs”. In one of the most successful inoculation drives in Africa at the time, over two million children were vaccinated. He was also one of the first African leaders to raise awareness about HIV AIDS. Sankara also built schools and hospitals across the country and planted over 10 million trees to combat desertification. In just four years of his rule, Burkina Faso had attained food sufficiency.

One of Sankara’s great political achievements was bringing women into all levels of government in Burkina Faso. His government also banned female genital mutilation as well as polygamy.

Crucially, Sankara rejected aid from international institutions such as the World Bank and the IMF, focussing instead on building self-reliance where possible and cultivating relationships with other countries of the global south.

When asked about his revolutionary goals, Thomas Sankara once said, “Our economic ambition is to use the strength of the people of Burkina Faso to provide, for all, two meals a day and drinking water.”

A life cut short and a dream shattered

While Sankara was wildly popular among the masses, his political ideology and programme was inconvenient for Burkina Faso’s traditional elites as well as Western capitalist interests. After Sankara’s murder, not only were his close supporters persecuted for decades, much of Sankara’s work was undone.

Entities and businesses he had nationalised were privatised again, IMF became one of the country’s biggest lenders, and his successor cozied up to France, re-establishing old colonial connections Sankara had worked hard to move away from. Successor Blaise Compaoré was not only warmly received in Paris, the commander of Sankara’s assassins, Gilbert Diendéré (sentenced to life alongside Compoaré), was even awarded France’s highest order of merit, the National Order of the Legion of Honor.

Burkina Faso was flooded with anti-Thomas Sankara propaganda, which framed the coup as “rectifying the Revolution”. But ideas do not die easily and today, amidst 21st century’s ‘Great Game’ in Africa between the West and China, Sankara’s legacy provides a welcome alternative, based on self-reliance and pan-African solidarity.

For the common good

“They are about the ideal that political power can and must be used for the common good,” Andile Mngxitama, a South African columnist, told the BBC in 2014. Mngxitama was referring to Sankara’s influence in the then upcoming elections in South Africa, talking about how his political ideology guides leaders across all of Africa, till date.

Brian Peterson, in his book Thomas Sankara: A Revolutionary in Cold War Africa, wrote that Sankara’s enduring appeal lies in the fact that the conditions which Sankara sought to change continue to plague not just Burkina Faso but all of Africa. Whether it be European mining companies or American Banks, big philanthropists and international development organisations or ‘aid’ from states such as China and the US – all of these continue to keep Africa subservient to foreign interests, and enrich a tiny section of local elites who weild political power.

“Imperialism is a system of exploitation that occurs not only in the brutal form of those who come with guns to conquer territory. Imperialism often occurs in more subtle forms, a loan, food aid, blackmail . We are fighting this system that allows a handful of men on Earth to rule all of humanity,” Thomas Sankara had once said in a speech.

“At the core was his visceral opposition to injustice and a sense of moral outrage at oppression and inequality,” says Peterson in an interview to The Jacobin. Add to that an immensely disciplined and modest lifestyle, it is not hard to see why Sankara still speaks to so many.