MY WALL OF FAME THOMAS SANKARA {TOM SANK}

Thomas Sankara was a charismatic left-wing leader and president of Upper Volta, which he renamed Burkina Faso ("the land of upright people") during his period of office between 1983 and 1987.

As a professing Pan Africanist he fought for a united Africa. He is frequently referred to as the "Che of Black Africa" for his resemblance to Ernesto Guevara with regards to personality and political ideas. Inspired by the Cuban Revolution, Sankara is widely considered as an example for the possibility of revolution in one of the poorest countries of the world.

Thomas Isidore Noël Sankara, born on Dec 21st 1949 and assasinated on Oct 15th 1987, was a Burkinabè military officer, Marxist revolutionary and Pan-Africanist who served as President of Burkina Faso from his coup in 1983 to his assassination in 1987.

He was the third of ten children of Joseph and Marguerite Sankara. His father, Joseph Sankara, was a gendarme.

He spent his early years in Gaoua, a town in the humid southwest to which his father was transferred as an auxiliary gendarme. As the son of one of the few African functionaries then employed by the colonial state, he enjoyed a relatively privileged position. The family lived in a brick house with the families of other gendarmes at the top of a hill overlooking the rest of Gaoua.

Sankara attended primary school at Bobo-Dioulasso. He applied himself seriously to his schoolwork and excelled in mathematics and French.

He entered the military academy of Kadiogo in Ouagadougou with the academy's first intake of 1966 at the age of 17. While there he witnessed the first military coup d'état in Upper Volta led by Lieutenant-Colonel Sangoulé Lamizana on 3rd January 1966.

The trainee officers were taught by civilian professors in the social sciences. Adama Touré, who taught history and geography invited a few of his brightest and more political students, among them Sankara, to join informal discussions about imperialism, neocolonialism, socialism and communism, the Soviet and Chinese revolutions, the liberation movements in Africa and similar topics outside of the classroom.

This was how Sankara was systematically exposed to a revolutionary perspective on Upper Volta and the world.

In 1970, 20 year old Sankara went on for further military studies at the military academy of Antsirabe in Madagascar, from which he graduated as a junior officer in 1973. At the Antsirabe academy, the range of instruction went beyond standard military subjects, which allowed Sankara to study agriculture, including how to raise crop yields and better the lives of farmers, themes he later took up in his own administration and country.

During that period, he read profusely on history and military strategy, thus acquiring the concepts and analytical tools that he would later use in his reinterpretation of Burkinabe political history.

Returning to Upper Volta in 1972, he fought in a border war between Upper Volta and Mali by 1974. He earned fame for his performance in the conflict, but years later would renounce the fighting as 'useless and unjust', a reflection of his growing political consciousness

In 1976 he became commander of the Commando Training Centre in Pô. In the same year he met Blaise Compaoré in Morocco. During the presidency of Colonel Saye Zerbo, a group of young officers formed a secret organization called the 'Communist Officers' Group'. The best-known members being Henri Zongo, Jean-Baptiste Boukary Lingani, Blaise Compaoré and Sankara.

After another coup in November 1982 brought to power Major-Doctor Jean-Baptiste Ouédraogo, Sankara became Prime Minister in January 1983 but he was dismissed in May same year. In between those four months, Sankara pushed Ouédraogo's regime for more progressive reforms.

Sankara was then arrested after the French President's African affairs adviser, Guy Penne met with Col. Yorian Somé. Henri Zongo and Jean-Baptiste Boukary Lingani were also placed under arrest. The decision to arrest Sankara proved to be very unpopular with the younger officers in the military regime. While he was under house arrest, a group of revolutionaries seized power on his behalf in a popularly-supported coup later that year led by his friend Blaise Compaoré.

During his presidency he carried out a number of partly very successful reforms for the socialist development of the country, which included nationalization, reforestation projects and numerous social programs and aimed at the struggle against corruption and poverty and at the improvement of education and health care.

Among these measures one can mention vaccination programs, the radical abolition of the privileges of the public servants (cheap cars) and a land reform, whose resounding success made Burkina Faso independent of food imports within very few years.

Furthermore, he committed himself to strengthening the role of women in the society of Burkina Faso by for example prohibiting female circumcision and speaking out against polygamy. His government has the highest percentage of women in the whole of Africa. Sankara's popularity extended beyond the borders of his country and turned him into a globally known public figure.

His domestic policies included famine prevention, agrarian expansion, land reform, and suspending rural poll taxes, as well as a nationwide literacy campaign and vaccinating program against meningitis, yellow fever and measles. His government also focused on building schools, health centres, water reservoirs, and infrastructure projects. He combated desertification of the Sahel by planting over 10 million trees

His foreign policies were centred on anti-imperialism and he rejected loans and capital from organizations such as the International Monetary Fund. However he welcomed some foreign aid in an effort to boost domestic revenues, diversify the sources of assistance, and make Burkina Faso self-sufficient.

Although he reformed the political system for establishing possibilities of direct participation, he was also criticized, because the internal polarization of his country and the poor effectiveness of the state for the implementation of his ideals forced him to the apply strict measures such as the intolerance of political opposition, arbitrary decisions and indoctrination via the educational system, which he regarded as an "instrument of the revolution".

Accompanying his personal charisma, Sankara had an array of original initiatives that contributed to his popularity and brought some international media attention to his government.

On Oct 15th in 1987 , “Tom Sank” as he was fondly called by Burkinabe people, was killed in a coup, again led by his former friend Blaise Compaoré, who disagreed with Sankara's ideas.

Seizing the power. Compaoré canceled all nationalization and social programs and ordained a restructuring program by the IMF.

One week before, Sankara said in memory of Guevara: "Revolutionaries and individuals can be murdered, but ideas never die". Today, Thomas Sankara is regarded as person with an incorruptible integrity, who, in contrast to many African rulers, maintained modesty and credibility throughout his life. His death is symbolic of failed chances in Africa. His life is inspiration for many people who share his notion of justice and equality and aspire to turn it into reality.

In 2017, the Burkina Faso government officially asked the French government to release military documents on the killing of Sankara after his widow accused France of masterminding his assassination.

In April 2021, 34 years after Sankara's assassination, former president Compaoré and 13 others were indicted for complicity in the murder of Sankara as well as other crimes in the coup. This development came as part of President Roch Kaboré's framework of 'national reconciliation'.

In October 2021, the trial against Compaoré and 13 others began in Ouagadougou, with Compaoré being tried in absentia. Ex-presidential security chief Hyacinthe Kafondo, was also tried in absentia.

On 6 April 2022, Compaoré and two others were found guilty and sentenced to life in prison in absentia. Eight others were sentenced to between 3 and 20 years in prison. Three were found innocent.

The exhumation of what are believed to be the remains of Sankara started on African Liberation Day, 25 May 2015. Permission for an exhumation was denied during the rule of his successor, Blaise Compaoré. The exhumation would allow the family to formally identify the remains, a long-standing demand of his family and supporters.

In October 2015, one of the lawyers for Sankara's widow Mariam reported that the autopsy revealed that Sankara's body was 'riddled' with 'more than a dozen' bullets.

Twenty years after his assassination, Sankara was commemorated on 15 October 2007 in ceremonies that took place in Burkina Faso, Mali, Senegal, Niger, Tanzania, Burundi, France, Canada and the United States.

A statue of Sankara was unveiled in 2019 at the location in Ouagadougou where he was assassinated. However due to complaints that it did not match his facial features, a new statue was unveiled a year later.

In 2023, the government of Burkina Faso formally proclaimed Sankara as a "hero of the nation".

In October 2023, on the 36th anniversary of his assassination, the government changed a main road name in Ouagadougou to honor Sankara. The road in question was the Boulevard Charles De Gaulle now known as Boulevard Capitaine Thomas Isidore Noël Sankara.

He is viewed by many as a charismatic and iconic figure of the revolution, and a powerful advocate for Pan-Africanism, and workers’ rights, while his critics condemned his human rights abuses and the authoritarian government he led.