Imperialism (down with it)!
Imperialism (down with it)!
Neocolonialism (down with it)!
Racism (down with it)!
Puppet regimes (down with them)!
Glory (to the people)!
Dignity (to the people)!
Power (to the people)!
Homeland or death, we will win!
Homeland or death, we will win!
Thank you comrades.
You’re listening to Back in the USSR on CFRU 93.3 FM,
I am Siegfried, and those were the opening lines of one of the Burkinabe revolutionary
Thomas Sankara’s most famous speeches, which he delivered before a crowd of
five hundred people at the Harriet Tubman School in Harlem in New York City
back on October 3rd 1984. The
event was organized by the Patrice Lumumba Coalition, an organization named
after another great African revolutionary leader, who, like Sankara, struggled
to build international solidarity with the peoples of Africa in their fight
against European and Western colonialism.
The clip you heard at the beginning of the show was from the documentary
“Thomas Sankara: The Upright Man” and is a pretty good introduction to who this
remarkable man was, what he stood for, and what he was able to achieve for his
people during his four years as president of the West African nation of Burkina
Faso from 1983 to 1987. As you’ll see, Thomas
Sankara’s example as a man who fought against colonialism, imperialism,
capitalism and racism remains absolutely relevant today, and contains lessons
for us all as to what liberation means and what is necessary to achieve it in a
world that remains dominated by an exploitative and unjust system that keeps
billions of people under its boot heel.
As I’ve
said before on this show, colonialism is a disease that sucks the life out of
those that it oppresses. Before the
presidency of Thomas Sankara, his country did not even have its own name,
instead bearing the old French colonial title of “Upper Volta”. Even though it was nominally independent by
the 1960s, the country’s economy and political system remained geared toward
the needs of France and multi-national corporations and business
interests. The people lived in desperate
poverty, illiteracy, and faced regular famines and disease epidemics. Colonial oppression thus remained a cruel
fact on the ground. So when Thomas
Sankara took power in 1983 in a revolutionary uprising and embarked on a revolutionary
journey that would inspire and empower millions of colonized and formerly
colonized peoples all over Africa and beyond, he demonstrated his intentions to
liberate his people from the cruelties of colonialism by re-naming his country
Burkina Faso – literally “the land of upright men”.
Alpha Blondy - Sankara
Thomas Sankara, who was himself only 33 years old when he became the president of his
country after the revolution of August 4 1983, was born in 1949 when France
still ruled over what was then called “Upper Volta”, along with much of Western
Africa. The third child of one of the
few Africans then employed in the French colonial administration, he was able
to attend the Kadiogo military academy, which was one of the few schools in
Upper Volta where African youths could gain a high school education in the
1960s. As a soldier, he continued his
training in Madagascar, where as a young man he witnessed the mass
demonstrations and strikes by tens of thousands of workers and students that
toppled the government there in 1972.
Witnessing the scale and power of this popular mobilization had a
profound effect on him. It was in
Madagascar where Sankara also began reading Marxist literature, which he
continued doing during his subsequent stay in Paris in the late 1970s while undergoing
training as a paratrooper. Back in Upper
Volta, he joined with other progressive-minded military officers and soldiers
who rejected the oppressive conditions in their homeland, where France continued
to dominate a country that was independent in name only and where landlords,
businessmen, tribal chiefs, and corrupt politicians worked hand in glove with
Paris in a neocolonial arrangement to maintain Western political and economic
dominion over the former European colonies in West Africa.
On
August 4, 1983, in tandem with anti-government street demonstrations, 250
soldiers led by Captain Blaise Compaore, at the time a close ally of Sankara, marched
from a nearby military base to the capital Ouagadougou. The unpopular regime of Jean-Baptiste Ouedraogo
was overthrown and Sankara became the president of the new National Council of
the Revolution. Over the next four
years, this revolutionary government organized peasants, workers and students
to carry out deep economic and social changes throughout society that broke the
power of the neocolonial elites and empowered formerly oppressed people to
exercise real self-determination for the first time since colonization had been
imposed on the region by the French Empire in the 19th Century. Mineral wealth was nationalized and taken away from multinational mining companies so that it could be used for public works and national development. Farmland was nationalized, redistributed, and
support provided to peasant farmers in order to make the country
self-sufficient in food production. Through these policies wheat production was increased from 1,700 kg per hectare to 3,800 kg per hectare, thus removing the country from its former dependence on food aid. 10,000,000 trees were planted and
irrigation projects initiated to increase agricultural production and to halt
the expansion of the Sahara Desert.
Massive immunization campaigns and the introduction of free public
healthcare countrywide had the effect of cutting infant mortality in half and
allowed the country to eliminate or dramatically reduce many of the preventable
diseases that so many of its people had been needlessly suffering from because
of poverty and underdevelopment. In particular, 2,500,000 children were vaccinated against meningitis, yellow fever and measles. Mass literacy
programs were begun and public education programs put in place for every man,
woman and child. Millions of people
received an education for the first time in a country that had previously had a
92% illiteracy rate before 1983. Concrete
steps were taken to emancipate and empower women, systemically breaking down
the patriarchal barriers that had kept them from taking part in public life, working
and being able to live with dignity and equality. Female genital mutilation was outlawed, along with forced marriages and polygamy. Public works programs for building schools,
housing, roads and railways were put in place to improve infrastructure as well as to
ensure full employment for working people.
But
the Burkinabe Revolution wasn’t only about empowering the people of Burkina
Faso and breaking free from the legacy of colonialism and oppression in West
Africa. Sankara was an internationalist
who aligned his country with those fighting oppression and exploitation
throughout Africa and worldwide, demonstrating his solidarity with other
peoples time after time. He stood with the people of Western Sahara against the occupation of their country by Morocco
and led a successful fight to gain Saharawi representation in the Organization
of African Unity. He played a leading
role in organizing support, in Africa and worldwide, for the struggle against
the Apartheid regime in South Africa. He
likewise supported the Palestinian people and their struggle to liberate
themselves from Israeli settler-colonialism.
He campaigned for the cancellation of the crushing debt burden imposed
on African and Third World countries by Western banks and governments; calling for a united front of African countries to repudiate this debt, arguing that the poor and the exploited of the world were under no obligation to repay money to the rich and exploiting. He spoke in Harlem in New York City to show
his support for the struggle of African-Americans against racist oppression in the
United States. He stood in solidarity
with revolutionary struggles in South and Central America , visiting Cuba in
1984 and 1986 and Nicaragua in 1986 where he spoke on behalf of all the
international guests at a 200,000 strong mass rally marking the 25th
anniversary of the founding of the Sandinista National Liberation Front.
Sams'k Le Jah - Thomas Sankara
In
Burkina Faso, Sankara championed the democratic participation of workers,
peasants and youth in all aspects of social and political life – setting an
example that endures to this day. In
August 1987, speaking on the 4th anniversary of the revolution, he
said that “the democratic and popular revolution needs a convinced people, not
a conquered people – a convinced people, not a submissive people passively enduring
their fate”. This democratic empowerment was particularly notable with regard to what it did for women. Sankara's government became the first in Africa to include women in top cabinet positions while large numbers of women held public office, something unprecedented in the history of the region. Sankara called for the establishment of new social relations that would upset "the relations of authority between men and women, forcing each to re-think the nature of both". He went on to say that "The revolution and women's liberation go together. We do not talk of women's emancipation as an act of charity or because of a surge of human compassion. It is a basic necessity for the triumph of the revolution. Women hold up the other half of the sky".
On
October 15, 1987, Thomas Sankara’s former ally and close collaborator, Blaise Compaore, led a coup against his former friend that was backed by the French
and other Western governments. Sankara
and twelve of his closest supporters were assassinated, the Burkinabe Revolution
ended, and a Western-backed neo-liberal regime imposed on the country.
One
week before his assassination, Sankara declared, in a statement eerily similar
to the one made by Black Panther leader Fred Hampton before his own
assassination years earlier, that “while revolutionaries as individuals can be
murdered, you cannot kill ideas.” This statement should be kept in mind. For the fire that Thomas Sankara lit in the
hearts and minds of African youth, with his message of dignity and hope, could never be extinguished.
And
so when Blaise Compaore, the traitor who continued to rule Burkina Faso for
decades after the coup in which he had murdered his former friend, dismantling
Sankara’s progressive social programs and re-imposing capitalism and
neo-liberal austerity on his people at the behest of the World Bank and IMF, tried
to extend his 27 year term in office even further, he was met with the popular rage
of a people who had had enough. In the
2014 Burkinabe Uprising, this usurper, puppet of the West, and betrayer of the
aspirations of his own people, was overthrown in a popular uprising and forced
to flee the country in disgrace. The
masses of the Burkinabe people remembered and remained inspired by the example
of Thomas Sankara, the Upright Man, and remembered Compaore as the one who betrayed
their revolution and sold out the country for his own private gain. Even after all that time, they knew him as
the enemy and they knew who their real heroes were. Again, Burkina Faso, home to some of the most
impoverished people in the world, showed the way and what can be achieved when,
as Thomas Sankara used to say, “the people stand up”. Millions of people throughout Africa were
inspired by the uprising that took place in Burkina Faso in October 2014, and many
Western-aligned puppet rulers across the continent were left quaking in their
shoes, terrified of the power of the people and that the uprising might spread
to their own lands.
December
21st 2019 would have been Thomas Sankara’s 69th birthday. A revolutionary Marxist, feminist,
pan-Africanist, and president of revolutionary Burkina Faso from 1983 to 1987. He was also an accomplished guitarist and wrote the new national anthem of Burkina Faso himself, while being friends with Afro-beat legends like Fela Kuti. Perhaps it's no real surprise that there are so many musical tributes to him from so many different artists. Thomas Sankara knew how to live and he empowered so many others by his example. Rest in power, comrade. You will never be forgotten. “When the people
stand up, imperialism trembles”.
Faso Kombat feat Alif Naaba - Martyrs
Didier Awadi feat Smockey - La patrie ou la mort
The Coup - Dig It
No comments:
Post a Comment