A chance of justice for Thomas Sankara
EARLIER this month a court in Burkina Faso’s capital indicted former president Blaise Compaoré for his role in the murder of his comrade, Thomas Sankara, on October 15, 1987.
The military court detailed Compaoré’s “complicity in the assassination”, the first time a court in the country has made such an accusation. Compaoré ruled the country until 2014 when he was forced to flee for neighbouring Cote D’Ivoire during a mass uprising.
The decision to try the former leader has been called a landmark moment. Sankara’s family has pursued justice for almost 34 years but while Compaoré was in power there was no possibility of bringing his murderers to justice.
The political history of Burkina Faso is one I have studied and written about extensively, with a particular focus on the circumstances leading to
Sankara’s assassination. It is important to unravel this event and its significance if a trial of Compaoré is to be understood (or to take place).
Sankara was the president of Burkina Faso when he was murdered at the age of 37. He was the leader of a bold initiative to transform a country trapped in a dependent relationship with the rest of the world, particularly France.
From the early 1980s, Sankara emerged as a challenger to the cynical class of post-independence leaders. Sankara was a radical army officer who became disgusted by the circulation of a self-serving elite in his country since independence in 1960.
Sankara came to power in a popular coup on August 4, 1984.
The Burkinabé revolution, as it became known, took place at the start of the age of economic austerity on the African continent. This arose from the structural adjustment policies demanded by the World Bank and the IMF, and from cuts to funding for public services.
Economic devastation and the largely unreformed relationships of African states with former colonial powers formed a pattern which Sankara promised to break. He refused to accept that poverty in West Africa was inevitable, and offered a new kind of freedom.
Development projects imposed by the West had failed, and he saw the future in securing Upper Volta’s (as the country was known before 1984) separation from the exploitative linkages with France, the former colonial power.
Many of the reforms implemented under the brief period of Sankara’s rule were ambitious, and far-sighted. Sankara’s government launched a mass vaccination programme in an effort to eliminate polio, meningitis and measles.
Compaoré, who had been minister of state at the presidency during Sankara’s
years, quickly denied involvement in Sankara’s murder, claiming he was at home and sick. By the evening of the assassination, he was the new president. The new regime quickly returned Burkina Faso to its place in the global political-economic hierarchy – with little reaction from all the Burkinabé who had supported Sankara’s transformation ideas. He had tried to substitute his popularity, charisma and oratory for a movement that could confront the forces working towards his defeat.
With the possible arrest and trial of Compaoré for the murder of his comrade there might be a chance for justice. Compaoré delivered Burkina Faso and its great hopes for revolutionary change back into the hands of international power and French influence. For this he was overthrown by a popular insurrection in October 2014.