Maïka Sondarjee is an assistant professor at the School of International Development and Global Studies at the University of Ottawa. She directed the collective work Feminist approaches in international relations (PUM, 2022). She is also the author of the book lose the south (Ecosociety, 2020).
Pan-Africanist revolutionary-turned-head of state of Burkina Faso, Thomas Sankara, was assassinated 35 years ago on October 15, 1987. This year, courts shed light on the circumstances of his death and sentenced the former Burkinabé President Blaise Compaoré to life imprisonment.
It is “the longest legal fight in the case of the murder of a head of state in Africa, or even elsewhere in the world”, according to the Africanist political scientist Aziz Salmone Fall in an interview with the media. Hurry to the left! The international Justice for Sankara campaign is organizing events in Montreal on October 15 to commemorate his assassination.
The 1983 revolution and coup brought Sankara to power in Burkina Faso when he was in his early thirties. He quickly became a symbol of resistance against imperialism in West Africa and around the world. Four years later, in 1987, former comrades in arms organized his assassination and that of a dozen members of his government. His former revolutionary ally Blaise Compaoré, suspected of having orchestrated the murder, then took over the presidency. He will keep it until 2014, when he himself will be thrown out by popular mobilizations. He remained in power for 27 years, one of the longest reigns for a non-monarchical head of state.
Nearly 10 years after the murder disguised as natural death, the mobilization to bring justice to Sankara is intensifying. Then, between 2015 and 2020, thanks to a mobilization campaign in Burkina supported by an international movement, legal remedies made it possible to start a trial on October 11, 2021.
On April 6, 2022, after six months of hearings, the military court released three defendants, but sentenced eleven of the defendants involved in Sankara’s death to terms between three years in prison and life in prison. Former President Compaoré received life imprisonment for “complicity in murder”, as did two members of his close guard, Gilbert Diendéré and Hyacinthe Kafando.
According to Fall, this judgment is a first in the legal history of the African continent. He hopes that this victory will lead to applicable case law for other assassination cases in African countries, in order to counter the impunity from which he believes several former leaders benefit.
Unfortunately, when the sentence fell, Compaoré, now aged over 71, was not in the country to submit to it. Forced to flee the country in 2014 due to violent riots, he took refuge in Ivory Coast, a country which granted him citizenship. With his departure, the new government was able to exhume the body of Sankara buried near the capital, Ouagadougou, in 2015. The long-awaited autopsy revealed more than a dozen bullet wounds, contradicting the thesis of natural death.
On July 7, 2022, about three months after the sentence, Compaoré returned to Burkina, but was never arrested. Later in July, he asked for forgiveness in the press for his role in Sankara’s death. He is still at large despite an international arrest warrant.
A hero of Pan-Africanism
Companies, whose quest for profit would make them turn in their graves, have taken the face of Cuban Ernesto Che Guevara for t-shirts and the checkered keffiyeh of Palestinian Yasser Arafat. However, the wardrobes of young activists around the world show a little less the determined face of Sankara, with his red beret and his well-trimmed mustache. Sankara is a poorly known and insufficiently celebrated revolutionary figure outside the African continent.
He is, however, a major figure in the anti-colonial and pan-Africanist movements, which promote a unified, independent and united continent. Around the world, Sankara is recognized as a pioneer of solidarity between the various liberation struggles. A revolutionary socialist murdered at the age of 37, he is described by many as the “African Che Guevara”.
One of his major legacies was the change of the French colonial name of the Republic of Upper Volta to Burkina Faso, or “country of upright people”. Much to the chagrin of several Western countries and international organizations, Sankara enacted a series of socialist policies in his short presidency, including nationalizations of private businesses and extensive construction of social housing. He was also one of the first leaders to speak openly about the HIV/AIDS epidemic and to at least partially ban genital mutilation, polygamy and forced marriages.
Sankara has also written a complete book on the link between national emancipation and that of women. In his book The emancipation of women and the liberation struggle of Africa, he argues that a real social revolution requires the liberation of women from their economic and political marginalization. He thought that revolutionaries of all countries should build an egalitarian social project, the only way out against imperialism.
His lifestyle was also recognizable, cycling to work and denying some of the material benefits associated with the presidency. During his reign, he notably sold the fleet of Mercedes cars owned by the Burkinabe government. In that sense, he resembles leaders like the former president of Uruguay, José Alberto “Pepe” Mujica Cordano.
His charisma and eloquence in his international appearances remain unmatched. His speech at the UN on October 4, 1984 remains etched in our memories, when he called for a complete overhaul of the international system: “We must proclaim that there can be no salvation for our peoples unless we radically turn the back to all the models that all the charlatans […] tried to sell us for twenty years. There can be no salvation for us outside of this refusal. No development outside of this rupture. »