26 The Fall of Captain Sankara, or Why You Can't Make Revolution without the Masses His chest riddled with bullets, his na Faso was the most recent attempt tral plateau, killing people and Kalashnikov lying a few feet away to find an "independent path" to animals, pillaging and burning vil• in the dry dust of Ouagadougou, national liberation without a revolu• lages. As part of the carving out of the Captain of the Burkina Faso tionary war of the masses, without the French West African empire, its "revolution," Thomas Sankara, the leadership of a genuine proletar• borders were altered regularly up was cut down in a palace coup on ian political party, and without the until 1947. The vast majority of its October 15, 1987. Several members science of Marxism-Leninism-Mab population are rural, herders and of his military entourage and advi• Tsetung Thought. The coup was the peasant cultivators; its economy, sors lay dead at the scene of ambush bloody denouement of a play whose never developed, was distorted and beside him. Soldiers acting on be• ending, like those of the Greek stagnated first by colonial plunder half of rival ministers within the rul• tragedies, was written into the very and further ravaged by repeated ing National Council of the form itself. droughts and famine, bringing in Revolution (CNR) he presided over Sankara was by no means a their wake foreign "aid" from a hurriedly threw the bodies into a revolutionary communist (and most host of Western imperialists and jeep and reappeared with shovels in of the time didn't pretend to be), their parasitical representatives of the middle of the night to throw but his militant, anti- imperialist the IMF, World Bank, the FAO, some dirt over them in a hastily- posturing, his jaunty, confident EEC, U.S. Peace Corps and so on. made common grave. style, his Che Guevara military The population is mainly Moslem With Thomas Sankara died an "look," and most of all his unor• and consists of numerous ethnic "experiment'' in radical reform that thodox attempt to "revolutionise" communities speaking over 60 lan• had raised the hopes of many in one of the world's poorest coun• guages and dialects. Ninety per cent Africa and even elsewhere. Burki- tries, captured the imagination of of the eight million people live in the many African youth and intellectu• countryside, which is completely Thomas Sankara als who followed his innovations dominated by Ouagadougou, the closely, just as among them his capital. The city's population con• death has become a subject of sharp sists of a tiny modern working class, controversy and has posed pointed a fairly large number of government questions: what kind of revolution employees ranging from top-level was he leading, and was his path bureaucrats to the lowest custodi• one that could liberate Africa? ans, military personnel, artisans, * * * employees of French concerns, and Burkina Faso, formerly known as a small but rapacious class of mer• Upper Volta, is a landlocked coun• chants. The city is a creation of im• try whose northern border stretches perialism and a parasitic drain on through 3000 kilometres of the Sa- the country as a whole. hel, a semi-arid region on the In 1932 France actually adminis• southern edge of the Sahara Desert. tratively attached Upper Volta to It is located at the crossroads of the far richer coastal colony at its routes that penetrated colonial Afri• southern border, the Ivory Coast, ca. Colonial conquest of Upper making official its relationship as a Volta dates back to a reign of ter• gigantic reservoir of labour to work ror in 1895, in which a French naval the Ivory plantations and fields. captain led his men through the cen• Today, two million Burkinabe con- 27 tinue to work in the Ivory Coast, m and, as the desert advances, so does the southward migration. France restored Upper Volta's m "autonomy" in 1953 and subse• > quently granted formal indepen• dence in 1960 to a tiny comprador bourgeoisie, continuing its neo- - o colonial presence under the rule of corrupt and staunchly loyal army officers who have been toppling i-'-l O each other ever since in a series of coups d'etat, at times with the back• ing of the powerful civil servant trade unions. It was hardly shock• ing that Sankara's politically radi• cal reign ended in the same abrupt rived in town, worried over possi• ans, of course, the trade unions o manner. More importantly, the very ble diplomatic realignments.1 based on the civil servants in the means by which Sankara came to Youth demonstrated in Ouagadou• capital!).2 power and the very nature of the gou and Sankara's left-wing officer Despite his sympathies for the 5 state power he took over is the fun• friends retreated to the elitist para- plight of the peasants and undoubt• damental reason he could not lead commandos camp in the southern edly genuine desires to improve a thorough-going revolution. Burkinabe town of P6 and planned their lives, Sankara did not rely on a rebellion to get him reinstated. them and they never became his so• Seizing Power from Above: On August 4, 1983, this column cial base: his outlook and line coin• The Left-wing Officer Corps of future ministers marched into the cided instead with that of the urban capital city of Ouagadougou and petite bourgeoisie, and from the be• Sankara called his revolution a took over the government, ginning was one which could not "peoples democratic revolution," proclaiming the "revolution." This liberate the vast majority of the toil• the goal of which was to get the peo• "left" coup relied on a totally bour• ing masses in Burkina Faso. ple to "assume power." In fact this geois military line of tactically out- It is true that Sankara had gained concentrates much of the problem: manoeuvering the temporarily some popularity, and the masses — political power was never seized disorganised alliance of right- wing although mainly bystanders — did from below, through people's war. and "moderate" forces within the not generally oppose him; he was Instead, emerging as the charismatic neocolonial army; it was at best ten• confident that through time, he leader of a fiercely nationalist, anti- tative and required hasty efforts to could win them to his revolution. colonialist wing of the army, the consolidate its urban social base As for the sticky dilemma of radical young captain Sankara among the radical left organisations shedding the army's neocolonial found himself Prime Minister in which were influential in the urban heritage, Sankara thought he could November 1982, when an army doc• petit bourgeois sectors, particular• transform it into a people's army tor commander, Jean-Baptiste ly in education and among civil ser• through "political education." Ouedraogo, took over the presiden• vants, in order to hold onto state "We want the army to melt into the cy with the collaboration of the left- power. As Sankara put it candidly, people." wing officers and unions. Sankara "Without them we couldn't have Although Sankara considered his invited Libyan president Khadaffi won, they prepared the masses for leadership the "democratic to Ouagadougou in April 1983 and us." And, somewhat surprisingly, representation of the people," in was promptly arrested shortly after "Our main support is from the or• reality the struggle over political a French African Affairs official ar- ganised workers" (by which he me- power was centred within the CNR 28 which gave representation to the ideology. For us, ideologies provide "pro-Chinese" (revisionist, pro- major left currents and served as a light, ways of analysing things Deng Xiaoping) ULC-R (Union of vehicle for the four rnilitary bosses which allow you to discern the real• Communist Struggles — Recon• — Sankara, Blaise Compaore, ities of society.... Human dignity, structed) who were influential on Jean- Baptiste Lingani and Henri that is our ideology." He believed the university campus, along with Zongo — to try to arbitrate the po• in no mold other than the Bur- the pro-Albanian Voltaic Revolu• litical disputes and patch together a kinabe mold he was attempting to tionary Communist Party (PCRV) ' 'unity'' which would allow them to shape: "It's a continual practice of which led the General Student Un• function and carry out a platform Eurocentrism to always uncover ion and five civil servants unions; of reforms. spiritual fathers for Third World the strongest union association, the In fact if Sankara and his radical leaders.... Why do you want to put CSV (Voltaic Union Confedera• rnilitary friends could be judged on us in an ideological slot at any price, tion); and some other Marxist and the basis of intentions and good to classify us?... There can only be Trotskyist circles. Ministerial posts ideas, their marks would not have salvation for our people if we radi• were divided amongst these left been all failing. He wanted to help cally turn our backs on all the forces, except for the pro- g the peasant masses, to end the sti• models the charlatans have tried to Albanians, who were the loyal op• fling weight of the chiefdoms in the sell us for some 20 years.... We take position — until Albania came out countryside, to wipe out the corrup• from others what is dynamic and in support of Sankara and suggest• tion of government officials and the creative."3 ed they follow suit. nest-feathering of the urban civil To fashion this Burkinabe model, While the debate in the govern• servants, to make women equal to Sankara took the battlecry from the ment and the leftist circles went on, men and lighten their burden, as Cubans: "Homeland or Death! We the very practical problem remained well as to rapidly achieve the goal will conquer!" From Albania he that the imperialists had never been of two good meals per day and all borrowed the pick and rifle for the ousted from Burkina Faso and that, the water the average peasant national symbol.