Justice for Thomas Sankara

Recently, a court in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, handed down a life sentence to a former president of the country, Mr. Blaise Compaore, for his role in the murder of his predecessor, Thomas Sankara. Sankara, a young, charismatic and beloved leader, was gunned down along with 12 others during the 1987 coup d’etat that brought Compaore to power. At the time he was gruesomely murdered, the charismatic Marxist revolutionary was only 37, but he had made remarkable changes in the lives of the people, having himself come to power via a putsch four years previously. Compaore and Sankara were a close pair and had jointly seized power in 1983. Thus, one lesson to be learnt from this nasty experience is to handle the commodity called trust wisely. Although Sankara was warned that his so-called friend was mutinous, his faith in his friend beclouded his rationality. Such is the stuff that tragedies are made of.

According to the prosecution, Sankara was lured to his death at a meeting of the ruling National Revolutionary Council. As confirmed by the ballistics experts who testified during the trial, he was shot in the chest at least seven times. However, although the verdict was greeted with a loud applause, getting Compaore to serve the sentence may be difficult as he had taken up Ivorian citizenship since 2014 when he was forced to relinquish power following a popular uprising in 2014. He was charged in absentia along with his former head of security, Hyacinthe Kafando. The verdict is therefore merely symbolic. It shows that Mr. Campaore’s 27-year rule has not blunted the people’s memory about their hero. This seems to be why Sankara’s widow, Mariam, who had attended the trial throughout, said the verdict represented justice and truth after a 35-year wait.

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To say the very least, Sankara was a selfless leader; a revolutionary who made black people everywhere proud of their heritage. He was, to the best of our knowledge, the only African leader that refused to have his portrait hung in public places, and would not even use an air conditioner because such luxury was unavailable to ordinary citizens. Sankara loved the people and was just as ordinary as the (wo)man on the street. As president, he was spartan to a fault. He lowered his salary to $450 a month, cut the salaries of all public servants and outlawed the use of government chauffeurs and 1st class airline tickets. Sankara redistributed land from feudal landlords and gave it directly to ordinary peasants. He actually converted the army’s provisions store into a state-owned supermarket open to every citizen. And his earthly possessions? A car, four bikes, three guitars, a fridge and a broken freezer. He disposed of the government’s fleet of Mercedes cars and made the Renault 5, the cheapest car in Burkina Faso at that time, the official service car.

Among other landmark achievements, Africa’s Che Guevara, as he was fondly called, was credited with initiating a nationwide literacy campaign that increased the literacy rate from 13 percent to 73 percent and vaccinating 2.5 million children against meningitis, yellow fever and measles in just weeks. He planted over 10 million trees to prevent desertification and built roads and railways. An advocate of affirmative action, Sankara gave women key positions in government and the military, and granted pregnancy leave during education. He outlawed female genital mutilation, forced marriages and polygamy. He was one of the most distinctive voices among African leaders: he opposed foreign aid and deplored continued neo-colonialist principles. But along came Campaore and his gang…

Ordinarily, the Campaore verdict should send a signal to murderers and dictators on the continent, namely that they may end up at the hangman’s corner in their old age. But then, how effective is an unserved sentence in mitigating violence in the polity? It would have been nice to see Mr. Campaore paying for his crime. That is the best way to discourage similarly minded political adventurers from toeing his ignoble path. Africa has immense potential but certain adventurers have always arrested its march to  greatness. The ideals that Sankara lived and died for have been rubbished by people like Campaore. Worse still, Compaore has probably got away with murder on account of his fatuous change of citizenship. That is a grim prospect and the African Union should work towards averting this kind of eventuality.

For Burkinabes, there might be some solace in the fact that Campaore, for as long as he lives, cannot set foot on the land of his birth without dire consequences, and remains a convicted felon unless otherwise decided by the country’s apex court. It is also instructive that it has brought closure to a vexing issue that has troubled Burkinabes for decades.