Thomas Sankara - discuss.

most admired socialist of the 20th century?

― eclectic husbandry (Dr Morbius), Thursday, 5 December 2013 22:38 (1 minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

probably, although Thomas Sankara is definitely the one who should be spoken in the same breath

― veneer timber (imago), Thursday, 5 December 2013 22:41

Nelson Mandela - 68,600,000 results

Thomas Sankara - 1,560,000 results

A thread to discuss the late President of Burkina Faso, Thomas Sankara, in the hopes of rendering him a less obscure figure. In my opinion, one of the most admirable political figures of the 20th century.

My post earlier tonight was his first ILX mention, which is scandalous.

His Wikipedia page makes for a bracing read - of course there are - must be - allegations of human rights abuses, but it is striking how muted & limited in citation & scope they are.

Thanks for starting this thread!

The operative paragraph, before all the grumbling about press restrictions & so forth:

Sankara seized power in a 1983 popularly supported coup at the age of 33, with the goal of eliminating corruption and the dominance of the former French colonial power.[1][5] He immediately launched one of the most ambitious program for social and economic change ever attempted on the African continent.[5] To symbolize this new autonomy and rebirth, he even renamed the country from the French colonial Upper Volta to Burkina Faso ("Land of Upright Men").[5] His foreign policies were centered on anti-imperialism, with his government eschewing all foreign aid, pushing for odious debt reduction, nationalizing all land and mineral wealth, and averting the power and influence of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank. His domestic policies were focused on preventing famine with agrarian self-sufficiency and land reform, prioritizing education with a nation-wide literacy campaign, and promoting public health by vaccinating 2.5 million children against meningitis, yellow fever and measles.[6] Other components of his national agenda included planting over ten million trees to halt the growing desertification of the Sahel, doubling wheat production by redistributing land from feudal landlords to peasants, suspending rural poll taxes and domestic rents, and establishing an ambitious road and rail construction program to "tie the nation together".[5] On the localized level Sankara also called on every village to build a medical dispensary and had over 350 communities construct schools with their own labour. Moreover, his commitment to women's rights led him to outlaw female genital mutilation, forced marriages and polygamy, while appointing females to high governmental positions and encouraging them to work outside the home and stay in school even if pregnant.[5]

imago, your post was the inspiration for starting this thread. I was very surprised that Sankara hadn't even been mentioned once! In light of all the (well-deserved) praise for Mandela, it would be a shame to not take this opportunity to remember other, lesser-known revolutionaries, especially one of Sankara's calibre.

Probably the saddest aspect of his story is that the guy who had him killed & replaced him as President is still fucking President 26 years later

"all-women motorcycle personal guard" is going on my xmas list tbh

he is held in v high esteem by certain old-school communists, which suggests there must be some brutal takedown of him somewhere, but one of the first things i found on a google was a thread on drowned in sound which is quite an indignity for any world leader

Hey, I posted to that thread (before quitting the website in a fit of loathing)

since i quit twitter i spend my lunch breaks reading articles from academic journals about myriad things, would recommend this to anyone who is looking for a good overview of Sankara:

Skinner, E. (1988). Sankara and the Burkinabe Revolution: Charisma and Power, Local and External Dimensions. The Journal of Modern African Studies, 26(3), 437-455. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/160892