Thomas Sankara: The poorest president in the world ever

I was watching DW-TV, outside was cold and dark, 3:30 in the watch....

There was a documentary on the show... looked like the same old docu-drama redeclaring the "pain" in africa. To be very frank, I don't find these documentaries very interesting these days ( though I used to spend my weeks on these some years back); partly because they have been cliched, partly because I find in them, the picture of my fellow contrymen (and it hurts).

But, this looked different: people were talking about the progresses(?).......
I was interested. Yeap, the country was Burkina Faso and they were talking something about how an inspirational leader prototyped his unique model of development, how he changed the "Colonized" land into the land of upright people.

I could not know much coz the show ended shortly after it attracted my attention. Then I googled it, ( actually I wikkied it). The leader is Thomas Sankara, the country is the landlocked west-african Upper Volta, the people are hopeless and dreamless creatures, problems are many--- looks like a good plot, I googled more...

Burkina Faso:: Where is it?
Previously called the Upper Volta, Burkina Faso is a west-african country landlocked by Mali to the north, Niger to the east, Benin to the south east, Togo and Ghana to the south, and Côte d'Ivoire to the south west.

History?
It was a protectorate of France for many years. It has a painful history of being divided into many countries and then being recreated. It is seen to have suffered from a rather nasty shadow of the then giant imperialist country France ( British rule also seems to have some role in the uneasy history of Upper Volta). The country got its full independence in 1960.

Thomas Sankara-The poorest president ever in the world
Thomas Sankara was the son of Marguerite Sankara (died March 6, 2000) and Sambo Joseph Sankara (1919 – August 4, 2006). His father fought in the French army during World War II and was detained by the Nazis. Sankara's family wanted him to become a Catholic priest, but he joined military and eventually entered into politics ( of works, not of words).(src: Wikipedia)

After basic military training in secondary school in 1966, Sankara began his military career at the age of 19, and a year later he was sent to Madagascar for officer training at Antsirabe where he witnessed popular uprisings in 1971 and 1972. Returning to Upper Volta in 1972, in 1974 he fought in a border war between Upper Volta and Mali.

He became a popular figure in the capital of Ouagadougou. He was a good guitarist and liked motorbikes.These added to his charisma.

He became commander of the Commando Training Centre in 1976 . That was the year when he met Blaise Compaoré (remember this name until a while) in Morocco.The civilian rule was reestablished in 1978 since the country's first military coup occurred in 1966. There was another coup, led by Saye Zerbo in 1980. During the presidency of Colonel Saye Zerbo a group of young officers formed a secret organisation "Communist Officers' Group" of which Sankara was an influential and devoted member.

Sankara was appointed Secretary of State for Information in the military government in September 1981. He was reported to attain the first meeting by riding on a bicycle. He later resigned from the post.

After another coup (November 7, 1982) brought to power Major-Doctor Jean-Baptiste Ouédraogo, Sankara became prime minister in January 1983, but he was dismissed (May 17) and placed under house arrest after a visit by the French president's son and African affairs adviser Jean-Christophe Mitterrand. Henri Zongo and Jean-Baptiste Boukary Lingani were also placed under arrest; this caused a popular uprising. src: Wikipedia

A coup d'état organised by Blaise Compaoré made Sankara President on August 4, 1983, at the age of 33. The coup d'état was supported by Libya which was, at the time, on the verge of war with France in Chad. src: Wikipedia

Sankara saw himself as a revolutionary and was inspired by the examples of Cuba and Ghana's military leader, Flight Lt. Jerry Rawlings. src: Wikipedia

Glimpses of what he did
He started to blaze a trail that other African countries might follow, a genuine alternative to Western-style modernization. I try to copy-paste some of the facts unveiling the truth of what he had done or tried-

• Worked for the betterment and pride of the over-shadowed half: women
• banned female circumcision, condemned polygamy, and promoted contraception
• He formed an all-women motorcycle personal guard
• Sankara's government included a large number of women
• An all-women parade marking the anniversary of the Revolution was organized
• A day of solidarity: men were encouraged to go to market and prepare meals to experience for themselves the conditions faced by women.
• An all in all incorruptible man
• A major anti-corruption drive began in 1987
• He sold most of the government fleet of Mercedes cars and made the Renault 5 (the cheapest car sold in Burkina Faso at that time) the official service car of the ministers
• The government suppressed many of the powers held by tribal chiefs such as their right to receive tribute payment and obligatory labour
• The poorest president the world has ever witnessed
  
• a salary of only $450 a month
• his most valuable possessions to be a car, four bikes, three guitars, a fridge and a broken freezer
• Sankara refused to use the air conditioning in his office on the grounds that such luxury was not available to anyone but a handful of Burkinabes ( Burkinabes: meaning people of Burkina Faso)
• Utmost modesty and due respect to the fellow countrymen
• When asked why he did not want his portrait hung in public places, as is the norm for other African leaders ,Sankara said ‘There are seven million Thomas Sankaras’.
• Changed the name from Upper Volta ( a name as a reminiscent of colonized history) to Burkina Faso ( the land of Upright People) derived from two of the most common local languages of Upper Volta.
• Revolutionary Ideas
• The rural poll tax was abolished.
• All land and mineral wealth were nationalized.
• Tribute payments to and obligatory labour for the traditional village chiefs were outlawed.
• All domestic rents were suspended and a massive public housing construction program began
• 32 dams built in less than 4 years ( compare with 16 dams built in the previous 20 years).
• In Ouagadougou Sankara converted the army's provisioning store into a state-owned supermarket open to everyone (the first supermarket in the country).
• Focus on Health and Education
• Vaccination Commando: In 15 days 2.5 million children were immunized against meningitis, yellow fever and measles.
• ‘Alpha Commando’. A literacy campaign in nine indigenous languages involves 35,000 people. ( Note that, the time I am writing this post, Burkina Faso is the country with the lowest literacy rate).
• The investment in health increased by twice
  
• Focus on tree-planting and reforestation
• Launch of a campaign to plant 10 million trees to slow the Sahara’s advance.
• Formed the CDRs (Comités de Défense de la Révolution), as popular mass organizations . Sankara's government also initiated a form of military conscription with the SERNAPO (Service National et Populaire). Both were a counterweight to the power of the army. He believed that the people should be powerful in all grounds, otherwise he said that coups and political usurpings are inevitable.

I don't truly believe on the principles of Communism and Marxist Philosophy anyway . But it does not matter at all when we are talking about the life and works of Thomas Sankara. The political doctrines are nothing when it comes to transforming your society. For me Sankara and Gandhi are no different. They both fought for their identity ( the former worked for discovering Burkina Faso in the sand of Upper Volta, the latter struggled to re-discover Bharat in the mud of India). For me, soldier and a saint ain't separable.

But the unfortunate story begins here!!!

On October 15, 1987 Sankara was killed with twelve other officials in a coup d'état organised by his former colleague Blaise Compaoré ( you remember this name right?). Compaoré deems his death an accident. Among a lot of chaos and instability, Compaoré continues to be the president of Burkina Faso ( but I am not interested in his story anyway!!!). The death ( murder) of S
Sankara is tragic, but the loss is bigger for the Burkinabes coz they are being ruled by the eminently corruptible man who has been extending his alliance with the West, keeping its ( I use its not his because for me a killer is a corpse) people under an abyss of poverty. This man, like many leaders of the under-developed countries, loves to fishing in the muddy water.

There is instability in Burkina Faso. There is illeteracy, very low expectancy of life, a lot of children dying of malnutrition, very little GDP ( i dont really know if GDP is a metric of prosperity, anyway), and what not..... Burkinabes are not the happiest citizens, if not the poorest. Thomas Sankara came like a wind, and passed away. Very little changed in Upper Volta in the long run. Africa has not quite come up since Sankara last drafted his revolutionary plans in west-africa. But again, Sankara did not die useless. He died, for sure. But his thoughts did not die. He said it one week before he was assassinated:

while revolutionaries as individuals can be murdered, you cannot kill idea

There is a lot to learn from Thomas Sankara, a true captain. Nothing much has grown since 1987 ( except the gap between the Rich and the Poor, the distance between mouth and hands, and the hatred between me and you). Sankara once said:

‘I would like to leave behind me the conviction that if we maintain a certain amount of caution and organization we deserve victory... You cannot carry out fundamental change without a certain amount of madness. In this case, it comes from nonconformity, the courage to turn your back on the old formulas, the courage to invent the future. It took the madmen of yesterday for us to be able to act with extreme clarity today. I want to be one of those madmen. We must dare to invent the future.’

Uhhh, may be we need a madman. Who is gonna be it???