Thomas Sankara

Thomas Isidore Noël Sankara (21 December 1949 – 15 October 1987) was a Burkinabè military officer, Marxist revolutionary and Pan-Africanist who served as President of Burkina Faso from his coup in 1983 to his assassination in 1987.

He is viewed by supporters as a charismatic and iconic figure of the revolution.

Thomas Sankara was born Thomas Isidore Noël Sankara on 21 December 1949 in Yako, French Upper Volta, as the third of ten children to Joseph and Marguerite Sankara.

His father, Joseph Sankara, a gendarme, was of mixed Mossi–Fulani (Silmi–Moaga) heritage while his mother, Marguerite Kinda, was of direct Mossi descent.

He spent his early years in Gaoua, a town in the humid southwest to which his father was transferred as an auxiliary gendarme.

As the son of one of the few African functionaries then employed by the colonial state, he enjoyed a relatively privileged position.

The family lived in a brick house with the families of other gendarmes at the top of a hill overlooking the rest of Gaoua.

Sankara attended primary school at Bobo-Dioulasso.

He applied himself seriously to his schoolwork and excelled in mathematics and French.

He went to church often, and impressed with his energy and eagerness to learn, some of the priests encouraged Thomas to go on to seminary school once he finished primary school.

Despite initially agreeing, he took the exam required for entry to the sixth grade in the secular educational system and passed.

Thomas's decision to keep on his education at the nearest lycée Ouezzin Coulibaly (named after a pre-independence nationalist) proved to be a turning point.

This step got him out of his father's household since the lycée was in Bobo-Dioulasso, the country's commercial centre.

At the lycée, Sankara made close friends, including Fidèle Too, whom he later named a minister in his government; and Soumane Touré, who was in a more advanced class.

His Roman Catholic parents wanted him to become a priest, but he chose to enter the military.

The military was popular at the time, having just ousted a Maurice Yaméogo, an unpopular president.

It was also seen by young intellectuals as a national institution that might potentially help to discipline the inefficient and corrupt bureaucracy, counterbalance the inordinate influence of traditional chiefs and generally help modernize the country.

Besides, acceptance into the military academy would come with a scholarship; Sankara could not easily afford the costs of further education otherwise.

He took the entrance exam and passed.

He entered the military academy of Kadiogo in Ouagadougou with the academy's first intake of 1966 at the age of 17.

While there he witnessed the first military coup d'état in Upper Volta led by Lieutenant-Colonel Sangoulé Lamizana (3 January 1966).

The trainee officers were taught by civilian professors in the social sciences.

Adama Touré, who taught history and geography and was known for having progressive ideas, even though he did not publicly share them, was the academic director at the time.

He invited a few of his brightest and more political students, among them Sankara, to join informal discussions about imperialism, neocolonialism, socialism and communism, the Soviet and Chinese revolutions, the liberation movements in Africa and similar topics outside of the classroom.

This was the first time Sankara was systematically exposed to a revolutionary perspective on Upper Volta and the world.

Aside from his academic and extracurricular political activities, Sankara also pursued his passion for music and played the guitar.

After being appointed Prime Minister in 1983, disputes with the sitting government led to Sankara's eventual imprisonment.

While he was under house arrest, a group of revolutionaries seized power on his behalf in a popularly-supported coup later that year.

Aged 33, Sankara became the President of the Republic of Upper Volta and launched social, ecological and economic programmes and renamed the country from the French colonial name Upper Volta to Burkina Faso ('Land of Incorruptible People'), with its people being called Burkinabé ('upright people').

His foreign policies were centred on anti-imperialism and he rejected aid from organizations such as the International Monetary Fund.

Sankara welcomed foreign aid from other sources but tried to reduce reliance on aid by boosting domestic revenues and diversifying the sources of assistance.

His domestic policies included famine prevention, agrarian self-sufficiency, land reform, and suspending rural poll taxes, as well as a nationwide literacy campaign and vaccinating program against meningitis, yellow fever and measles.

His government also focused on building schools, health centres, water reservoirs, and infrastructure projects and he combated desertification of the Sahel by planting over 10 million trees.

Moreover, he outlawed female genital mutilation, forced marriages and polygamy.

Sankara set up Cuban-inspired Committees for the Defence of the Revolution.

He set up Popular Revolutionary Tribunals to prosecute public officials charged with political crimes and corruption, considering such elements of the state counter-revolutionaries.

This led to criticism by Amnesty International for human rights violations, including extrajudicial executions and arbitrary detentions of political opponents.

Sankara’s revolutionary programmes for African self-reliance made him an icon to many of Africa's poverty-stricken nations, and Sankara remained popular with a considerable majority of his country's citizens, although some of his policies alienated elements of the former ruling class, including the tribal leaders — and the governments of France and its ally, the Ivory Coast.

On 15 October 1987, Sankara was assassinated by troops led by Blaise Compaoré, who assumed leadership of the country shortly thereafter.

Compaoré retained power until the 2014 Burkina Faso uprising, and in 2021 he was formally charged by a military tribunal for the murder of Sankara.