Marxism in Practice: Did Thomas Sankara Truly Improve Burkina Faso?
In 1983, 23 years after France and various neo-colonial regimes had relinquished their despotic grip on their overseas territories, the Republic of the Upper Volta saw destitution the likes of which were largely unrivalled throughout the world. The growing redundancy of the African cotton trade, previously unprecedented levels of desertification and difficult soils all ensured that the vast peasantry (which constituted 85% of the country’s total population), was plunged into severe poverty. This coupled with a 2% literacy rate and a GDP per capita of $100 meant that the country was a breeding ground for corruption and political and economic instability: the lack of healthcare and education made for a land devoid of social mobility or equality in any sense of the word. Considered by the colonial apparatus since 1919 (when it was merely a region within French West Africa) as but a source of forced labour to cultivate the fertile coffee and cocoa plantations of neighbouring Ivory Coast, the Upper Volta experienced a food supply unable to keep up with the exponentially growing population.
It was not in need of mere reform: only complete political upheaval could transform such a country. It is with no surprise, therefore, when one examines the reasons behind Thomas Sankara’s coup d’état of 1983, that it was met with universal support. However, despite the improvements that Sankara enacted on the newly-renamed Burkina Faso, one wonders as to whether Sankara’s coup d’état actually harmed the long-term future of his country, as opposed to setting a socialist or pan-Africanist precedent for governments to come, as he had intended.
Let us first examine the transformative role that Thomas Sankara played during his presidency from the years 1983–1987. Thomas Sankara was born in 1949 in Yako, French Upper Volta. Throughout his childhood and teenage years, he was already becoming deeply affected by the revolutions taking place in the surrounding countries: he enrolled in the military academy of Kadiogo, where he witnessed the first military coup d’état in the Upper Volta. There, he was subject to the progressive ideas of professor Adama Touré, an inspirational figure to him who invited Sankara to discussions concerning socialism and anti-imperialism. However, it was during his military career in Madagascar that profoundly influenced his political views — there, he witnessed the 1972 Malagasy Revolution against the Tsiranana regime, as well as becoming for the first time acquainted with the works of Karl Marx and V.I. Lenin. These ideas formed the basis for the 1983 coup d’état.
On 4 August 1983, Sankara and his long-time ally, Blaise Campaoré appointed Sankara as president of the Upper Volta. Sankara already had vast plans for the country. He saw himself as the African equivalent of revolutionary Che Guevara and described his foremost intentions as anti-imperialist and in favour of the RDP (Révolution Démocratique et Populaire). In a speech in 1984, Sankara proudly exclaimed that by means of such revolution, he has “made possible the realisation of the Paris Commune’s dreams of justice”. In order to truly achieve this, Sankara put forward several reforms that would greatly improve quality of life in the newly-renamed “Burkina Faso” (“land of reputable peoples”). Firstly, improvements to healthcare and public services were instrumental in improving the quality of life. Sankara’s mass vaccination programme was the first locally-implemented attempt anywhere in Africa to eradicate the diseases of polio, meningitis and polio, with 2.5 million Burkinabé vaccinated within a week of the programme’s initiation. Large-scale housing projects took place (brick factories were erected and “The Battle of the Rails” project facilitated manganese production), yet not at the expense of the environment. In order to supply 7,000 village nurseries and plant millions of trees, Sankara created “The People’s Harvest of Forest Nurseries”. Within four years, Burkina Faso achieved self-sufficiency, demonstrating the immense impact that Sankara’s regime had on a country that had previously been stagnated in all political, economic and social aspects.
In addition, the social progress of Burkina Faso under Sankara is even rivalled currently by many of the most developed African countries of the 20th century. Sankara’s explicit goal was to improve the position of women in Burkinabé society and overturned the largely-practised tribal beliefs of polygamy, forced marriages and FGM, all within a year of his assuming of the presidency. As the first African country to publicly recognise the AIDS epidemic as a threat to global health during the 1980s, Sankara promoted contraception and ensured it was available throughout the nation.
Sankara’s personal image and ideological beliefs are also significant in examining his successes and shortcomings. The foremost difference that set Sankara apart from other anti-imperialist or self-declared “socialist” African leaders such as (Nkrumah or Senghor) is his lack of ambiguity regarding the Marxist theory of “class struggle”. Sankara was steadfast in his opposition to any foreign intervention in Burkina Faso, as the dichotomy of the bourgeoisie and proletariat was rather clean-cut for life in Burkina Faso. Sankara saw the country and vast proportion of peasantry as potential allies to the revolution, while the foreign investors or kleptocrats were the enemies of the Marxist struggle. This clearly differentiated his regime from others in Africa and may be one factor contributing to the successes during his presidency: he allowed no foreign aid or intervention whatsoever and therefore western powers had no influence on his country (they no doubt would have intervened if they could, this was typical US or UK foreign policy at the time). It is on the basis of this analysis of class struggle that he was able to formulate and implement policies of redistribution, staying close to several tenets (although as it will later become evident, not all) of Marxism and achieving self-sufficiency. Another difference between Sankara and other “socialist” leaders (such as Stalin or Kim Il-Sung) is that he didn’t generate quite the same cult of personality. When asked in 1985 why he did not want his portrait hung in public places, he replied: “there are seven million Thomas Sankaras”. In the same vein, Sankara limited his luxuries: he sold the government fleet of Mercedes cars, replacing them with the cheapest car available, the Renault 5; limited his salary to $450 per month and only allowed his possessions to include four bikes, a car, three guitars and a refrigerator. It is evident that Sankara strictly followed and adhered to his beliefs and this faith in socialism drove him forward, making him a symbol of revolutionary potential in Africa without arrogance or monopoly.
In October 1987, his former ally Blaise Compaoré and 12 other officials staged a coup d’état against Sankara, dismembering him and burying him in an unmarked grave. The commonly-accepted motive for such a violent coup d’état was Sankara’s deterioration of relations with Ivory Coast and their ally, the former colonial power France. However, opposition to Sankara and his failures run somewhat deeper than that. A critical issue that was, and always would be, instrumental in his eventual downfall was the way in which he came to power. The Burkinabé socialist, yet vocal dissident during the Sankara regime, Joseph Ki-Zerbo argued that my coming to power in another coup d’état and therefore the ensuing suspicion by Sankara of everyone in the political establishment, including his ideological and partisan allies, he ensured his demise. Before he had put forth his first policy, Sankara had set the ground for a continuation of the coups d’état that were previously commonplace in the Upper Volta. Ki-Zerbo sees Sankara as having been misguided in one major aspect: what was needed was not, in fact, a better leader of another coup d’état, but a turn towards realistic and stable governance that would last in the long term. Sankara was extremely critical of parliamentarianism (deeming it “bourgeois democracy”) yet failed to create a viable institutional alternative that would last for the future of Burkina Faso.
Despite the objective victories in health, food and infrastructure, towards the end of the regime, Sankara’s government had alienated several Burkinabé. In a similar vein to the establishment of the Soviet Union, Sankara gravely underestimated the revolutionary capacity of the peasantry, who, much like in the Soviet Union, were largely illiterate and were wholly disenfranchised with the centralisation of the government and “top-down legality”. One major mistake that Sankara made was the immediate removal of power from the feudal landlords. This was largely to achieve self-sufficiency and prevent the development of the bourgeoisie, yet this greatly angered rural citizens, many of whom felt as if their whole way of life had been suddenly overturned.
Sankara’s judicial reforms demonstrate his unwillingness to compromise and therefore were an immense failure, both on the national and global stage. The reforms involve the introduction of two main systems: the People’s Revolutionary Tribunals (PRTs) and the Committees for the Defence of the Revolution (CDRs). PRTs were a system of courts initially created by Sankara in order to try former or corrupt government officials in a straightforward fashion so that the average Burkinabé could participate in or oversee trials of “enemies of the revolution”. One major criticism of these is the fact that they were merely “show trials”, whose only purpose was to demonstrate the success of Sankara’s regime: former government officials were almost exclusively given light or suspended sentences. In addition, the legal procedures of PRTs were antiquated and unjust. Defendants were obligated to prove themselves innocent and were not allowed to be represented by counsel. This caused a great amount of injustice as, in several cases, innocent defendants were given substantial prison sentences. Also, the idea of “lazy workers”, which was popularised by the government, created discord within the country — several people created their own courts to settle scores with enemies so that they would be expelled from their jobs, sentenced to work for free or be discriminated against. Comparisons (albeit highly exaggerated) have been drawn by Christian Morrisson of the OECD between the system of PRTs and the “Reign of Terror” during the French Revolution. Taking the idea from Cuba’s Fidel Castro, CDRs were established in order to counterweight the power of the army and to provide a “revolutionary spirit”. The failures of these were innumerable: the main one being the descent into thuggery that the members of CDRs underwent. By the end of Sankara’s regime, CDRs used their unchecked power to their advantage and essentially devolved into armed and state-funded groups of lawless vigilantes that wandered the streets of Ouagadougou. Evidence of the fundamental ineptitude of such a system may be observed in Jerry Rawlings’ military and conservative Ghanaian regime — a system integral to a right-wing regime could never reflect the true needs of the proletariat and his unwillingness to reverse mistakes he had made merely contributed to this.
This point leads neatly to Sankara’s largest hypocrisy as a self-declared Marxist. In many respects (especially regarding his views on internationalism), Sankara’s core ideological beliefs conflict with those of Marx. The coup d’état of 1983 and Sankara’s entire regime was based on the principles of “anti-imperialism” (the resistance of foreign interference or colonialism). However, this stubbornness caused him other problems. The refusal of Burkina Faso to cooperate with any foreign power, no matter the political system or alliances, ensured that Burkina Faso was surrounded by enemies. More importantly, it directly controverts Marx’s central belief: that the international proletariat should strive together for a Marxist utopia. Sankara saw the idea of “anti-imperialism” (much like Stalin) as “anti-internationalism” and therefore betrayed the needs of workers worldwide by failing to provide support for revolutions occurring across the globe in other nations, greatly concentrating on nationalism and internal affairs. It is easy to mistake Sankara as a true Marxist — while it is likely argued that his ideological beliefs were some of the closest to Marx’s out of any world leader, the most significant facet of Marxism (the unity of the international proletariat) was absent from the foreign policy of Burkina Faso. It was this that led to his eventual downfall as he was faced with both opposition from Africa’s extreme left-wing, as well as internal opposition due to his alienation of several key social classes.
Ki-Zerbo and the left-wing, anti-Sankara opposition argued that by the way Sankara structured his government and established political power by means of a coup d’état, it set the stage for Blaise Campaoré to introduce almost three decades of oppression and reactionary rule. Evidenced by the murder of journalist Norbert Zongo in 1998 (seen by Ki-Zerbo as a member of the Gramscian civil society), post-Sankara Burkina Faso was rife with corruption and repression. Even currently, after the fall of Campaoré’s regime in 2008, life in Burkina Faso bears some shocking similarities to that of life in the Republic of the Upper Volta: its HDI lies at 0.423 (ranked 183/189), with the UK’s FCO advising against “all but essential travel to […] Burkina Faso, including the capital [of] Ouagadougou.”
To conclude, Sankara’s leadership was instrumental in transforming The Republic of the Upper Volta to an equal and more socially liberal society. The human rights work that Sankara conducted, as well as the economic improvements to Burkina Faso, helped to improve countless lives, integrating Marxist and socialist values into the country’s political, economic, but also social systems. Despite this, the contradiction by Sankara of several of the essential tenets of Marx’s theory meant that both internal and external opposition were allowed to fester and eventually become an immense threat to Burkina Faso’s regime and the cause of Sankara’s downfall. The alienation of potential allies and the failures involved in Sankara’s government’s judicial reforms both increased oppression and paranoia and (coupled with the system of coups d’état that had been already interwoven into the political culture of Burkina Faso) facilitated Blaise Campaoré’s repressive regime. It was always inevitable that Sankara’s deposition would occur, if not in October 1987, then at another date, as the amount of opposition that had developed was incontrovertible. Therefore, although Sankara may have succeeded in improving Burkina Faso in the short term, his regime would have always fallen through and led to a period of oppression. Thomas Sankara failed to construct his regime to withstand the power of time and therefore had no long-term impact on the Burkina Faso of today: his presidency from 1983–1987 was ultimately a failure in regard to his country’s future.
