They Never Killed Thomas Sankara
Last week, Blaise Compaoré was jailed for his role in the murder of Burkina Faso's revolutionary leader Thomas Sankara — but real justice can only be won by a movement that fights to bring Sankara’s socialist vision back to life.
Thomas Sankara speaks in Paris, France, on October 5, 1983. (Alain Mingam / Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images)
After a drawn-out legal battle lasting almost three decades, former president of Burkina Faso Blaise Campaoré was last week sentenced to life in prison for his role in the 1987 coup d’état that toppled Pan-African Marxist revolutionary Thomas Sankara.
“[I] am proud to have a country where justice works,” declared Sankara family lawyer Guy Herve Kam upon delivery of the verdict. But with the death of Sankara snuffing out the Burkinabé Revolution before it could truly come to fruition, and its lead conspirator tried only thirty years after the fact, some feel the justice served is a limited one.
“Africa’s Che Guevara”
Once Sankara’s right-hand man, Compaoré was also a leading figure in the 1983 coup that brought him to power. In 1983’s aftermath, French Upper Volta — one of the poorest countries in the world, scarred by the ravages of French colonialism — become Burkina Faso, or “Land of Upright Men” No longer were the backs of the Burkinabé people to be bowed under the boot of French colonialism: instead, they would once more become a proud and independent people.
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