Thomas Sankara, the revolutionary leader of Africa

in blurtafrica •  4 years ago 

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Hello friends, today I am going to talk to you about Thomas Sankara, the most revolutionary leader in Africa. I hope you like it very much.

Thomas Isidore Knoll Sankar was born on December 21, 1999, in High Volta Yako, Burkina Faso.

He was a Birkinab revolutionary from 1983 and president of Burkina Faso until his assassination in 1983.

Shankara was a Pan-African, anti-imperialist leader.Who fought for the self-reliant Burkina Faso, free from French intervention.

Fans saw him as the charismatic and iconic figure of the revolution and sometimes as "Che Guevara of Africa".

Before he came to power, Burkina Faso was called High Volta. He changed the name of his country from High Volta to Burkina Faso, meaning 'Land of Straight Men'.

On October 15, 1987, a handsome man in a white T-shirt and red track pants went to a meeting with six of his cabinet ministers. After dressing for his weekly football match, with the president of Burkina Faso, Thomas Sankara, with a bright smile and a magnetic personality, he was thirty-seven years old on this day, he arrived at his cabinet meeting in his fancy black Peugeot 205.

He lived on a salary equal to about $ 462 per month. Some of his assets were public knowledge: a car, a fridge, a few bicycles and several guitars. While many members of Burkina Faso's ruling class were busy enriching themselves with government funds, Shankara strongly modeled his belief that state employees were the drivers of public money.

As president of one of the world's poorest countries, Sankara firmly believed that Burkina Faso could learn to survive without foreign aid. He rejected the International Monetary Fund's aid packages, which he said were linked by strings.

As he famously declared, "He who feeds you usually imposes your will on him." At the summit of the Organization of African Unity in July 1987, he tried to persuade other African countries to collectively refuse to pay their former colonists financially. “The sources of Debt go back to the source of colonialism,” he said, his voice floating with emotion. “We cannot repay the debt because we are not responsible for the debt. On the contrary, others owe us something that means nothing. This is the debt of blood. ”

The Army Captain of the Nineties came to power in a military coup in the early 1980s and began a fierce political experiment like no other on the African continent. Shankara was deeply influenced by his study of the Marxist revolution. He called on every village and town in Burkina Faso to organize in committees to defend the revolution, a local organization promoting social welfare.

According to Ernest Hersh's book Thomas Sankar: The African Revolutionary, in the first three years of his presidency, serial production increased by 755 percent, a surprising benefit for a country where most people were subsistence farmers.

However, by 1987, the hybrid government was also in trouble. The capital, Ouagadougou, expressed concern over organized leaflets published by unions and student groups, with whom Shankar had openly quarreled.

He spent most of the night before the future cabinet meeting, hoping that his government would remove the growing ideological conflict between the feudal parties. More urgently, he suspected that his right-hand man, Blaze Compori, might have been plotting a coup.

“Whatever the opposition, whatever the opposition, solutions will be found during the rule of confidence,” Shankar wrote optimistically in his speech for the day. The meeting had just begun, when the machine gun fire disrupted the proceedings. "Everyone out!" Someone shouted.

Shankara instructed his panicked ministers to stay where they were. "I want them," he said. Raising his hand over his head, he walked out to the first step where his bodyguards had already died. As he was leaving the council meeting, a group of soldiers who had answered Kampore shot and killed him.

When the revolutionary president of Burkina Faso was assassinated in 1977, his successor obstructed the investigation into his death. After decades of hindrance, justice can finally be served

Shankar was a great friend of Ghanaian President Jerry Rawlings. Ghana declared a week of mourning after hearing of Shankar's assassination.
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