It seems all but certain that the days of Blaise Compaoré are numbered. On Thursday 30th October, while the National Assembly was set to vote on revising Article 37 of the constitution that limits the president to a two-term mandate of five years, angry youths stormed the building and set it ablaze. The army has intervened; announcing a political transition programme within a year.
Compaoré had been the strongman of the Sahelian nation for twenty-seven years. Tensions had been brewing for some time. On January 18, more than 10,000 people led by opposition leader Zephirine Diabre embarked on a mass demonstration against the ‘over-centralisation’ of power and one man’s ambition to perpetuate himself in power forever.
I have fond memories of the country when I visited in June 2010. The wide open streets of Ouagadougou and its tree-lined boulevards remain fresh in my memory, as is the friendliness of the people. There is a spirit among the people that bespeaks of the genteel humaneness of ancient Africa and of the great Mossi and Malinke empires of old.
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Going down memory lane, in February 1986, I was hanging out with some friends at a café in the Latin Quarter of Paris, when President François Mitterrand was being interviewed on TV regarding the recently concluded Summit of La Francophonie, the French Commonwealth. A journalist asked him what he thought about the young Thomas Sankara of Burkina Faso who had held everyone in thrall by his military fatigues, photogenic charisma and fearless oratory. Mitterrand had only three words: “Il est insolent”. If the president of France could refer to his Burkinabe counterpart as being “rude”, I solemnly prophesied, “c’est fini pour Thomas”.
François Mitterr and was a socialist statesman who also had the pretensions of a Pharaoh. Like succeeding generations of French leaders before him, he viewed Africa as a backyard and playing field for imperial ambitions. Then as now, no single Francophone African leader would survive if they dared to pursue an independent course. France has continued to play the role of gendarme for NATO and the West in our benighted continent.
Thomas Isidore Noël Sankara was a young army captain of 33 when destiny brought him to the leadership of the Republic of Upper Volta as it then was. He renamed the country Burkina Faso, “Land of upright people”. His deputy was Captain Blaise Compaoré.
In October 2004, I represented the African Development Bank at the First Pan-African Conference of Black Intellectuals in Dakar, Senegal. One of my cherished memories was meeting the eminent Burkinabe historian and political activist Joseph Ki-Zerbo and his wife. He was already past eighty. When we met, he held my hand and wouldn’t let go. It was as if I was a beloved son that he had lost and found after decades. Ki-Zerbo went to be with the ancestors two years later, in December 2006. From him I learned much about the illustrious Mossi people and the challenges facing his nation.
During lunchtime at the same occasion, I happened to be sitting on the same table as the Egyptian economist Samir Amin, former executive director of the UN Institute for Development Planning in Dakar. His books on imperialism and the economics of underdevelopment were mandatory reading for students of political economy during our time. Samir Amin told us how, one evening, after a long day in the office, he was relaxing on the sofa of his drawing-room when his phone began to ring. When he enquired who was at the other end, it was none other than President Sankara. “Professor,” he declaimed, “I have been so impressed with your economic theories and your strategy of de-linking; now that we have taken over power in Burkina, please, we need your urgent advice on how we can implement de-linking.” Samir Amin told us that he had never been more bewildered in his entire life.
Thomas Sankara was one of the great pan-African revolutionaries of our generation. During his short life on earth, he was a model of African Personality. As leader, he launched ambitious development programmes, building roads, railways and other infrastructures. He sought to diversify his country’s economic linkages. He pursued a pan-African foreign policy that angered France. Aid was cut off and the Bretton Woods institutions decided he must be strangulated.
The person they got to do the hatchet job was none other than his bosom friend and brother, Blaise Compaoré. Sankara was assassinated on 15 October 1987 and Compaoré took over as leader; a ruthless fox who systematically reversed the progressive reforms that had been achieved. He took the country firmly back into the orbit of France’s invisible empire, eliminating his political rivals and consolidating his stranglehold on the state.
He is a man with a lot of blood in his hands. He was deeply implicated in the civil wars that took place in Sierra Leone, Liberia and Côte d’Ivoire, profiteering from arms sales, blood diamonds and timber smuggling. As an agent for our Roman conquerors, he was the embodiment of political Ebola in West Africa long before the real thing was inflicted on us.
To be fair, Compaoré saw Burkina through a period of sustained growth, averaging 7 percent over a decade, thanks to mounting revenues from gold, manganese, phosphates, iron ore, copper and cassiterite. He rolled out an ambitious accelerated development programme that has made Burkina a destination of choice for investors. Unfortunately, much of the wealth has been concentrated in the hands of a few elites to the detriment of the long-suffering masses. Compaoré also tried to play the role of elder statesman by brokering peace deals in strife-torn Togo, Mali and Côte d’Ivoire.
If he had had the good sense to leave gracefully, history may have looked upon him more benignly. But he was too intoxicated with power. God tends to give tyrants a long rope with which to hang themselves. While Compaoré takes his ignominious exit from history, Thomas Sankara’s name will be written in pure gold.
OBADIAH MAILAFIA
