It was Thursday, 4th August 1983 in what was soon to be
renamed Burkina Faso. On this day, a coup d’etat led by Captains Thomas Sankara
and Blaise Compaoré set in motion a Pan-Africanist, Marxist, revolution which
sought to liberate Franz Fanon’s “wretched of the earth” from the clutches of
imperialism and neo-colonialism. Sankara emphasised the universality of the
Burkinabe revolution in his address to the UN General Assembly a year after
becoming President of the National Council of the Revolution.
“Our revolution in Burkina Faso embraces the misfortunes of
all peoples. It draws its inspiration from all of man’s experiences since his
first breath. We wish to be heirs of all the revolutions and all the liberation
struggles of the peoples of the Third World.”
Sankara’s revolutionary vision was based on ‘self-reliance’
and solidarity and included an ambitious programme of development - health,
education, agriculture, infrastructure and an end to the excesses so familiar
in African governance today- hyper corruption and consumerism. He embarked on
an agrarian revolution which including the planting of millions of trees and
land reform. He called for the full cancellation of the continent’s debt,
rejected foreign aid and asserted that only a complete rejection of the norms
of global capitalism and imperialist domination would liberate Africans.
But it was Sankara's focus on women’s emancipation and its
meaning for all of humanity, that distinguished his revolutionary vision.
Sankara argued that the key to social transformation was in improving the
status of women and he demanded that they be a central part of the
revolutionary project. Sankara did not just make pronouncements, he was
meticulous in explaining class relations and the everyday ways in which African
masculinities work in collaboration with capital in exploiting women’s labour
and abuse of their dignity. His analysis of gendered and sexualised social
relations would be considered progressive even today:
“It was the transformation from one form of society to
another that served to institutionalize women’s inequality. This inequality was
produced by our own minds and intelligence in order to develop a concrete form
of domination and exploitation. The social function and roles to which women have
been relegated ever since are a living reflection of this fact.”
Describing the home as the premier sight of capitalist
reproductive exploitation and sexualised oppression, Sankara’s government
campaigned against forced marriages, polygamy, and female genital mutilation
and tribal markings. Women were for the
first time able to initiate divorce without the consent of their husbands.
Sankara insisted that men take an active part in the domestic sphere by
experiencing those activities traditionally left to women such as preparing
meals, going to the market and caring for children. At the same time he
encouraged women to take on jobs that had previously been the domain of men
including joining the military. He also began a programme of dismantling
traditional sites of patriarchy by reducing the powers of village chiefs and
nationalising all land. Other areas
where his government prioritised women’s equality were in providing improved
access to education and public health through a nation-wide adult literacy and
grassroots health programmes. Significantly he was the first African leader to
appoint a large number of women to government positions including the cabinet.
One of the primary instruments in the transition of women
towards full citizenship was the Women’s
Union of Burkina Faso [UFB]. Sankara
described the UFB as “the organisation
of militant and serious women”. These
were the women of the revolution drawn from the urban workers and rural
‘peasants’ classes. Sankara repeatedly urged the UFB women to break away from
the “kind of practices and behaviour traditionally thought of as female”.
On International Women’s Day March 8th, 1987 Sankara
addressed thousands of women in Ougadougou calling for the emancipation of
women in Burkina Faso and throughout the continent. In the speech he explained
in great detail, the material base for women’s oppression rejecting simplistic
theories such as biological differences
“At this moment, we have little choice but to recognise that
masculine behaviour comprises vanity, irresponsibility, arrogance, and violence
of all kinds towards women. This kind of behaviour can hardly lead to
coordinated action against women’s oppression. Such attitudes are in reality
nothing but a safety valve for the oppressed male, who, through brutalising his
wife, hopes to regain some of the human dignity denied him by the system of
exploitation. This masculine foolishness is called sexism or machismo. It often
gives politically conscious women no choice but to consider it their duty to
wage a war on two fronts."
On Thursday 15th October 1987, the Burkinabe revolution
ended when Sankara along with 12 comrades were assassinated in a
counter-revolutionary coup led by Blaise Compaoré. In his betrayal like
Mobutu’s betrayal of Patrice Lumumba, Compaoré donned the "white
mask" and returned the Burkinabe people and Burkina Faso to a
neo-colonialist state.
Sankara lived the Burkinabe revolution by example and
insisted his ministers and government officials do the same. Thomas Sankara’s
was committed to removing the injustices of imperialism not just in Burkina
Faso but in the whole continent. In remembering Sankara we are also reminded of
the enormity of the struggle we face if we are to achieve the kind of social
transformation he envisaged.
