Bruno Jaffré

The violent murder of Thomas Sankara is commensurate with the relentlessness of his killers to dishonour and erase him from the memory of his countrymen. By the same token, attempts to make known the circumstances of his assassination seem to encounter powerful forces.

The consternation of a man always ahead of his entourage, betrayal by a friend, destruction of a family losing a beloved one, the life of Thomas Sankara ended in tragedy.

Burkina Faso’s president, Thomas Sankara, defined his aims shortly before he was assassinated in 1987: ‘Our revolution will be of value only if, looking back… and ahead, we are able to say that the Burkinabe people are a little happier because of it.

Any revolution is a complex process, the conjunction of a given historical period, of societal contradictions that have reached maturity and must be addressed, of events that accelerate the process, and of course of the human factor, without which nothing is possible.