Burkina Faso

With eyes filled with fear, the Burkinabe intellectual who offered to act as tour guide begged that his name not be mentioned in connection with Thomas Sankara. ‘It is forbidden to talk about him in this country,’ he emphasized repeatedly.

As Africa celebrates 50 years of the founding of the Organization of African Unity, and now the Africa Union, we must thank Pambazuka for daring to promote African renaissance and our unity, in spite of our diverse cultures. But more than that, we must also celebrate African heroes (‘sheroes’).

Thomas Sankara remains one of Africa’s illustrious Pan-African sons, but his thoughts and actions during his short life need to be remembered by a new generation of Africans. More importantly, in our present time, they need to be implemented to transform the lives of African people. 

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.

The concept of endogenous or self-centred development refers to the process of economic, social, cultural, scientific and political transformation, based on the mobilisation of internal social forces and resources and using the accumulated knowledge and experiences of the people of a country.

Burkina Faso, a landlocked country of the SaheI, has since 1987 been ruled by President Blaise Compaoré, who established a semi-authoritarian regime, moving from a repressive military rule to a formal multiparty democratic system, but one fully controlled by the president.

Johannesburg, 29 November 2012: Global civil society network, CIVICUS: World Alliance for Citizen Participation and Réseau des Organisations de la Société Civile pour le Développement (RESOCIDE), Burkina Faso, denounce the crackdown on freedom of expression in Burkina Faso.

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