Thomas Sankara, regarded by many revolutionaries as the African Che Guevara, presided over Burkina Faso from 1983 to 1987 with a government aimed at rooting out corruption, but also at reducing the influence of the former colonial power, France, in the country.
The military leader and nationalist figure was undoubtedly an obstacle to Western political interests in the sub-Saharan region—much like Congolese Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba thirty years earlier, whose death set back democratic progress across the continent.
The assassination of Sankara continues to bring to light troubling dynamics, implicating not only his successor, Blaise Compaoré—who returned from exile in Ivory Coast, where he had fled after being ousted on October 31, 2014, in a coup backed by a civil uprising.
According to former warlord Prince Johnson, the plot against Sankara was contingent upon the presence in Burkinabe territory of the Liberian guerrilla faction to which Johnson belonged; this presence was, in fact, only possible through the support and active influence of military leaders conspiring against the president.
Following the 1987 coup that resulted in Sankara’s death, Compaoré—whose claim that the killing was accidental was met with universal disbelief—carried out what he termed a “rectification” of the revolution, effectively reversing all the progressive measures his predecessor had implemented.
“Blaise Compaoré’s culpability in Sankara’s assassination was the basis of the first legal claim filed against Burkina Faso by Mariam Sankara, Thomas Sankara’s widow,” judicial sources noted regarding the cases that had long gone uninvestigated.
In April 2006, the UN Human Rights Committee issued a definitive ruling against the authorities in Ouagadougou for failing to investigate the circumstances of the nationalist leader’s assassination or to prosecute those responsible for the crime.
Nevertheless, there remains a hope that the case file will stay open until justice is served in honor of Africa.
