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Burkina Faso's revolutionary hero Thomas Sankara to be exhumed
Source: The Guardian
Burkina Faso's revolutionary hero Thomas Sankara to be exhumed
David Smith Africa correspondent
Friday 6 March 2015 16.47 GMT
Like film stars who die young, there is a constellation of African thinkers and freedom fighters whose brightness never wanes. Steve Biko, black consciousness founder, murdered by apartheid police in South Africa, aged 30; Patrice Lumumba, Congolese prime minister, murdered with the complicity of western governments, aged 35; Thomas Sankara, president of Burkina Faso, murdered in a coup, aged 37.
The announcement this week that Burkina Faso has ordered Sankara’s corpse to be exhumed is testament to the enduring legacy of “Africa’s Che Guevara”. A government decree said the move was aimed at formally identifying the remains of the former president, assassinated in a 1987 putsch that brought his former friend and protege Blaise Compaoré to power.
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While Compaoré was still in office, a court blocked a request by Sankara’s family for an exhumation. But the new government, headed by Michel Kafando, has announced that the long-awaited investigation can finally go ahead.
Sankara, a Marxist and pan-Africanist, transformed the former French colony of Upper Volta into Burkina Faso, which means “Land of the Upright Men”. He became president in 1983 after an internal power struggle and launched nationalisation, land redistribution and grand social programmes in one of the world’s poorest countries. During his four-year rule, school attendance leaped from 6% to 22%, some 2.5 million children were vaccinated and thousands of health centres opened. Housing, road and railway building projects got under way and 10 million trees were planted.
[font size=1]-snip-[/font]
David Smith Africa correspondent
Friday 6 March 2015 16.47 GMT
Like film stars who die young, there is a constellation of African thinkers and freedom fighters whose brightness never wanes. Steve Biko, black consciousness founder, murdered by apartheid police in South Africa, aged 30; Patrice Lumumba, Congolese prime minister, murdered with the complicity of western governments, aged 35; Thomas Sankara, president of Burkina Faso, murdered in a coup, aged 37.
The announcement this week that Burkina Faso has ordered Sankara’s corpse to be exhumed is testament to the enduring legacy of “Africa’s Che Guevara”. A government decree said the move was aimed at formally identifying the remains of the former president, assassinated in a 1987 putsch that brought his former friend and protege Blaise Compaoré to power.
[font size=1]-snip-[/font]
While Compaoré was still in office, a court blocked a request by Sankara’s family for an exhumation. But the new government, headed by Michel Kafando, has announced that the long-awaited investigation can finally go ahead.
Sankara, a Marxist and pan-Africanist, transformed the former French colony of Upper Volta into Burkina Faso, which means “Land of the Upright Men”. He became president in 1983 after an internal power struggle and launched nationalisation, land redistribution and grand social programmes in one of the world’s poorest countries. During his four-year rule, school attendance leaped from 6% to 22%, some 2.5 million children were vaccinated and thousands of health centres opened. Housing, road and railway building projects got under way and 10 million trees were planted.
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Read more: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/mar/06/burkina-fasos-revolutionary-hero-thomas-sankara-to-be-exhumed