Blaise Compaoré and Thomas Sankara grew up together and lived together.
Blaise Compaoré was raised by Thomas Sankara’s father. They lived like brothers.
Blaise Compaoré and Thomas Sankara joined the Burkina Faso army in the same year.
When Sankara became President of Burkina Faso, he made Blaise Compaoré his Vice President.
Little did Sankara know his childhood friend and brother would later kill him.
Five days before Compaoré assassinated Sankara, they both had an event where they danced and drank together.
Sankara was briefed by the country’s Intelligence Unit about Compaoré’s plans to assassinate him. As someone he grew up with, Sankara dismissed the possibility that his childhood friend and brother would do such to him.
Sankara was reluctant to go after his friend. He could not believe it.
In October 15, 1987, Thomas Sankara was assassinated in a coup led by his childhood friend, the man he grew up together with, the man he loved, the man he took as his brother — Blaise Compaoré.
Being brothers does not stop the jealous and careless one from killing the other. After all, Cain killed Abel. Sankara was shot eleven times in the chest, and four times in the head by Compaoré’s men.
Shortly after the coup, Sankara’s father asked Compaoré “where is your brother, Thomas”. He couldn’t answer.
Blaise Compaoré became the President of Burkina Faso shortly after he had killed his brother and childhood friend, Sankara.
He reverted many of Sankara’s Pan-African policies. He continued relations with France and rejoined the IMF.
He is currently living in exile (Ivory Coast). Though, he recently apologized to the Burkinabes, he is yet to pay for his crimes.
After being appointed Prime Minister in 1983, disputes with the sitting government resulted in Sankara’s eventual imprisonment. While he was under house arrest, a group of revolutionaries seized power on his behalf in a popularly supported coup later that year.
At the age of 33, Sankara became the President of the Republic of Upper Volta and launched an unprecedented series of social, ecological, and economic reforms. In 1984, Sankara oversaw the renaming of the country as Burkina Faso (‘land of the upright people’), and personally wrote its national anthem.
His foreign policy was centered on anti-imperialism and he rejected loans and capital from organizations such as the International Monetary Fund. However, he welcomed some foreign aid in an effort to boost the domestic economy, diversify the sources of assistance, and make Burkina Faso self-sufficient.
His domestic policies included famine prevention, agrarian expansion, land reform, and suspending rural poll taxes, as well as a nationwide literacy campaign and vaccination program to reduce meningitis, yellow fever and measles. Sankara’s health programmes distributed millions of doses of vaccines to children across Burkina Faso. His government also focused on building schools, health centres, water reservoirs, and infrastructure projects. He combatted desertification of the Sahel by planting more than 10 million trees.
Socially, his government enforced the prohibition of female circumcision, forced marriages and polygamy. Sankara reinforced his populist image by ordering the sale of luxury vehicles and properties owned by the government in order to reduce costs. In addition, he banned what he considered the luxury of air conditioning in government offices, and homes of politicians.
He established Cuban-inspired Committees for the Defence of the Revolution to serve as a new foundation of society and promote popular mobilization. His Popular Revolutionary Tribunals prosecuted public officials charged with graft, political crimes and corruption, considering such elements of the state counter-revolutionaries. This led to criticism by Amnesty International for alleged human rights violations, such as arbitrary detentions of political opponents.
Why was Sankara assassinated?
On 15 October 1987, Sankara and twelve other officials were killed in a coup d’état organized by his former colleague Blaise Compaoré.
When accounting for his overthrow, Compaoré stated that Sankara jeopardized foreign relations with former colonial power France and neighbouring Ivory Coast, and accused his former comrade of plotting to assassinate opponents.
Prince Johnson, a former Liberian warlord allied to Charles Taylor and killer of the Liberian president Samuel Doe whose last hours of life were filmed, told Liberia’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission that it was engineered by Charles Taylor. After the coup and although Sankara was known to be dead, some CDRs mounted an armed resistance to the army for several days.
According to Halouna Traoré, the sole survivor of Sankara’s assassination, Sankara was attending a meeting with the Conseil de l’Entente. His assassins singled out Sankara and executed him. The assassins then shot at those attending the meeting, killing 12 other people.
Sankara’s body was riddled with bullets to the back and he was quickly buried in an unmarked grave while his widow Mariam and two children fled the nation. Compaoré immediately reversed the nationalizations, overturned nearly all of Sankara’s policies, rejoined the International Monetary Fund and World Bank to bring in ‘desperately needed’ funds to restore the ‘shattered’ economy and ultimately spurned most of Sankara’s legacy. Compaoré’s dictatorship remained in power for 27 years until it was overthrown by popular protests in 2014.
In 2017, the Burkina Faso government officially asked the French government to release military documents on the killing of Sankara after his widow accused France of masterminding his assassination. The documents were released in 2020 by French president Emmanuel Macron.
In April 2021, 34 years after Sankara’s assassination, former president Compaoré and 13 others were indicted for complicity in the murder of Sankara as well as other crimes in the coup.
This development came as part of President Roch Kaboré’s framework of ‘national reconciliation’.
In October 2021, the trial against Compaoré and 13 others began in Ouagadougou, with Compaoré being tried in absentia.
Ex-presidential security chief Hyacinthe Kafondo, was also tried in absentia.A week before the trial, Compaoré’s lawyers stated that he wouldn’t be attending the trial which they characterized as having defects, and also emphasized his privilege for immunity, being the former head of state.
After requests made by the defence attorneys for more time to prepare their defence, the hearing was postponed until 1 March.
On 6 April 2022, Compaoré and two others were found guilty and sentenced to life in prison in absentia. Eight others were sentenced to between 3 and 20 years in prison. Three were found innocent.
The same Burkina Faso is trending today over Ibrahim Traore, making efforts to liberate his people.
France and the US have already set eyes on Traore. There have already been several attempts to assassinate him with Ivory Coast aiding the heinous plans by the US and France. The US AFRICOM Commander had accused Traore of using Burkina Faso’s resources for his personal gains.
Earlier last, thousands of Africans across the world staged a solidarity moment to stand against any aggression being planned to get Traore out of office.
Traore and his men have remained resolute, warning any external aggression will be met with full scale response from the Sahel States. Burkina Faso has already established ties with Russia, China and North Korea.
Several reports suggest that Russian President Vladimir Putin has sent a special forces team to provide assistance to Captain Traore.
