In the Land of Upright Men

The histories of a multitude of third-world liberation projects remain unknown to the general public in the West. Many Americans erroneously believe that the United States won the war in Vietnam, and further, they assume it was fought for righteous reasons. Additionally, many conflate communism with fascism without the knowledge that the Soviets lost over 18 million lives fighting the Nazis. But what is even more egregious than a lack of historical knowledge is to chauvinistically paint all liberation struggles in the ‘underdeveloped’ world with the broad stroke of despotism. In the media, headlines about “African warlords” were sure to sell. When Margaret Thatcher famously declared in the 1980s, “there is no alternative,” she was referring to the crystallization of global, neoliberal capitalism, and the new imperialism which would sustain the endless need for the rate of profit to never fall. But some dared to believe that there was an alternative to the dictates of the West. This is the story of Thomas Sankara.

Thomas Sankara was born in 1949, making him just eleven years old when his country achieved independence from France in 1960, as the Republic of Upper Volta. Like Ghana, Algeria, and other formerly colonized African countries, the Upper Volta entered the neocolonial era, in which they were still dependent on a relationship with their former colonizers. At this point in time, it would have been too costly for France to continue to militarily cling to all their colonies, especially while the rest of the West was focusing their resources on post-industrial specialization at home. For France, which had kept the Upper Volta undeveloped, treating it as a source of forced labor for the mines in the Ivory Coast, it was not so much a loss but rather a redesigned relationship which would still be in their favor (Harsch 2014). For the people of the Upper Volta, one might imagine that what ensued was psychologically traumatic. As a French colony, their history, culture, and identity were subsumed to the ‘superiority’ of the French. What did it mean to have independence now, to become a nation of their own? When Sankara led the communist revolution in 1983, he would insist that they needed to learn to become African. I will discuss Thomas Sankara’s life and ideology in order to illuminate his popularity, and the success of the Burkinabe revolution, in the context of the material conditions and global relations of the Upper Volta.

1. Debt

The Republic of Upper Volta was still a feudal country in the 1970s. Out of seven million people, six million were peasants. Thomas Sankara was privileged enough to receive a scholarship for a proper education abroad, studying at a military academy in Madagascar. While there, he witnessed an uprising of the people of Madagascar, which inspired him to study revolutionary history and theory. Back in the Upper Volta, the late seventies were marked by a severe drought in the landlocked country, and the government was relying on foreign aid to get by. After fighting in a senseless border war with Mali in 1974, Sankara went to Morocco for training to support his military career advancement. While in Morocco he met Blaise Compaore and the two of them went on to form a secret communist cell of officers in 1976. They would develop their radical ideology based on their frustration with the results of nearly three decades of neocolonial governments and so-called independence (Harsch 2014). Sankara found in Vladimir Lenin’s theory of imperialism the consciousness-raising expression of what was going on. Thomas Sankara became a Marxist-Leninist.

Marxism-Leninism denotes the contributions Lenin made to Marxism as a philosophy of revolution. Marx described the capitalist mode of production, and how it gives rise to a class society with constant contradictions and crises. Lenin described how modern imperialism would be the final form of the relationship the capitalist class has to the means of production. He wrote:

“Imperialism is the monopoly stage of capitalism. Such a definition would include what is most important, for, on the one hand, finance capital is the bank capital of a few very big monopolist banks, merged with the capital of the monopolist associations of industrialists; and, on the other hand, the division of the world is the transition from a colonial policy which has extended without hindrance to territories unoccupied by any capitalist power, to a colonial policy of monopolist possession of the territory of the world which has been completely divided up.” (Lenin 2013 [1917], 89)

Writing this in 1917, Lenin had observed that the First World War was setting the stage for this new imperialism, as the warring sides were fighting over the division of the world to plunder. Lenin also wrote:

“The imperialist era does not destroy either the striving for national political independence or its ‘achievability’ within the bounds of world imperialist relationships. Outside these bounds, however, a republican Russia, or in general any major democratic transformations anywhere else in the world are ‘unachievable’ without a series of revolutions and are unstable without socialism.” (Lenin 1964 [1916])

Thomas Sankara realized that on the global stage, entire nations such as his would be made to play the role of the working class to this Western monopoly of finance capitalism: they would be saddled with debt, unable to develop and raise their standard of living or quality of life, let alone fulfill their human potential. Sankara really focused on the role of debt, as he saw other formerly colonized territories of Africa falling into the same trap, which he articulated as a ‘clever’ reconquest of Africa. In a speech, Sankara said:

“My country knows that this debt was contracted on the advice of — was imposed by means of an infernal trap by — those who today exhibit such intransigence and cynicism toward us, which only their pocketbooks understand. Burkina Faso knows that the foreign debt is a vicious circle they want to lock us into — to go into debt to pay one’s debt, and go into debt even further.” (2007, 200)

Sankara was right. In Life and Debt (2001) documentary filmmaker Stephanie Black presents a case study of Jamaica and the disastrous results of the deals the country made with the IMF. In the late 1970s, much like the Republic of Upper Volta, Jamaica was in a desperate position of extreme poverty and economic crisis, with seemingly no alternative but to accept a loan from this Western institution. The terms of the loan included a high interest rate, a strict repayment schedule, and a structural adjustment policy of trade liberalization, privatization, deregulation, and austerity measures. The predatory design of such an agreement was perniciously cloaked in the sales-pitch that should Jamaica take all these measures, they will achieve the substantial development necessary to modernize and enrich their country through private investment. As Black details, Jamaica was made to devalue their own currency, making all the imports they relied on even more costly, while foreign corporations set up shop in Jamaica to take advantage of the cheap labor. Jamaica was paying out more and more than the financial resources it was bringing in. As of 2001, Jamaica owed the IMF 4.5 billion dollars with virtually nothing to show for it as they were worse off in nearly every aspect. Such was the system for which Thatcher declared there was no alternative.

While Stephanie Black’s documentary tells the story of one country, there is plenty of scholarship analyzing the problematic pattern. In his historiography of debt, anthropologist David Graeber (2011) explains how, in the 1970s, agents from Citibank and Chase went out to pitch low-interest loans to Third World governments, and how because of U.S. money policy the interest rates immediately shot up, causing the Third World debt crisis for which the IMF presented the ‘only’ solution: refinance the debt on their terms. Graeber believed that that debt should have been abolished, not simply because it was unfair to make the working class of a country pay back a loan that went straight into the personal bank account of a corrupt leader, but because the deal was unethical and predatory to begin with. As a discipline, economics has been long divorced from its origin as a philosophy of ethics. However, economist Ajit Singh (1985) made the case objectively that Third World debtor countries demonstrate how trading systems and financial systems are inextricably linked. Singh analyzes how the economic growth of the Third World from 1960–1980 did not equal economic development, as these countries did not decrease their propensity to import.

2. The Upright Man

Vladimir Lenin had also contributed to Marxism the first successful application of the theory in practice, evidenced in the Russian Revolution through the effective use of a vanguard party. As an internationalist, Lenin asserted that so long as capitalism exists in the imperial center, socialist countries would come under attack. But as a dialectical materialist, he understood that each country had its own particular set of material conditions and contradictions such that the work of a revolutionary should be to focus primarily on building socialism in their own nation. Sankara found a viable alternative to the debt arrangement with the West in the idea of national self-sufficiency. This would be the primary speaking point that would rally the masses of the Upper Volta in support of the Burkinabe revolution, which kicked off with a military coup led by Sankara and Compaore in 1983. Sankara encouraged the masses to ‘invent the future.’ While he showed solidarity with other communist projects, evidenced in his friendships with figures like Fidel Castro, he was committed to learning from their mistakes. National self-sufficiency was even more important in the context of the Cold War, as Sankara was also not interested in being supported by the stumbling Soviet Union (Sankara 2007, 135).

The revolution renamed the Upper Volta to Burkina Faso, which means ‘the land of upright men.’ Sankara said, “our revolution in Burkina Faso draws on the totality of man’s experiences since the first breath of humanity. We wish to be the heirs of all the revolutions of the world, of all the liberation struggles of the peoples of the Third World” (41). To be upright connotes a dignified existence: to walk without assistance as the small child inevitably does in the course of their human development. But the concept of ‘self-sufficiency’ could stir up national sentiment in even the most reactionary, such that Sankara emphasized the importance of a continuous revolutionary education. He said:

“We had to give meaning to the brewing revolt of the idle urban masses, frustrated and weary of seeing limousines driving elites around, elites that were out of touch, succeeding one another at the helm of state while offering the urban masses nothing but false solutions elaborated and conceived by the minds of others. We had to give an ideological soul to the just struggles of our popular masses as they mobilized against the monster of imperialism.” (111)

Sankara also stated that “there is no true social revolution without the liberation of women. May my eyes never see, and my feet never take me to a society where half the people are held in silence. I hear the roar of women’s silence. I sense the rumble of their storm and feel the fury of their revolt” (253). In the revolution, women enthusiastically enlisted in the military or chaired revolutionary committees in their interest. Sankara outlawed female genital mutilation, forced marriage, and the practice of expelling schoolgirls if they fell pregnant.

The achievements of the Burkinabe revolution during the four years of Sankara’s leadership make for an impressive list: they raised literacy from 13% to 73%, vaccinated 2.5 million children, planted 10 million trees, built hundreds of schools and clinics, as well as a railroad connecting the capital city to a mining region, all without foreign aid. Sankara seized land from feudal landlords and redistributed it to farmers, allowing the country to produce enough wheat to become food self-sufficient. He insisted their actions lived up to their words. Sankara did this personally by paying himself a meager salary, living frugally, and owning few possessions. Additionally, he sold the previous government’s fleet of Mercedes, opting for more humble means of transportation for himself and all government officials, as well as requiring their uniforms be made from Burkinabe cotton (Harsch 2014). This was in stark contrast to the self-enrichment and indulgent lifestyles of the former neocolonial administrations. Sankara said, “our revolution, just like others, is constantly threatened by all kinds of counter-revolutionary dangers. We must be conscious of this, highly conscious, and firmly commit ourselves to the permanent defense of the correct perspective that will guide us to the ultimate goal” (2007, 273). Analyzing the relationship between national consciousness and individual consciousness, Frantz Fanon (1969 [1958]) wrote:

“The liberation of the individual does not follow national liberation. An authentic national liberation exists only to the precise degree to which the individual has irreversibly begun his own liberation. It is not possible to take one’s distance with respect to colonialism without at the same time taking it with respect to the idea that the colonized holds of himself through the filter of the colonialist culture.” (103)

As Sankara’s second in command, Blaise Compaore’s role in charge of the military placed him at a distance from the president. Stationed a couple of hours from the capital, and alienated from much of the positive revolutionary work, Compaore became restless and disagreeable. Sankara was alerted that Compaore was planning to assassinate him, but he refused to have Compaore arrested. Perhaps Sankara was overcorrecting for Stalin’s error of paranoid arrests. But Compaore followed through with his plans, assassinating Thomas Sankara on October 15th, 1987, and assuming the presidency (Harsch 2014). Compaore completely betrayed the revolution, and as dictator for the next 27 years he enriched himself through deals with the West. Today it remains an allegation that Compaore’s plan to overthrow Sankara was supported by the CIA and French secret service.

Sankara was said to be incorruptible, a praiseworthy virtue no doubt. But Sankara himself understood that to be corruptible, or greedy, was not a matter of immutable human nature or personality, but of a spirit clouded by the colonized psyche, as Fanon suggested. While Compaore certainly could have carried out his plans entirely without persuasion or assistance, the outcome was clearly beneficial to the West, and the allegations of interference are not unwarranted. In his book, The Jakarta Method, journalist Vincent Bevins (2020) tells the story of Washington’s Cold War crusade on communism, providing a exhaustive timeline of global coups and mass murders that the CIA orchestrated. The focal point of his book details how the CIA created and disseminated an outrageously dishonest anti-communist propaganda campaign in Indonesia, provided the military with a list of names, and helped to artificially create an economic crisis so that their guy Suharto could further shore up support to take over. In 1966, around one million Indonesians were murdered, and the largest communist party outside of China and the Soviet Union was wiped out. McNamara said this had “greatly reduced America’s stakes in Vietnam,” and Bevins explains that the United States could then afford to ‘lose’ in Vietnam because they had still won the version of Southeast Asia that they wanted (160). And in 1967, under Suharto, Indonesia was back open for business as dozens of American companies seized the opportunity to exploit their labor and resources.

The people of Burkina Faso held on to Sankara’s ideas after he was assassinated, but they were powerless against the military which Compaore controlled. Sankara’s story, what he stood for, and what his revolution achieved, is an eternal truth like that of sunlight peeking through the clouds of anticommunist ideology. Today, too many Americans are untroubled by stories of children with school lunch debt, or of people losing their homes because of medical debt, or predatory lending. While a certain era of twentieth century imperialism may have funded social welfare programs in Western democracies, the tendency of the rate of profit to fall (TRPF), as theorized by Karl Marx, has brought neoliberalism home to roost, where being crushed by a massive amount of personal debt is normalized in a paradigm of ‘liberty’ opposed to ‘socialism.’ In 2020, as Americans take in a constant feed of fear-mongering disinformation about China, the twitter account of World Bank South Asia tweeted about China’s neighboring country, saying “71% of Bhutan’s territory is covered in forest, but with a contribution of only 2% to GDP per year, the forest sector remains underutilized. How can the country sustainably invest in its forests?” Meanwhile, China has taken the lead in cancelling Africa’s debt, proving there are alternatives to Western global hegemony.

Bibliography

Bevins, Vincent. The Jakarta Method: Washington’s Anticommunist Crusade & the Mass Murder Program that Shaped Our World. New York: Public Affairs, 2020.

Black, Stephanie, dir. Life and Debt. 2001; New Yorker Films. Digital.

Fanon, Frantz. Toward the African Revolution: Political Essays. New York: Grove Press, 1969.

Graeber, David. Debt: The First 5,000 Years. New York: Melville House Publishing, 2011.

Harsch, Ernest. Thomas Sankara: An African Revolutionary. Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 2014.

Lenin, V.I. [1917] Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism. New York: International Publishers, 2013.

Lenin, V.I. [1916]. “A Caricature of Marxism and Imperialist Economism” In Collected Works, Vol. 23. Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1964.

Sankara, Thomas. Thomas Sankara Speaks: The Burkina Faso Revolution 1983–1987. New York: Pathfinder Press, 2007.

Singh, Ajit. “World Trading and Payments System, Economic Growth and Structural Change: A Third World Perspective.” Economic and Political Weekly 20, no. 1 (1985): 26–31.

World Bank South Asia. Twitter post. February 13th, 2020, 12:00 a.m.https://twitter.com/WorldBankSAsia/status/1227865071164022784