Over the past 2 months, I’ve been reading about Thomas Sankara. Since I don’t understand French, which is what most of the Burkinabe use, I’ve had to use the only L’Anglais books I could find. These were Thomas Sankara Speaks (a collection of his speeches, and we all know that one of the best ways to understand a man is to listen to his speeches), and Thomas Sankara: An African Revolutionary by Ernest Hasch, which is sort of a biography of his life by a journalist who was in contact with the man, and who was in the city of Po on the day of Sankara’s assassination.
The main aim of this listing is to ask you guys to read about Sankara. As a way of goading you into it, here are some things I found out that you won’t hear about if you only wait for reporters to tell you what happened.
[ul]
[li]His right-hand man, Blaise Compaore, betrayed him.[/li][li]The guy who most likely fired the shots that killed him was called Gilbert Diendere.[/li][li]He died at around 1615HRS, dressed in track suits (he usually went for sport activities every Thursday). After he was felled by the bullets, a grenade was thrown at his body, which is why the exhumation only found fragments of his clothes and 2 teeth.[/li][li]Sankara’s wife, Mariam, was fiiiiine! African beauty, I tell you.[/li][/ul]
http://www.capitainethomassankara.net/images/ARCHIVES_PHOTOS/Sankara_Mariam_guitare.jpg
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[li]He met Mariam when he was around 27.[/li][li]His kids look like him.[/li][/ul]
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[li]The man loved guitars. He had almost 15.[/li][li]His father was a muslim who converted to Christianity upon joining the French Foreign Legion[/li][li]His father changed the family name from Sankara to Ouedraougou while in the military, then back to Sankara after his military service.[/li][li]At 24, he lived with his brother (Paul, 10) and sister (NimesahauJina, 8) in his house in the barracks at Po.[/li][li]At a time when computer technology was just taking off, he started taking lessons on its use. He even had his ministers take lessons.[/li][li]He popularised (although with lots of effort and in spite of general reluctance) the Faso Dan Fani. It became known as the Sankara Arrive, Sankara viene, or “Sankara Anakuja”[/li][/ul]
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(The bitchnigga Compaore is the mofo in blue, shining his eyes on leadership)
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[li]The name “Burkina Faso” is a made up of words from 3 different languages.[/li][li]He led the people in building a railway through the La Bataille du Rail initiative, when the IMF and WB wouldn’t fund it.[/li][/ul]
http://i.colnect.net/f/2590/339/Laying-rails.jpg
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-jSrooGNzlWo/Uhzi313orZI/AAAAAAAAADI/mEUh0wojh0g/s640/bataillerails2.png
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[li]I think he and Museveni met once. I don’t know when this was. (Do we have any listers in State House Uganda who can ask M7 and get back to us? Azandizana.)[/li][/ul]
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(M7 is in the right middleground)
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[li]To be honest, I think he loved posing for photos. But why should I deny him that privilege? After all, he was modest in every other way.[/li][li]He had lukewarm relations with Gaddafi. Not too hot, not too cold[/li][li]Similar to how Jezebel called and asked for the head of Yohana Mbatizaji on a platter, I think Sankara’s death was caused, in a way, by Chantal Terrasson de Fougeres.[/li][/ul]
http://popafro.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/campaore.jpg
Inasemekana this bitch (she reminds me of my ex, btw) who was and still is Compaore’s wife, had a taste for the finer things in life. This went against Sankara’s policy of zero tolerance for corruption in the civil service. Whispers abound that she put it in her husband’s head to murder Sankara, considering the fact that they were to have their lifestyle audited by the CNR. Wanaume, ni nini inatusumbuanga na hawa majezebel? We forsake the future of a whole country just because of a mama? Anyway, Chantal’s story brings into play regional politics, because she grew up in the home of Houphouet-Boigny, the Cote d’Ivoirian president, who was a lackey of the French government, who were against Sankara’s policies… Complicated, I tell you.
So, go read about the man for yourself. Parle l’Francais? Lit a French book written by an African so that we can get an unbiased “foreigner-looking-in-on-Africans” perspective.
Some quotes:
Revolutionaries do not waste time hypocritically praising one another. Addressing Castro, while receiving Cuba’s Order of Jose Marti.
[B]
Glory, dignity, music, health, education and power to the people!
“I make no claim to lay out any doctrines here. I am neither a messiah nor a prophet. I possess no truths.” [/B]UN Address
“The word of Christ was betrayed. His cross was turned into a club.” Criticizing religious zealotry.
[B]
“Learn to live modestly; to accept and impose austerity on yourself in order to be able to carry out ambitious projects.”
“… good men… see their art prostituted by the alchemy of show-business tricks.”
With sentimentalism, one cannot understand death.[/B] On hearing the news of Amilca Cabral’s death (or was it Che Guevara’s? I don’t remember).
We admired this man [Samora Machel] who never bowed his head… At the same time, I ask you to name streets, buildings, and so on, after Samora Machel over the whole expanse of our territories, because he deserves it. Posterity must remember this man and all that he did for his people and for other peoples. We will thus shape his memory in our country, so that other men remember him forever. On Samora Machel’s death. They were buddies.
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Cursed is the person at whose door no one ever knocks and whose home no hungry and thirsty traveler ever visits or enters. Explaining why he’d still receive Mitterand, even though he and the French president were at loggerheads.
We can use Africa’s immense latent resources to develop the continent, because our soil and subsoil are rich. We have the means to do that and we have an immense market, a vast market from north to south, east to west. We have sufficient intellectual capacities to create technology and science, or at least to adopt it wherever we find it… and … Let’s make sure that the African market is a market for Africans. Let’s produce in Africa, transform in Africa, consume in Africa . Produce what we need and consume what we produce, in place of importing it. On utilising science and engineering to advance Burkina Faso.
RIP, Capitaine.
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