Sankara. From Robin Shuffield’s “Upright Man.”
[Commentary]
Happy Birthday Thomas Isadore Noel Sankara: (December 21, 1949–October 15, 1987)
You flashed for a brief and shining moment in Africa.
You accomplished much: instilling a spirit of self-reliance, instituting food production self-sufficiency, empowering women, launching national health campaigns, and contruction projects using domestic resources, labor and know-how.
Then you were gone; murdered brutally and dismembered by the agents of Neo-colonialism, just as another Pan-African was butchered earlier in 1961–Patrice Lumumba.
You predicted your death at the July 1987 O.A.U. Heads of State summit in Addis Ababa. You denounced the heavy debt burden then suffocating Africa and said all the leaders must renounce them collectively. If you dared to do it alone, you told the other presidents in your speech, you would not live long enough to attend the following year’s summit.
Three months later, you lay in a pool of blood.
The Burkinabe never forgot you and never forgave your killers who acted at the behest of France; it took 27 years but finally the Burkinabe rose and threw out the assassin Blaise Compaore.
You are gone, but you are with us.
You inspire people in Uganda who are determined to remove Gen. Yoweri Museveni, a brutal, genocidal, corrupt bribe-taking tyrant, and in Congo where Joseph Kabila, another dictator attempts all devious schemes to maintain control.
You inspire the African Youth, rising up in South Africa, Nigeria, Ethiopia and throughout the continent.
Emboldened by your legacy they will succeed.
