by Jonathan Azaziah

Happy, happy birthday to Thomas Isidore Noël Sankara, the revolutionary godfather of Burkina Faso. Africa’s Che Guevara would’ve been 67 today and there is a deep sense of melancholy knowing that he was martyred at the tender age of 36. One of the world’s least known but nevertheless most historically important revolutionaries, Sankara came to power in 1983 after spearheading a masterful Anti-Imperialist coup. From the moment he took the reins, he began to implement radical changes that affected countless lives for the better in a nation ravaged by decades of French colonialism. From anti-capitalist land reform to the immediate implementation of total women’s rights, Cuban-style literacy promotion to education, a declaration of war on famine to resource nationalization, the removal of colonialist structures to national, public, free health care, rejection of neoliberalism to the punishment of collaborators and colonialists, Pan-Africanism to staunch Anti-Zionism, the incorruptible Burkinabé firebrand was like a shooting star in the solidification of all these policies. Never before in the post-colonial era on the African continent had such revolutionary shifts occurred in such a short period of time. Continue reading Happy 67th Birthday To Martyred Burkinabé Revolutionary Thomas Sankara, You Are Missed Today More Than Ever Before →