Rev Left Radio - Thomas Sankara: "The Che of Africa" and Marxist Martyr

Episode Date: December 16, 2018

 Comrade Slasher from Nigeria joins Breht to talk about the life, politics, and legacy of Marxist revolutionary and Pan-African leader of Burkina Faso, Thomas Sankara.  Find our guest here: https://twitter.com/slasher_oag?lang=en Outro music: "I'm A African" by Dead Prez & "The 3rd World" by Immortal Technique ----------------------------------------- NEW LOGO from BARB, a communist graphic design collective! You can find them on twitter or insta @Barbaradical. Please reach out to them if you are in need of any graphic design work for your leftist projects!  Intro music by Captain Planet. You can find and support his wonderful music here:  https://djcaptainplanet.bandcamp.com Please Rate and Review our show on iTunes or whatever podcast app you use. This dramatically helps increase our reach. Support the Show and get access to bonus content on Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/RevLeftRadio Follow us on Twitter @RevLeftRadio This podcast is officially affiliated with The Nebraska Left Coalition, the Nebraska IWW, Socialist Rifle Association (SRA), Feed The People - Omaha, and the Marxist Center. Join the SRA here: https://www.socialistra.org/

Little by little, Sankara takes his country out of misery, achieves food self-sufficiency, but clashes with the French who want to keep control over their former colonies. Above all, they want to avoid by all means that Sankara's ideas spread throughout the region. France does not understand Africa. It's time that it does. Who in this room is not wish to see our deaths simply cancelled? If you don't, you can take the first flight. the first flight, to go and pay it to the World Bank.

It's our common wish. Thomas Sankara is attacked by those in the north as well as in the south who benefit from Africa's under development. His closest collaborator, Blaise Compaure, with the support of foreign powers, will betray him. Killed for his ideas, Thomas Sankara has become the African Che, in the eyes of African youth today. For our patriotic struggle, for our radiant future, our homeland or death, we will win. Hello everybody and welcome back to Revolutionary Left Radio. I'm your host and Comrade Bred O'Shea, and today we have on Comrade's

Sukami from Africa to talk about Thomas Sankara, his life, his policies, and his legacy. We're very appreciative to have him on. Before we get into the show, we want to give a shout out to Comrade Evan, who is a supporter on Patreon of Rev Left Radio, and who came through Omaha recently, and Dave and I got to hang out with him, have some beers with him, show him our studio. It's just really cool when we get to meet listeners and comrades from around the country. So if you're interested in doing the same thing, if any of you find yourselves in Omaha, We'd absolutely love to meet up with you.

And as always, if you like what we do here on RevLeft Radio, we have a Patreon account, patreon.com forward slash RevLeft Radio. In exchange for your support, we give you a bunch of dope shit, private Facebook group, a book club, a Discord chat, among many other things. So if you want to support us on that front and get some cool shit in return, definitely do. We greatly appreciate it.

It means the world to us. But having said all of that, let's go ahead and get into this really wonderful and heartfelt, episode on Thomas Sankar. My name is Sukami. I'm a Nigerian. I've got a background in environmental management and biochemistry and also a first graduate degree in food security management. and my views and accumulation of revolutionary knowledge have wholly been self-thought

because you don't get this in schools. No one is going to sit you down to give you the knowledge to overthrow them. So this shows that the continent is largely in the hands of colonial agents and even wrapped up in imperialism. So I just spent my time reading a lot about revolutions, trying to update my knowledge and, you know, keep in touch with other revolutionary-minded people. Yeah, and just out of curiosity, what country are you calling from? Because I think this is the first interview we've ever done from the continent of Africa.

Yeah, yeah, I'm calling from Nigeria to Lagos, Nigeria. That's awesome. I'm really excited about this. I'm really excited to have you on. I know we met through Twitter and just sort of talked a little bit, and then when I mentioned this show, you reached out and said this is something I'm very interested in. And I always love having listeners turn into guests. and so this is another example of that.

I guess the best way to start is maybe talking about how you identify politically and then maybe talk a little bit about what got you interested in Thomas Sankara in the first place. I identify politically as a Marxist-Leninist. So as a Marxist Leninist, I consider the Marxist theory as the clenching in the fist and then the Leninist theory as the movement of the fist. It is the backbone that you can rest your concrete analysis on for any revolution. movement. So, but, you know, it kind of galvanizes the mind to know how capital moves, how dynamic it is, how it infiltrates into the political system of your country, and how you can

approve them by studying various revolutions and coming up with your own revolutionary theory. So the Marxist-learningist theory gives a guiding principle, and, you know, it's like a pathway through which you can uproot the domination of capitalism from the country and the forces of nuclearism and ultimately imperialism for national liberation. And how I got interested in Thomas Sankara was by reading about African-American struggles, especially from people like Malcolm X, the Black Panthers, you know, they will talk about people like France Fanon and other revolutionaries all around the world. And I was very curious, like, do we have any revolutionary in Africa,

or do we have other people that have taken this heroic pathway? So just a little bit of search will pop up Tomo Sankara's name, maybe I'm Nailka-Cabra and other revolutionaries. really fascinated and impressed by the very, very tremendous achievements he made in very, very short four years that he ruled the country. So he gave me a key into knowing that, oh, these things can actually be done and this pathway could actually be followed. So, yeah, that was what got me interested in Thomas Ankara. And I kept on upgrading and updating my knowledge about what he did and how to link it up to our current struggles on the continent of Africa and the world. I love the metaphor of, you know, Marxist,

Leninism being a clenched fist in the Marxist position, and then Leninism is the method by which that fist moves forward. I think that's really interesting, and I like that a lot. And, you know, doing the research for this episode, I just kind of fell in love with Thomas Sankara, his way of caring himself. His absolute dedication to the cause will obviously get into to all of that throughout this interview. But, you know, he's been called the Che of Africa. And I think that's right in a lot of ways. There's that authenticity. There's that sensitivity. There's that sincerity. There's that dogged dedication to the cause. The people really truly loved him. But I also believe he's not really the Che of Africa. He's the Sankara of Africa. He is his own

man. He is his own legacy and his own force. Yeah. Yeah, I believe that too. And in fact, you see that knowing the conditions of Burkina Faso, knowing the conditions of his people and where he really led to tackle imperialism and nuclear nationalism, he brought to bear his own understanding of this Marxist-Leninist theory and was able to apply it. You know, but though you're always alone, because these theories are very, very hard to come by. Imperialism is making sure they mop up revolutionaries, kill them, assassinate them, do whatever it is they have to do to make sure that the knowledge is not popularized and people don't overturn what they've planted to continue exploiting Africa.

So, yeah, he did that really well. And, you know, we can see from his example that, you know, there's a way to follow, and there's a way to really lift the people out of poverty and misery. Yeah, absolutely. And if you listen to, if anybody listened to our Vietnam episode, we talked about the presence of France in Vietnam and their colonial ambitions there. That same sort of French colonial power is at play here, which we'll get into. But, you know, the history of French colonialism, which I know a lot of Americans aren't really taught about, is just as brutal, just as disgusting, almost, I think, as the U.S. itself. And so this is another example of that taking place. yeah yeah that is what that is what you have all around the continent and the sad thing is it is it hasn't changed because you african countries were just starting to come out to define their identity their political leanings but they see imperialism sees colonial people see that oh this is a shining light we have to take this guy out you know when you want to find your way to the light and then

they push you back into darkness by killing the people that are here to save the continent or to put the people on the right part. So they do that. They've been mastered that. They've mocked up a lot of revolutionaries from Guinea-Bissau to Cape Verde, Franz Fanon, a lot of people that you see that just died very, very early, you know, or planned assassination attempts, you know. So just to disrupt because revolutions take a lot of time to come together to happen. So they know how to do that. And people must be vigilant to understand that you mustn't lose your guard and you must always popularize a revolutionary theory. that when they take one out, you still have millions of revolutionaries that's going to carry

out the agenda to uplift the people and empower the people. Yeah, exactly right and incredibly well said. And I know people that have listened to our history shows in the past, after you hear this and how Thomas Ancara's life ended, you will immediately see the continuation of a very gross and horrifying and tragic pattern in the history of left-wing movements and the crushing of them by the forces of reaction of imperialism and of the bourgeoisie. So let's go ahead and just get into the life of Thomas Sankara and perhaps the best way to start is maybe talking a little bit about how he grew up. So what was Sankara's childhood like and what kind of man did he grow up to be?

So he was born on December 1949. He was a third of 10 children. His father was a gendarme. So when we say gendarm, he's a civil law enforcement for the colonial regime. So we start to see that these bumps up Sankara's probability. of getting education and having access to privilege. So it could read, it could get some basic amenities, and it was a bit better than the average person

that wouldn't even have access to education and some other things that would put you on the path so even stumbling across a good education. So he was always a very studious young boy. He was eager to learn, which is a trait of every revolutionary, you know, as a child. And then he did well in French and mathematics and went to church often.

His parents wanted him to become a Catholic priest because you're either a priest or you're in the military or you're just working for the colonial regime. So these were the jobs that were very common at that point in time. So you could have some sort of benefit from the colonial apparatus. So he took the exam to his basic education school and passed. But at the time he was doing this, he was around 1966 and the atmosphere around after the first school had galvanized the minds of the young people to. to go into the military. They saw the military as a way to tackle corruption

because they had overthrown the first president, Maurice Jamehul, from power. And then so Sankarro was like, okay, let me go to school and get this military training. But while doing that,

I'm sure I'm going to get a scholarship because my family can afford to put me through higher education. So he got a scholarship into school and joined the military preparatory school at the age of 17. And when he was there,

He met up with a tutor that was secretly exposing him to concepts like imperialism, neocolonialism, communism, told him about the Soviet and Chinese revolutions and other African liberation movement. So we start to see how the ability of going into school had put him on the path of exposure into radical awareness. And then he was part of the brightest students in school, which gave him accolades. And we had a lot of good people moving with him in school. and, you know, a lot of young, young people aspire to be like him. And he loved music too. And as a young person, he went for that into the Arirabe Military Academy in Madagascar.

And while he was there, he studied agricultural techniques that helped him in his governance by increasing the productivity in his country. Then while he was in Madagascar, he witnessed an uprising against the government there, which made him see the power of the people and was so in this. seeds of investing in the people, making sure that you carry the people along, and there he further studied the works of Marx and Lenin. And while doing that, he studied military strategy and history of the African continent and his own country in particular. So that had nudged him in the direction of being a revolutionary already. So he grew up to be a very, very sharp and keen

man with love for the people and always being by the side of the people. Yeah, absolutely. And his family describes him as sort of an incredibly sensitive person and incredibly intelligent and reflective person. And as we'll see throughout this interview, an incredibly dedicated human being dedicated to the cause of liberation, dedicated to anti-imperialism and dedicated to anti-capitalism. He dedicated every part of his life to it. Can you talk before we get into how Sankara came to power, maybe a little bit of the historical background? Can you talk about the history of quote unquote upper Volta, which would later become Burkina Faso? under Sankara, especially with regards to colonialism and its effects on the country and its people? The European Scramble for Africa led to the invasion of what we call Upper Volta by a French army between 1896 and 1904. And what happened essentially if we take a look at the Berlin conference was, oh, just scrabble Chicana, later come and exploit the resources on this real estate called Africa.

You know, so it was a bit bad for them because the land in Burkina wasn't too fertile and it was landlocked, so they couldn't do much, but they still kept their real estate. So what they did was tie in the exploitation to Côte d'Ivoire because they used the people of Burkina Faso as cheap labor for the mines and other productivity work in Cote d'Ivoire. They had no business developing the lands. They didn't spend money on educating the people. they didn't do any form of development since it was also about extractive

exploitation. They benefited from the flora of the country and the forest for timber and other raw materials. It was later on that they discovered the manganese and some other raw materials on the country, but by that time there were successive

military governments that didn't allow them as such to get full access to the resources, but they were still trying to develop techniques into tying the African continent down into debt. In this wave of actions, you see them leading the African continent and even Burkina Faso and most of the people there to stagnation, there was poverty, it was very high level of

illiteracy, it was disease, hunger, all around the continent. And on top of that, there was drought. So it wasn't too much of a good real estate for them as other French colonial Africa that they got. Definitely. And, you know, again, just sort of tying back to other historical examples, There is this Ho Chi men in Vietnam sort of dynamic here, this extractive French colonial project. That sort of dynamic is very much there.

And, you know, we talked about it being named Upper Volta, which was the name that the French gave it and is based on a river in the area. But, you know, when Sankara came to power, he renamed the entire country Burkina Faso, which means the land of upright men. Is that correct? Yeah, yeah, that's what it did. You know, when you're a revolutionary, you know that what French people did or what colonelizing did was to wipe off your culture, wipe off your history. So you have to give a rebirth. You have to give a new African culture. That's why you see places like Ghana. Ghana was Gold Coast, so it had to be changed to Ghana. You study your history. You look at the kingdoms that were there. You name it Ghana.

Look at Upper Volta, change it to Burkina Faso. There must be that rebirth. And things like the name, the flag of the country really come into clay because it signifies something. You know, so it signifies that this is a new way of thinking. We had precedents before Sankara, but they didn't think of doing that. It shows that they were not even that thorough and didn't understand that the country and even the continent as a whole needed a rebirth.

So Sankara, with the understanding, that you need to claim your identity, you need to claim where you are, and show to the world that you can run your affairs yourself and lift your people out of poverty. So it comes with reinstilling that African identity back into the people and giving them a place or things.

to focus on for their own development and empowering them. Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, after he took power, they would start releasing announcements in different African languages, and that's just sort of this symbolic gesture, like the French colonial project of taking away our culture and our language and making us second-class citizens in our own country is now over, and we're going to reach out to Africans of all stripes. And he really was a pan-Africanist in that he really wanted to unite Africa against this entire colonial and imperial project. Before we talk about how he rose to power, Can you talk about his pan-Africanist approach and ideas?

Yeah. So he was someone that knew that he had been, or the people of Africa, that get access to education, you already have this assimilation characteristics that the French had planted into your country. So with the French, they have the assimilation policy to throw you in and speak you out as a French person. Once you come out as a French person, you're, you're, you're, outlook on life, the way you do things, how you think of the economics, how you think of

your governance, would be exploitative and automatically you're serving the interest of the French. They don't have to even have forces there, they don't have soldiers there. You're already doing their bidding and you think whatever they say is what you should follow. So once you are conscious of these things and once you get your theories right and you understand from the revolutionary perspective that this is what this assimilation has done and this is what will continue to do, then you need to find a way to go back to your Pan-African way. So that was what he did. And he even connected to the black struggle by visiting Harlem, talking to a lot of revolutionaries

there, encouraging people linking up with other revolutionary movements in Africa, and even linking up with people that were from the other continents that would call Caribbean and all. He was close to the Prime Minister of Grenada. So you need to kind of re-bring the African face into the picture back, and that was what he did. He made sure, even with some of his policies, to encourage the production of African goods, consuming of African goods, and even showing to the world that we can do things by ourselves and not be subjected by other people. So a lot of his policies that we're going to talk about maybe later on when we were doing the interview might show us what he did. to bring Africa into the limelight, but he certainly showed to the people that you could be

an Africanist and move in terms or in tune with the technology of the world and also retain your identity at the same time. So that was what he did. We never betrayed his people. That's incredibly powerful. Let's go ahead and talk about how he came to power. So how did Sancarra eventually rise to power? In 1972, after he graduated from the military school as an officer in Madagascar, he partook in a very short border war between Upper Volta and Mali. So I don't want to call it Burkina Paso yet because he hadn't named it yet. So shortly afterwards, he took command of a national training center in the southern part of Opa Volta.

And then he went for a training session at a parachute school in Morocco, where he met Blaze Compare. That would be second in command. So shortly after that, in 1976, he formed a secret group, a secret communist officers group with some bright officers that had some sort of synchronization of ideologies with him. And then a coup took place that removed General Lamizana, that's the second president, and put another colonel in power for just two years. So we should be aware that by that point in time, they have been already ideologically charged. and they're always in top command and flanking every government of the day

so you have any government that's in place you have ideologically sound officers there so Sankara was later appointed as a secretary to the president Zerbo temporarily and then the Zerbo administration put a ban on strikes and disled Sankara to resign from his post

the other officers in the communist group to resign from their posts and Sankara was arrested In November 1982, there was another crew that put Commander Jean-Bartis in power. And this was a coup that Sagara supported but didn't participate in the group. But he was designated the Prime Minister of the Military Council of that government. And while he was functioning as the Prime Minister, he represented upper voter all around the world. And most importantly, the unique ones was the representation of the non-aligned movements that they did.

in New Delhi, where he met Philo Castro, Samora Michelle of Mozambique, and Morris Bishop of Grenada. So I suspect that from meeting and interacting with these people, they had already given him some very, very good pointers to take a move in the country. So, Sakara's popularity began to soar in the country because he was giving speeches that electrified the masses. and the only rally that was held in the country was the forefront and really the oratory piece of the administration. So there was a crew that took place in 1983 by other factions in the government. And once again, Sankara is arrested, but Blase was able to escape to pole, which was the military command center that Sankara used to head. They formed a group that was able to free Sankara and then overthrew the government.

over through the government, a National Council for Revolution was formed and Sankara took power as president. And from then, you start seeing the changes that he made in the government based on the ideologies and the theories and the revolutionary perspective that he has had over time, starting from when he got into the military academy in prep school, down to the point that they took power. Yeah. And, you know, he was a great order. He had this amazing ability to connect with people and to inspire them. And, you know, although he did come to power through a coup, sometimes the word coup is used in ways that sort of muddy the water about what really happened. He did come to power through a coup, but he was also supported by, you know, he had mass support in the population and he had huge connections and support with a bunch of different revolutionary organizations in the country.

So this wasn't just a small, you know, group of people taking power. It was this mass movement and he was at the spearhead of it. Yeah, yeah, with a spearhead of it. And I think he was the one that really kind of synthesized and crystallized out the ideas because you see a lot of people rallying around him and, you know, him being the nucleus of whatever movement, the revolutionary movement in the country. So he is kind of the brain behind everything and with the people just rallying around him, you know, because we have to understand that this revolutionary perspectives, they're very rare. You don't come into them, you know, because these are new countries that are just coming up from. independence, they're really still finding their bearing. So it's people that have had the exposure, maybe petty bourgeois, people that now

commit what we call class suicide because of what they've gotten from the revolutionary theories that are able to now bring these theories and put to use for the people. So that's how I think people like Tomosankara got in, people like Cabral got in. You see a lot of revolutionaries, they were privileged people. But what made them turn away from their privilege and put their knowledge use for the people. It's this revolutionary perspective. Yeah. We talked about this a little bit, I mean, even in the last question, but I think it's important to drill down and even expand on this. So what made Sankara different from other

African leaders at that time? And why did so many people come to love and support him? Why Sankara was different from a lot of the leaders at that point in time was that his government was people oriented. He focused on the people and made sure that the wealth, the productive forces of the country was used for the people. And when people started getting relief from the government, when they start getting concrete upliftment from the government, they start to love you and they start to gravitate towards you. And at the same time, they start to open more to your ideals and start to understand what it is that you're doing. So that was what he did for most of the that most of the African leaders think too. And what we should understand that a lot of the countries

around him and a lot of the countries on the African continent have been trapped by colonialists and neo-colonial way of thinking. So a lot of the leadership wouldn't give room for his ideas to spread, but even at that, you still have a lot of people that appreciate what he did, which most of the other African leaders think, they were reaching themselves, putting the people in penury, making deals with colonial, former colonial people and just personally enriching themselves. And he didn't do that. He just showed that there was another way to do things, put the African dignity up and became a shining stack of a lot of young young people on the continent.

Yeah, and instead of enriching himself, he lived incredibly humbly. He didn't spend the money on private jets. He didn't allow anybody to take first class, first class. airline tickets. He vaccinated 2.5 million children against meninges and missiles in a few weeks. He integrated a national literacy campaign, which jumped the literacy rate from 13% to 72%. He planted over 10 million trees to prevent desertification of the Sahel. He did a lot of things, which will still elaborate and talk about bringing a quantitative and qualitative boost in the life of people and going another route

that uplifted the African was what made people love and support him. People have never seen things like this before. And a lot of people on the African continent think, oh, this is like a miseria that was just sent from everyone or something out of his goodwill. Because of the

ignorance of the theories that he was following just thought it was out of his goodwill. But when you're following an ideology and you're sticking by it, you start to see qualitative and quantitative gains in the people and which other revolutions have shown from Cuba to other parts of the world that has focused the resources on the people and to try to help with them.

Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, we had the episode on Staten Revolution. We talked about Marx and Engels and Lenin's idea of, you know, when you come to power, the people who are in the vanguard or, you know, whatever, controlling the government at that time, should not live as a separate class above the masses, but should take on, quote, unquote, working man's wages. And, you know, Sankar really put this into practice. I think he sold off the government's fleet of Mercedes and exchanged him for the cheapest car possible.

So all officials had to drive a cheap car and wear a traditional garb made in Burkina Faso, etc. Yeah, he reduced the salary of all public servants, including his own, forbaged the use of government chauffeurs and first-class airline tickets. There was a part in the documentary where someone was making a joke that he said that, what's the use of getting a first-class ticket? When the plane takes off, we all take off, and when the plane lands, we all land. So why do you need a first class ticket? And then at that point in time, he did other agrarian reforms, which boosted agriculture and made the people's food self-sufficient. Within four years, he was able to pick for the African people against neo-colonial debt

and he called for a United Front against the debt that was imposed on African countries. And then he also made sure that nobody was using the government's fund for self-enrichments. He required public servants to wear traditional woven fabric made by Burkina Faso cotton growers. So this is going back to the African personality. We have to live in an African way. You can't be buying cotton or clothes from America or Europe and thinking that your own local industry is going to grow. So in one documentary online, he called out a young man and said, oh, you're putting on Levi's, don't you think our tellers can make this here?

You know, so this is bringing back the African people and channeling the productive forces back to the people, empowering the masses and making sure that they're able to fend for himself in dignity. He had a motorcycle for himself and made an all-women's motorcycle brigade. He empowered the women. He employed them into higher levels of government. So he did a lot for the people, which, we can still elaborate to see how, I don't want to use the word magnanimous,

but how this theory will guide you into correcting the wrongs that you've had that were institutionalized in the previous governments. And we'll get into even more policies in a bit, but I do want to talk about anti-imperialism. So what role did anti-imperialism play in Sankara's policies and leadership? Yeah, so essentially it meant that he went against the economic, the political, the cultural, and even military interests. of France, the former colonizer,

and automatically against European and North American international finance monopolies. And this revolutionary understanding made him realize that majorly there were the native bourgeoisie that was complicit in stagnating Burkina Faso, linked up with this aforementioned factors. And then this class analysis also made him realize that he needed to dominate

and make sure that he puts this fuel alarm landlords and all the fuel elements in check. And also, he puts the neo-colonial agents on check too. He carried out a lot of trials that were public, the same way Cuba did when the revolution took place. And then his anti-imprilist stance gave him a clear bearing on economic structures that needed to be dismantled and opposed. And he also gave him a clear pathway on the economic direction to follow.

And in his political orientation speech, you get a full scope of the character of the revolutionary government. And the main aim of the revolutionary government was to build an independent, self-sufficient and planned national economy at the service of democratic and popular society. So you're not having any less fair economy or free markets, nonsense that comes into the countries of African nations to paralyze them or make them ensnared to foreign debt. And he started aligning himself with revolutionary leaders all around the world. Burkina Faso was with the non-aligned bloc. So you see moves like that that started pointing to his anti-imperilist stance.

And you could see that when you align yourself with the people and remove yourself from the yoke of imperialism, you start to see growth in the country. And he even, like I said, encouraged the rebirth of the African personality by renaming his country, Bokina Faso, the land of copyright men, you know, he composed the natural. himself. And, you know, the cultural resistance, again, like I've mentioned, is essential for Africans that have had their culture distorted by colonialism and empiricism. Because Empirizing to permeates its culture, it makes us have taste for foreign goods, it makes us subservience to foreign dictates and also he stood away clearly from that and started showing

Africans, reinstilling that African or African-ness in people, which is all the package you get from being anti-imperialist. It comes as a whole full pack. Yeah, I remember watching a part of the documentary, one of his speeches at like an African conference and he was pleading to other African leaders to join him in this anti-imperial approach and these policies and he said, if it's just me, if I just do it here in Burkina Faso, I'll be dead by next year. The summit of the OAU, the organization of African unity. Thomas Sankara challenges the other heads of state. He talks about the famous foreign debt and the drastic increase of interest rates are concern for all third world countries he points an accusing finger at all the

leaders who are degrading their people while growing personally richer in the name of the old north-south domination system I would like this conference that we cannot pay the debt not in a rebellious spirit but just to avoid being assassinated individually. If Burkina Faso is the only one to refuse, I won't be at the next conference. On the other hand, with everybody's support, and when we are saying that we should not pay that debt, we're not refusing our responsibilities.

responsibilities, or not keeping our words, it's just that we don't have the same moral standards as others. Between the rich and the poor, moral standards cannot be the same. The Bible or the Quran cannot serve those who exploit people and exploit the ones in the same way. We should have two editions of the Bible and two editions of the Quran. Brothers, with everybody's support, we will make peace at home. We'll be able to use Africa's full potential as well as to develop our country because our land is rich. We have enough manpower and we have a very large market.

From the north to the south, the east to the west. We have enough brainpower to create or at least go and learn something. go and learn science and technology where it can be learned. Mr. President, let's present a united front against the debt here in Addis Abeba. Let's make sure that this conference will decide to limit the arms race between the poor and weak countries. The clubs and knives that we buy are useless. Let's make sure that the African market belongs to Africans. Let's produce in Africa.

Manufacture in Africa and consume in Africa. Let's produce what we need and consume what we produce instead of importing goods. Burkina Faso came here to show you our locally produced cotton. Woven in Burkina Faso and tailored in Burkina Faso. in Burkina Faso, to clothe our people, I, along with my delegation, been dressed by our tailors, our farmers. Not a single thread comes from Europe or America. I'm not presenting a fashion show here. But I simply would like to say that we must accept to live the African way.

It's the only way to live in freedom and with dignity. Thank you, Mr. President. Our home line, Lordess, we will go. Yeah, yeah, and you can see the smirk on their faces. They didn't even take him serious, where they were just looking at this young boy, what is he saying? Because we have this respect thing, you know, the elders just keep looking at you, like, you're just young, you don't know how the world works. But when you're running with ideals, you have it different. But a lot of his policies were, you know, very, very noteworthy and I hope we'll get into that.

the interview goes on. Absolutely. Yeah, let's go ahead right now and kind of drill down into, we've mentioned mini policies at a surface level, but kind of talk about it more. What policies did Sankara pursue for his people while in power, especially with regards to like poverty in class, women's rights, and environmentalism? Women's rights, he outlawed female gentile mutilation. He outlawed forced marriages and he outlawed polygamy in support of the women's rights. In 1984, after one year of structural reforms, a cultural revolution.

is underway. Africans are far from indifferent to Sankara. He goes further and questions an African society in which men have always dominated women. This means that we must give a job to every woman of this country. We must give every woman the means to earn honest and decent living. He creates a real shock by being one of the first-hand life. being one of the first heads of state in the world to promote women's rights. How is women's liberation visible in the school?

Thomas Ancara. In this respect, we also have to get rid of futile practices, a traditional education that says that a boy is always above a girl, especially at school when girls are pregnant the schools are expelled them don't they?

They are simply excluded but nobody wants to know whether the partner responsible for the pregnancy is by any chance in the same class or not and even if he is the boy stays in

so boys can provoke as many pregnancies as they want they can start having kids up until grade six but girls if they're present, There was a policy, or at least the intention to implement policies that raise the rights of women to the status of human being

in Burkina Faso's traditional society in order to break away from practices, such as forced marriages, exism, and the fact that men were all powerful over their families. All these things have been examined and really backward practices have been fought against. It is thanks to the revolution that women started to take part in political activities next to men. Many women joined the army when military training was offered to them. They were able to carry out the same tasks as men did. handle arms, march, and wear the same uniforms.

And wear the same uniforms. I think he was the first African head of state to appoint women to positions other than minister for women's affairs. He always found extremely competent he knew where to find them. He knew where to find them. On the 8th of March for Women's Day, Thomas said that things had to go the other way around.

It was Women's Day, so instead of going to the market, they were going to stay at home. And men had to do the shopping for them. They did. We saw them buying tomatoes and condiments, all the food stuff's necessary for the day's cooking. It was great. They were laughing, and the men enjoyed it too. They got to know real market prices.

They got to know real market prices. Husbands who beat their wives to torture women, down with them. Our homeland or death, we will win. There's something I'd probably recommend There's a speech on International Women's Day that shows how class the private property and historical dialectics of how you start seeing the women's exploitation. You see that there.

And then he appointed a female so high employment position. Then on environmentalism, like I said, he planted 10 million trees to prevent desertification. And then he redistributed land, very, very important because land is wage and a real wealth people and then again he constructed railways that tied to the country together for movement of goods and encouraged that the nationalization of the country's resources be done which he did and also the expectation of the country's resources which was manganese be done by the country no foreign corporation coming to do that for them so when he did that the substantial wealth that he got from it was channeled into health programs and he made

sure that civil servants paid, you know, this high earning civil servants are part of the native elites paid part of their salaries to health programs and education programs. He also made sure that he didn't use air conditioning in his room. He wasn't indulging in any form of luxury, you know, like the Che Guevara episode where we mentioned that he wasn't walking on the red carpet. You start to see how deep you can go with this. And then he converted the army provisioning store into a state-owned supermarket to enable everyone get access to goods. And then, like I said, he forced his civil servants to pay one-month salary to public projects.

He lowered his own salary to $450 a month. And he just had a few possessions, which was a car, four bikes, and three guitars. And then on the environmental plane, he made sure that it was like planned grazing. so you have a depletion of the forest reserves or animals just damaging crops and then he made the one growth, one community so each community has to have a group where they plant trees lumbering activities was cropped

so it wouldn't be inciscent or just indiscriminate cutting of lumber because of the desertification problem that they had and then his government on the side of the oppressed He made sure that the decades and decades of expectation that the feudal landlords have had was overturned, gave the land back to the people, made sure that they had the proceeds, and even made sure that the economy was integrated into the work of the prison. So this was a few of the things that he even pursued as a leader in his country. And then he prosecuted corrupt officials in tribunals that was public to the glare of everybody. So when you have eye-class people being shown on TV or in public courts, you know, to explain how the malfeasance went on or how they stole money from government, you know,

it becomes something that's really embarrassing for them. And he picked a lot of things from the Cuban Revolution to by making his own committees for the defense of the revolution and also having his own states-run newspaper called Sidwaya, which will publish the government's stance and views on things. So this was, in a way of making the revolution very complex and compact. So, yeah, he did a lot of things in that regard. With the support of the Burkina Bay, the people of Burkina, Sankara launches a series of large-scale works throughout the country.

In the middle of the 80s, Africa is just emerging from one of the deadliest droughts in its history. Sankara is the first president to launch a campaign against. desertification. With his fellow citizens, he organizes the planting of several million trees, a first on the continent. Thomas Ankara is concerned Thomas Ankar. He took several initiatives to fight against desertification. As one example, we can talk about the one village, one grove operation. The point was that young people in every village were encouraged in planting a grove that would demonstrate their will to stop the desertification process.

It was done to encourage reforestation everywhere possible in order to reduce harmful effects and, generally speaking, to develop people's awareness and matters of environmental protection. In the cities, where people are taking shelter in slums, Thomas Sankara launches a public housing building program and rehabilitates other city areas. But the countryside must not be left behind. While it's always difficult to travel through a continent where rural populations are isolated, Sankara connects all the regions of the country thanks to a vast road and rail building program. He launches what he calls the Battle of the Rails.

He plans a rail track that will connect Wagadugu to the manganese mine several hundred kilometers north. It's a gigantic project, and foreign financial aid is a long time coming. For Sankara, it's an opportunity for the Burkina Bay to roll up their sleeves. No question now of leaving foreign companies in charge of building the country. Yeah, I mean, I love him so much, and when you're talking about his lack of possessions and the fact that he didn't even use AC, it really also speaks to this part of his personality that was austere and very disciplined, and for people in the West who have sort of benefited from the domination of the global south and have sort of a higher commodified standard

of living, that austerity and that discipline is, I think, incredibly important for us to try to see if we can weld into our own political outlook, but it's something that I think is incredibly admirable in anybody, but especially in Sankara. And you did mention the CDR, the commission for the defense of the revolution. And in some ways, this mirrors Mao's Red Guards, for example, this giving agency to the people, especially the mobilization of the youth. Can you talk a little bit more about that? Yeah, okay.

So when he created the CDR, he made sure that from a very young age, revolutionary ideas and ideals was propagated in that realm. And at the same time, he was making sure they were geared for some sort of military activity. But, you know, for the short period of his government or governance, that didn't morph to be as solid as, let's say, to the El Castro's movements that took, you know, years upon years before he died.

You know, so that didn't cement fully into the country. But to a large extent, we started to see something new. We started to see something different in his way and style of government. And people rallied around that, you know. But the main problem was that they weren't very in on the ideals. They themselves were in the revolutionaries. They were just following the orders. But, you know, like he still did and tried and, you know, made sure that they had a program or had a structure of framework to put the youths around, to make the youths, you have a central focus and mobilize people.

And he got a lot of mass support, especially in the earlier times of the revolution, when the revolution started delivering a lot of these things that we mentioned, like healthcare, literacy programs and all that. So he got, he was able to mobilize a lot of people, you know, behind that. before the agents of imperialism and the petty bourgeoisie and the native agents started to twist and turn his government upside down. So he got a lot of mobilization in the earlier times of the revolution. Now, kind of going, and you touch on this a little bit, but nobody's perfect and all human endeavors are prone to flaws, excesses, and mistakes. So with that in mind, and I think it's important for us to take honest stock of failures from our comrades in the past, well so we can learn from them. So with that in mind, what were some of Thomas Sankara's biggest mistakes or failures in your opinion? Yeah. So there was this interview that I saw

with one of his guards. The god was telling him that, look, they're planning to assassinate you. We're going to be killed anytime soon or they're going to topple your government. Should I put your second in command under arrest and make sure that we averts this problem? He said he didn't want to betray his second in command, that it is left for his friends to betray, that he wouldn't betray. That is a great mistake, because if you're alive, that is when you can carry out the revolution. You have to be alive to make sure that the revolution is consolidated. So with that, I think we have to balance ideals and the material world. You can have your ideals of holding on and not being a betrayer.

But at the same time, you have to look at the millions of people. that are attached to you, that their hopes and aspirations and dreams are attached to you. So if you're going to put your friend above the fate of millions of people, then it kind of shows the imbalance. Or maybe you don't understand how severe or how serious what it is that you're doing, and what your place in history is.

And then at the same time, I feel that the revolutionary knowledge wasn't spread enough in the military cadetia, itself because soon as it got killed, a lot of the movement fell apart and the people who weren't revolutionaries themselves. So it was just a top-down thing where Sankara was the man ultimately with the ideas. He was the real revolutionary, but he was maybe trying to make revolutionaries out of people. But he wasn't able to do that because of the lack of propagation of the knowledge. And that I feel were two big flaws that made his problem fall apart,

made his government fall apart easily. You know, the revolutionaries hadn't made its way into the zeitgeist of the people. There was no countryside, you know, revolutionary, you know, organized teachings. There was a movement in Guinea-Bissau and cabled by Amilca Cabral where he taught the people, you know. So even after he was assassinated before the independence, the people went ahead and got their independence anyway because he had made revolutionaries out of them. You know, so but when Sankara died, the movement fell apart. So that's, you know, one of the things that I felt was a problem.

It was over idealistic and just allowed himself to be killed. I was reading somewhere when they came to get him. It was like, oh, yeah, I know everyone you've come together. And they just killed him. And all the people that are around him. So that's, you know, when you're thinking about uplifting the people, you have to make sure that the revolution is continued and you have to do all you can to make sure it is consolidated.

So those are the parts that I feel. And it might be easy because I'm not, because I wasn't in his shoes. And maybe how the revolution came to be because he was just from the top and he got power from the top. So it takes a lot of time to permeate and preculate the revolutionary ideas. You know, so I don't want to belittle whatever he did. I don't want to talk down whatever because, you know, that's his condition. And that's, you know, his own outlook towards like what I felt that if he had taken the move or tried to curb the assassination attempt, I think Burkina Faso will be in a far better place than what it is right now.

Yeah, and, you know, I think there was, they call him the Che of Africa. I think there was a pinch of romanticism in both Sankara and Che that that sort of comes out at certain times, and you can see that. And part of the problem also is that it was only four years. I mean, maybe he could have built up more revolutionary fervor and education amongst the people over time. Yeah, it was very short. His government was very short.

So we couldn't expect him to do much with that very short period of time. And at the same time, we should understand. a lot of the countries around him were very reactionary. They were for the French and would do anything that, especially Cote d'Ivo was very, very pro-French. So they had already, you know, just marked him for any form of attempts to just get rid of his government because Codovartu wasn't getting cheap labor from Burkina Faso to run the exploitation pipeline for exports towards France. yeah, it's a big problem, but I wish the revolution had been longer, and I wish he lived longer, you know, so we could see how the thing would have played out in Okina Faso.

Definitely, and you've mentioned a few times in this interview, his close friend, somebody he came up with called Blaze Cambrari, and that was the person who was his second in command, but also the person who led the coup against them. So can you talk about how and why Thomas Sankar was assassinated in what role, you know, the French played in the coup that ousted and killed him? Yeah, so, um, on, on, On 15th October 1987, Sankara was killed by an armed group, along with 12 of his officials in a coup d'etal organized by Blase. And another key factor that we need to understand was, or that we need to be aware of, was there was a rebel leader from Liberia called Charles Taylor. And this rebel leader had connections with the CIA.

So we can start to see the tentacles of imperialism spreading far and wide and how they orchestrate you know, to pull different strings, to bring down revolutionary government. So Blas stated the deterioration in relationship between neighboring countries like Ivory Coast, and it was essentially Ivory Coast and Francis Pointman on the ground to do the job. You know, so now the president of Ivory Coast saw the masses as just cheap labor reserve. He wasn't getting that anymore. Sankar was putting his people to dignifying use. He was making sure that they had.

control of their lands. They were being uplifted and in part. So things like this would start to chip into the profits of these exploiters that we have on the continent and outside of the continent. So France just made sure that they gave a tacit approval for the execution of Sankara through Blaze and his guy in Liberia. They did the assassination and then you see the very, very implicit and dirty hands of France by quickly identifying with. the government, when they killed him, they recognized the government and it was all nice and as if nothing happened, you know, so you start to see how these governments and how all these people all around and the enemies of Africa make sure that whenever any country is going

towards the right part, they just nod you off into a wrong vortex and, you know, down, we're going in a downward spiral. So again, we have the native bourgeoisie and all the civil servants that have been enjoying these boils of corruption and wanted the expectation to continue. So it was just very, very easy for imperializing to crawl back in the mix and just use the people on ground for the assassination. You know, with France as the back power and then Blase and Charlestellar as the spearhead of the movements and also the native elements in the country. Thomas Sankara's circle of friends is growing smaller.

According to Captain Bukari Cabaret, one of his last and most faithful supporters, Blaise Campaure is growing impatient and wants to see. his power. I had personally asked Thomas, his permission to put things to rights. That meant arresting blaze, because he was preparing his assassination. He told me, no, friendship can't be betrayed. I said, there's no friendship anymore. Planning murder can't be right.

He said, it's not right. It's not up to us to betray. It's up to them to betray. I find myself like a cyclist. Going up a steep slope, with precipices on each side, he has no other option, no other choice in pedaling.

Otherwise, I'll fall. So, to remain true to myself, I have to keep on the same track. Do you feel isolated in Africa? Not understood. Not understood, not liked? Not liked, yes. We talked about Che Guevara.

And I said, listen, the 8th of October is the 20th anniversary of the assassination of Che. We talked all night long about Chei and the commemoration. And suddenly, I have a very vivid memory of this. He looked at me and he said, he died at third. Am I going to last to the age of 39 like him? Then we kept on talking. He had a premonition. He died before the age of 39.

You know, Mao always talked about this idea that in the transition to socialism, contradictions actually heightened and get more intense and a class struggle occurs inside the revolutionary party itself, with opportunistic elements seeing how they can pursue their own individual ambitions or goals. And here we see that in stark detail. We see Thomas Sankara's secondhand manned, his best friend being the spearhead by which the forces of reaction and imperialism take down Sankara from within his own party. Can you talk a little bit about the assassination itself, how Sankara tried to protect his colleagues and how that played out? Yeah, so when they were having the meeting, Sankara was here in Gonshot and also the members of the panel. So he knew that they were

coming to get him. So he said, oh, I know it's me they want. So he walked out and they didn't even listen to him to say anything. They didn't. They just shut him. And if it was only him, they got, it will have been a bit understandable. So they went into the office where they were having the meeting and just killed everybody dead. But he didn't expect that it was going to get to a level whereby, you know, it will lead to his assassination. So he was just like, oh, I know he's made it once. And then just killed him and killed everybody. And by the evening, there was a new president, which was his second in command, that was saying that, oh, Sakara wanted to kill him, and then they didn't have any choice but to kill him. So that was how it went. But he

tried to protect his colleagues and just going outside so that they would take him and do whatever it is that they wanted to do to him. But after killing him, they still went there, killed the other ones, and just buried Sakara, chopped his body up, and buried him in a marked grave. Yeah, absolutely, absolutely brutal. It speaks to his loyalty. and his empathy trying to just take the death himself, but it still resulted in the death of everyone. And like you said, they chopped them up, threw him in an unmarked grave.

They called it giving him a dog's grave, very unceremonial, and they intimidated any supporters that tried to visit Sankara's grave site. And, you know, tying in some of these more connections, there's this same thing that occurs from our martyrs, right? From our communist comrades who died a martyr's death.

Che, when he was up against the firing line, said, shoot coward, you're only going to kill a man. Fred Hampton talked about you can kill a revolutionary but you can't kill the revolution and Sancarra said while revolutionaries as individuals can be murdered you can't kill ideas so this same pattern comes up and you see this complete devotion to the cause and this laying down of one's own life

for a bigger and more important project and if anything we can admire that and Sancarra went to his death like Che and Fred Hampton with integrity intact and with his chin held high Yeah, I believe that was what happened because it takes a lot of, you can't be a revolutionary and not know that you're fighting against the order of the day. You're fighting against the order of the day. You're trying to overturn systems and you're going to meet very, very brutal pushbacks. And this brutal pushbacks don't mind killing, assassinating, we can see what happened in Vietnam.

We can see, like, it was a very, very moving episode, you know, for me, like, it's the average and orange. They go to any lens to do anything. So it is this knowledge that revolutionists must keep and make sure that the revolution survives whatever the cost. It must survive and it must prevail. Yeah, exactly. Well said. On the 15th of October 1987, Thomas Sankara is taken by surprise at a meeting with a dozen collaborators. Members of Blaise Campaure's personal guard rush in an open fire. Sankara's body is cut to pieces.

He is buried at night in a hurry, like a dog. Thomas knew very well that he had to die. And I think he accepted his death, because somehow it showed his greatness. And I'm here to say that he was a great man. Those who fought him cannot take that away from him. Because a man who accepts to die to become a great man, has to be appreciated as his proper value. A French journalist from AFP was in Yonba.

And said that it was the first time he ever saw people crying in the street. You just went by hundreds of people crying and crying in the street. When you asked them why, they said they just heard about Sankara's death. So it was not just in order. It was felt in all of Africa. It was felt in all of Africa.

The next day, Blaise Campaure appoints himself president. For the international press, he tries to exonerate himself from the death of his best friend. Do you have any regrets? This is Blaise talking. Do you have lost a friend? Of course. And a regret for knowing that he thought about getting rid of us. It's a very moment of his life, he has

thought to us liquided. It's a pity. Dommage. It's a pity. It's a pity. And I remember at that time, there were two very good friends, Thomas Sankara and Blaze.

Yeah. someone Sankara and Blaze, you know. Blaise remains immune to the emotion felt throughout the continent. He institutes what he calls the rectification of the revolution, making people believe that he's perpetuating Sancara's ideas. The truth is that he's taking his country back to the old politics of cooperation. He receives the congratulations of the French and Ivory Coast governments. Sankaha'a Haas' reputation is dragged through the mud.

He is accused of having grown richer while in power. His family is subjected to harassment. Their house is searched in vain. Sankaha died the way he lived, with empty pockets. Just a few personal belongings left in his students' room remain with his. family. Official documents have disappeared. All traces of his presence in power have been systematically destroyed. In a way, great men enlighten their time long after they've gone.

And I say after their death, because... It's when you have lost something. to be aware of its true value. He's one of the real value. He is an important figure to the whole of the African continent African. So keeps being held up as an example. For his courage, for his integrity,

for his creativity, for his refue and for his refusal of Afro-pessimism in a manner general. Sankara is becoming Thomas Sankara has become a moral and spiritual reference for all of us. A.L. A.T.A.T.A.L.

Over time, for the Burkina Bay, but also for all the people of Africa, the death of Thomas Sankara has come to symbolize a tragic waste. A lost opportunity for their continent to emerge from the abyss. from the abyss. So what was the response to his assassination from his supporters? And what happened to the country and the policies he spearheaded after his death? There was a lot of uproar amongst the poor people, you know. But like I said, they went revolutionary, so they was just enduring their fate.

They were up around, people were saged, they were visiting his grave, dropping flowers. You know, it was crazy all around Africa, you know, especially amongst the young people that saw the lights and the routes that he was following to uplift Africans. But in most parts of Africa too, amongst the reactionary countries, you wouldn't see any form of acknowledgement or that, but his supporters really gave it all to him. him. They were there, people crying in the streets. A lot of reporters recorded people crying, weeping and wailing in the streets. Then after his death, a lot of his policies, which his friend termed, he started rectifying the policies of the revolution. So he essentially just reversed all Sankara did. So the Committee for Defense of Revolution, which were the local bodies or the revolution in Malaysia, was abolished and disbanded, the salaries of the civil

7 that was reduced under Sankara was increased back and the special tax that forced them to contribute to the health and education projects was scrapped so the people still you know kept on accumulating their wealth this local native bourgeoisie elements and then Sankara supporters were detained without trial over a year the structural adjustment package is arranged with IMF under Blasey's governments involving the privatization and liberalization of the markets and the foreign debt of the country skyrocketed. The loans

from IMF started rolling in in 1993, he got $67 million on a condition that the country would operate a free market policy and stick by it. The corruption in the country obviously increased. There was money to line everybody's pockets

and also got back to buying a presidential plane for his own personal prestige. A lot of projects that was supposed to be for the people who was channeled into his private home or for his families. And, you know, so it was just a downward spiral, starting from the time that Sankara was killed. And he just essentially made the country a neo-colonialist haven and a nice place for the exploitation of international capital. You know, so the exploitation of the manganese, they have gold mines and all that was just placed in the foreign market for anybody that had capital to come and invest.

and exploits in the country, which has made the country poorer and the citizens back into, driven them back into the misery that Sagar lifted them out of, very briefly. Yeah, and I mean, I mentioned earlier this repeating tragic pattern of history and anybody that, you know, all the comrades and listeners that have heard our past shows, that this story is very, very familiar. It's as familiar as it is heart-wrenching and just angering and we have to pull lessons from this shit. But God, damn. It's happened again, you know. It's going to keep happening.

We have to stop this death machine by any means necessary. It's, it's horrifying. Very, very horrifying because they will go to any lengths to make sure that the tentacles that have sunk into colonial, their former colonial empire remains the same. Because you start to see, even in Nigeria, a lot of people complain that, oh, the government isn't working, blah, blah, blah. A lot of people don't know that they're just being slaves to foreign capital. They don't know that their governments essentially are just puppets of foreign capital. You know, so there's so much debt problem. There's like class domination of the brilliant elites over the people.

People think they have democracy over there. They think, oh, why is our democracy not working, blah, blah. No, you have a domination of the elites, not democracy. It's just wrapped in the flag of the country, whatever country. It's just wrapped in the flag to give it a national illusion. but you have the domination of the elites and the higher class people in the country so that's what it is

and it's because of the lack of understanding of this Marxist concept of this Leninist concept because systematically it was removed and wiped out from the curriculum in fact some countries we don't have history they don't teach history anymore so it is just to keep people in the dark

and just make you lost forever if you don't go and do the hard work of searching. Like I said in the beginning, this is self-thoughts. Nobody sat me down in school to teach me this. I didn't know of any Sakara on the government, on the African continent, until I started reading by myself outside of the school worlds. So it shows how hard it is for us to nudge ourselves into the revolutionary frame of mind. And the main task like your podcast is doing,

and which might even inspire me to do one really targeted at the, continent is to popularize this knowledge, is to make sure that people have very, very easy access to it and bring it into the open so that people can know that, yes, this is the pathway to removing domination, both foreign and local, from the sphere of the nation. Yeah, absolutely, my brother. And, you know, here in the imperial core of the U.S., the belly of the beast, we have to teach ourselves as well. You know, nobody teaches this shit. it's the people's responsibility to not only teach themselves, but then to go out and try to educate. And when people on the left talk about the domination of the global south, this same

situation that Africa finds itself in has also been perpetuated on Latin America, on the Middle East, and on Asia. So this is this extractive, violent, bloody system operating on all these different continents, sucking the wealth and resources and the power and the wealth back to Europe and the in America. And then this is the thing. This is the big death machine. And this is what it looks like and this is what it does on every corner of the globe. Yeah, this is what it does. You can see. And the thing that really makes me sad or that makes me look back, it's like, oh, we had

really, really good movements on the African continent. We had a lot of revolutionaries all around Africa. But what they did, like we said, with violence, just systematically disconnect the old from the young, make sure the young don't have connection to the revolutionary movements of the older ancestors. So once they are lost, then you can just merge them into the nonsense liberal policies. You know, they graduate from Harvard and think they know economics. They graduate from all these bushy schools in New York, wherever,

and come outside giving us the World Bank policies. And you see time and again, these policies fail because it is part of the extraction, exploitative processes. And people need to understand that as soon as the productive forces of the country leaves the hands of the people and the people or the country are not in charge of this, then exploitation has commenced, you know, and people don't understand that, you know, you have foreign companies all littered around Africa tapping, exploiting the resources and just giving a meagre peanuts of the exploitation process to the people that prop up the local

bourgeoisie or these elements that think, oh, they've gotten a job in the oil company or gotten a job in the manganese mines or the gold mines, and they start lifting their local. the shoulders of thinking they are better than the masses of the people. So that's that mentality that needs to go. So once we know where our problem comes from, we can also systematically and surgically remove it and put back the productive process in the hands of the people. Absolutely.

And I just wanted to say that every liberal on the planet, every liberal that you bump into no matter how progressive they want to pretend to, this is their system. This is the mountain of corpses they sit up top. This is the systematic extraction and violence that they benefit from. and this is where their ideology leaves. So no matter how nice they try to present themselves and how heartfelt they try to present themselves,

this is their system. Yes, yes, this is the system. And this is what the problem is because a lot of Africans are carried away by, oh, he went to Harvard. He's a business guy that worked in World Bank. Or he's the guy that should come and make our financial policies. So when they come at the system fails, they don't question themselves like,

oh, why is this thing feeling? We've had a lot of World Bank guys in government as finance. ministers and you still keep having poverty coming up, spreading and being the order of the day. So isn't it time for us to change and look for other ways to do things, you know, which is the revolutionary way? Because I just sat and asked myself, oh, among the other countries that are exploited by foreign capital, on the African continent, we have 54 countries there are out on the African continent and none of them is able to get it right. It means there is a thread of exploitation that goes around all of these countries.

And once you find out from the Marxist theory, from the Leninist theory, and you're able to synthesize that it becomes all clear to you. It's like, oh, you're seeing the world are new, and you can know exactly where Africa stands, where the expected world stands, where Latin America stands, where people in America themselves stand. And even in Europe, a lot of people, you know where they stand and what you are able to do by propagating this knowledge. It's as valuable as gold, and we must propagate it.

That is the task that's, you know, I'm thinking of taking on over here. Amen, and we'll do anything we can to help get the word out about your project there, because I think that's incredibly important. But sort of zooming into the conclusion of this episode, looking back, what were Sankara's biggest accomplishments, in your opinion? So I'd say it's on two planes. The first plane was achieving food self-sufficiency. When you don't need to look for food,

You can do other things that are characteristically human. You don't worry about where your next bread is coming from. You can think about reading stuff up. You can think about contributing to society. You can think about even being positive and absorbing this knowledge. So that created a continent or a country that wasn't starving anymore. And people, you know, really, really were healthy. It reflected in the well-being of the people.

And then on the second plane, it was showing the Burkina. citizens and the whole of Africa that you know that there are other ways to do things there are other ways you do things and actually this way is work the revolutionary way and this kind of example is what scares your person to death and this is by far to me the most significant achievement because you don't find things like this you know often and even when it's it manages to happen it's for a very short period of time But for that short period of time, we could see that the country got a boost in the well-being of the people. And that, to me, is very, very important.

And these ideas, these ideals, you know, it's now sown seeds of, you know, revolutionary aspirations in the minds of people. Because anybody you see that know anything about revolution, before they mention two names, they talk about Sankara first or second. Like, that's the thing. So these ideas are there. They are nascent. But when the time for revolution comes and when the ground is fertile for it, the seeds will germinate and there will be an African revolution that will pull, if not directly. It will be very, very close to the ideas and ideals of Tomosaka. You know, and like we said, he said, you cannot kill ideas.

The ideas are here. This is what we are discussing. He died in 1987 or years back. And then we can see we are still discussing these ideas. They are very valid today. It means that nothing has changed and it means that we can pull from this idea. he gave and can use it to uplift and upgrade the lives of the people. Yeah, yeah, he died about a year before I was born, and my entire life trajectory ends up here

talking about him and his life, and so that speaks volumes in and of itself. The next question is, what is the legacy of Thomas Sankara in Burkino Faso, specifically and in Africa broadly today? In Burkina Faso, a lot of people kind of have boxed into one of the mythical figures. He's like one of the people you talk about, like, oh, maybe prophets come every once in a hundred years. But I'm saying, and I'm repeating once again, if the ideals had been propagated, they would see that what he did was just driven by his ideals and sticking to them sternly and making sure that these ideas were propagated and even became the order of the day. So now what we have is just a little bit of commemoration here and there. you know, but we can see that he's sort of lodged in the minds of the people.

Because when they overthrew or ousted the government of Blaze in 2014, the people were chanting Sankara's name when they were through the guy. So it shows that he's there in the minds of the people, in the minds of the young ones, in the minds of the people that witnessed his really spectacular government. You know, so what we can learn and what we can actually get is to keep on propagating this and to make sure that, oh, imperialism will do whatever it is that he wants to do. But we should make sure that we are always vigilant. We should spread the knowledge and make sure that the knowledge becomes the order of today.

We have social media now. We can use it to our own benefits for that purpose. And just to reiterate, yeah, you know, the person that led the coup against Sankara, Blaze took power, basically instilled a dictatorship for over two decades, reversed all of Sankara's policies. And in 2014, the people of Burkina Faso rose up. chanting Sankara's slogans and ousted that piece of shit. So that's powerful. And the example that Sankara said, as you said, still lives on, especially with the youth in Burkina Faso and the youth in

Africa broadly. There's that hope. There's that inspiration that they still draw from. And that's incredibly important. And it's going to fuel any liberation movements on that continent. So last question, what lessons can contemporary radicals all over the world draw from the life and revolutionary activity of Sankara, in your opinion. I think the lesson they can draw is to make sure that they are brave enough to test their ideas, make sure they study and be keen on understanding the root cause of exploitation. Once you have at the central theme of your pursuit of knowledge that is to understand the root cause of exploitation, you can easily just find your way into any of these revolutionary periods and become an embodiment.

of Athomas Sankara, even better, because now you're aware of how things go, you're aware of what dynamics imperialism can go to, what lengths can go to. So you can also come up with theories, you can come up with ways of rebranding the revolution, re-envigorating the revolution, and also mobilizing easily with the use of modern technology. And also, this should be the central theme and what should be at the back of the mind of every revolutionary that you should be studious you should make sure that you try to understand the root cause of exploitation and make sure that you're brave enough to step in the forefront and try to get people on board this is very very very important because a single man can do it

you need mass movements you need people that are also revolutionary minded because there's this egoistic thing that people want to be the main guy in the front show no no you have to educate people you have to make sure that you're recreating and churning out that revolutionaries, multiplying revolutionized such that to be hard for imperialism to have anything to do in terms of overthrowing your government, which is why I always, I consider the Cuban revolution my ultimate revolution, because this Philo Castro did a lot of education of the people, and this is what we should do. So that's a great lesson that every revolution can learn. And Sancaratu did it in his political orientation speech.

And always talk to the people, talk to the women, talk to the youths, went to different countries, Nicaragua, a lot of countries to talk to them, enlighten them, tell them what was happening in the country, and also open the people's mind. So when we talk to people, we are able to sow seeds in the minds of people. So that's what a revolutionary should do. Yep, definitely. And as you said, this complete dedication to serving the people, to mass work, to really winning over the people and operating in their interest is what creates.

amazing revolutionaries and the people that want power that are just egoic and narcissistic, that's bourgeois individualism. That has no place in a revolutionary moment. And Sankara himself said, I'd rather take one step with the people than 10 steps without them. And that is what it's all about. And that's what makes these figures live on even after their death is that they inspired the people and they live on in the hearts and minds of the people. And that is the only way that you can ever have a successful revolutionary movement whatsoever. Yeah, he also was a perpetual teacher. He was always trying to, you know, he says, spread knowledge and make people understand, you know, his stance because he felt isolated in the continent board.

Also, with that knowledge of isolation, he was trying to get people on board. That was why he was passionately talking to African leaders in that conference at the OAU and even his U.S. speech. So, yeah, we should always try as a revolution to be perpetual teachers and also perpetual question marks. Always asking, trying to know the root cause of things and also trying to learn from the people because ultimate knowledge, ultimate power comes from the people. Yep, and have humility. You know, nobody likes a narcissistic, arrogant asshole. Have humility, educate yourself so that you cannot just show off how smart you are to other people,

but so you can turn around and educate others. That's what it's all about. So, in conclusion, what recommendations would you offer for anyone who wants to learn more about anything we've discussed today? And where can listeners find you online? Okay, so there's books that can be read on Thomas Sankara. The book is titled We Are the Hears of Revolution. And then there's a book called Thomas Sankara Speaks. That's a very comprehensive book about the compilation of these speeches

and even a lot of these things that we talked about. You can find them in a book. And then very important for visual age for people that like to watch videos. They can go on YouTube. There's a documentary called The Upright Man. They can check that out too. And, you know, that should be enough to nudge them in the direction of finding more about the man,

synthesizing the theory and actually understanding how his revolutionary actions went. And then for anybody that wants to find me online, I'm at Slashar underscore O.A.G, just there spreading revolutionary knowledge, listening to people, you know, do good stuff online. And, yeah, that's that generally anyway. yeah and when this episode is published the clips that were a lot of the clips that we're going to use for this episode do come from that documentary free online called the upright man i highly recommend it comrade thank you so much for coming on thank you for having this discussion educating me and our listeners and please let us know if we can help with anything any of your projects that you're undertaking there in africa let's let's be comrades and make this connection and keep this connection going over time i really really appreciate you coming on it's my pleasure i love to be on again on any time you Like having. Thank you very much. Solidarity. Solidarity.

Peace. The black is for the gun in my palm And the green is for the trom That grows natural Like locks on Africans Holding the smoke from the herb In my abdomen Camouflor for T's in Doshiki

Somewhere in between And W.A. And P.E. I'm played like Steve Lico Raised in the ghetto by the people The police, you know how we do Hey yo, my life is like roots It's a true story

It's too gory for them televised Fables on cable I'm a runaway slave watching the North Star Shackles on my forearms Running where the gun in my palm I'm an African Never was an African American, blacker than black, I take it back to my origin, same skin hated by the clansman,

big nose and lips, big hips and buds dancing. I'm African, I'm an African, uh, and I know what's happening. I'm an African, I'm an African, uh, and I know what's happening. You are African, you are African, uh, do you know what's happening? I'm an African, I'm an African, uh, and I know what's happening. It's plain to see. You can't change me because I'm people on me for life What's plain to see?

You can't change me because I'm people on me for life It's plain to see You can't change me because I'm people on me for life It's plain to see You can't change me because I'm people on me for life Where you from food? No, I wasn't born in Ghana but Africa's my mama And I did not end up here from bad karma off a B-ball

Selling mad cracker rapping Peter Tosh tried to tell us what happened He was saying it too black, then you African So they had to kill him and make him a villain because he was teaching the children. I feel him. Don was trying to drop us a real gym. That's why we bucking holes in the ceiling when we hear it. I'm an African, I'm an African, and I know what's happening.

I'm an African, and I know what's happening. You are African, you are African. Do you know what's happening? I'm an African, I'm an African, and I know what's happening. Puerto Rico, Haiti and J.A. New York and Cali, F-L-A. Yo, it ain't by where you stay. It's about the motherland.

A-F-R-I-C-A. Puerto Rico, Haiti and J-A. New York and Cali, F-L-A. Yo, it ain't by where you stay. It's about the motherland. Just that tank top, flip-flop. Nadi Dreadlob, fuck a cop, hip-hop. Make your head bob, bounce to this.

Socialist movement. My environment made me the nigger I am. Uncle Sam came and got me and the rest of my family. and the rest of my fans try to infiltrate and murder off the best of my clan I'm not American punk Democrat or Republican remember that most of the cats you know be hustling my mama work all the life I'm still struggling I'm blaming on the government and say it on the radio and if you don't already know all these uncle Tom ass kissing niggins got to go got to go got to go I'm glad you know I'm studying a lot of African revolutionaries you know and hopefully

we'd like to do something on other revolutionaries when I have my time This took, you know, this is the first time I'm doing stuff like this. Yeah, yeah, so I was kind of nervous at first, but hopefully I think it was nice, like you said. Yeah, not only did you do great, but we're also going to add in a bunch of these clips like we do with our big, like, Vietnam and stuff. So it'll have you and me talking, and then we'll have it punctuated by clips of Sankara and all this stuff. So it's going to be a really great episode. Like Vietnam won. Yeah, exactly.

Yeah, yeah, I listened to that. it was really really painful you know yeah it was oh man it killed me to do it that's probably the most the most difficult emotionally for me to do that episode more than any other episode in the past was it was you know so but i'm really glad because i'm starting to see the continent are new with this revolutionary theories and you talk to people they are so ignorant about these things they don't know anything about class analysis they don't know anything and you can't blame them because in the context that they leave you don't have this knowledge anyway like you have to dig in decades, you have to start, you know, digging into old libraries before you can find

these things, systematically making the people ignorant of ways that they can, you know, liberate themselves, you know, like, and a lot of things I've gotten on YouTube too, because people are distracted, you can start to see them watching all these nonsense stuff, because it takes a lot of studying to understand. Like, I bumped into Michael Parenti. He really, really broke a lot of things down for me in terms of the dynamics of capitalism and how it morphs into government and you know class interests of the colonial guys and the native elements you know and a lot of analysis from revolutionary leaders in africa too followed suit with what he was saying you know because the the illusion of a native government the illusion of that national government

is what kills us in africa because people think they have a government now oh it's a black man so the white people have gone and then the exploitation has gone but they don't know that the native government that you have are just doing the bidding of the foreign capital people. So you keep on having exploitation, keep on having poverty, upon having accumulation of immense wealth, you know, in the hands of a few. And people are poor, scrapping by, you know, just, and then the currency is bad. So there's a lot of problems everywhere, you know. So it's just a big ball of mess which only revolutionary activity can solve.

And this is what I've kind of tried to, you know, make everybody around me know and anybody I talk to, even in the house, a lot of people that I talk to, they don't understand until I start sharing their my ract of books and say, oh, this, this, this, this, that. I feel like I've read revolutionary stuff more than the things I've gone to do in school. Like, yeah, I have two degrees, like, but I'm reading totally off what I've gone to study in school. Like, you know, so I studied in the UK, you know, and this, I can also see, all this class difference. I can see it because, okay, If you come from middle-class family, your parents have probably put enough aside so they can give you the best of education.

So when you go there, it's most likely that you fall into this bushy way of thinking and then you want to be like, you know, the people in UK or, you know, and all that stuff. But when you just by some stroke of luck fall into revolution and knowledge, you start to be, the moment you do that, automatically you start to be an African back, you start to get wherever you're from, you start to know that your culture is one of the very, very important. and things you have to hold on to your way of doing things, freedom for your people and all that. So it makes you really an African. You can see a lot of revolutionary artists. I don't know if you know about Bella in Nigeria. I don't know if you know, okay. So he just left. He was one of the revolutionary guys. He was a musician while he was alive. Very, very revolutionary, well known all around the world. You know, he left as a bougie guy here. He read revolutionary books, came back and became more of an African that he left. You know, because

colonizing distorts your mind frame. It distorts how you think. It makes you a white person in Africa. Like, once you're a white person, not that all white people are bad, but the access points to whiteness that we got was through exploitation. So automatically you start perpetrating your expectation. You don't like anything that is African. You start to look down on the people that are suffering. And when you have people like that in government, it becomes a problem. And that is what we've been facing. You know, so we have Yeah, you have new Yeah, exactly

And you know, that's part of the domination process If it can be psychological If it can get into your head And make you think about yourself differently It's far more effective than just brute explicit force, you know, that's how ideology works Yeah, in one of Sangara speeches He said it's more cost effective

For imperialism to dominate us culturally That you only need to ban lipstick, champagne And some other things for them to overthrow our government So it means that they have a very serious case of bourgeoisie people that are just into the decadence of the spoils of, you know, having champagne, luxurious life and all, you know, such that once he bounced out, they are able to just raise the people up and say, oh, let's go and overthrow the government. We're not enjoying our champagne anymore. We're not able to drive roadsworth anymore or live on, you know, good islands or wear the best and flashiest of things and cars drive the flashes of things and cars drive the flashes of. crowd. So that's what we're having. I don't know if you've seen the news, but a lot of people are getting poorer in the global south. In Nigeria, now we have the highest population of four

people. But people still don't know that once you don't free the resources of the country, the productive, if it's not in the hands of the people, you keep on having poverty because there's going to be a few people getting the money and others will just be getting the crumbs and they're getting poorer because standard of living is dropping and the cost of living is increasing. You know, so we need a revolutionary change in the country and even all around Africa because it's just very, very, you know, torturous to watch and say that what we have is imperialism and neol colonialism, you know. So we need to just get it off our continent to get further. Yeah, we have a comrade in Brazil who I've been in contact with about starting like a

basically a Rev-Off spin-off in Brazil to speak in Portuguese and speak to Brazilian people. I think you mentioned something about maybe wanting to do something. You're clearly into trying to talk to as many people and educate people if you can. So if you do come up with their own project or podcast, we'll put it under our umbrella. We'll pump it out. We'll amplify it. We'll get as many people listening as possible. You should do it.

You're great at explaining these things. I will. I think I'll do that. I just want to get my head around, you know, balancing my job and all, you know, then buy some microphones and all that about. Yeah, this is that you put me up onto Skype. I think it's a very, very good one. I just learn how to record the Skype thing

and then I can get people to talk about it and make sure that it's just strictly from a revolutionary perspective because that's what we need. And again, you know, this is Africa and even part of the record, it gets dangerous. So yeah, yeah, yeah,

so we have to be a bit technical and all. But then, like, you know, we just have to go at it and spread the knowledge, you know, and make sure that we sold the seeds so that people will gravitate towards it. Exactly right. Yeah, so if you need any, when you do finally be able to do that, if you need any technical advice, you need any help from us at all, let us know.

And if you do want to come back on, you have another African revolutionary figure that you think we should really talk about here on Rev Left. You can email me any time and we'll have you back on and we'll talk about that for sure. On your own time, no rush, of course. It's all up to you, but yeah, we're here for you. No problem, no problem. I'm glad this was able to come to life. Like, you know, I've been waiting.

You know, you start a picture of how do you get into the revolutionary conversation? And I'm glad this is my first time, you know, actually being on a podcast or talking to, you know, people on this skill and even on an international skill to start with. So I'm really proud, you know, very glad that I was able to do this, you know, meet up to the expectation of the interview. Yeah, your voice and your points are going to go and they're going to hit the ears of tens of thousands of people all over the U.S. and Europe and beyond. So this reach is going to be big and people are going to absolutely love it. Thank you very much for giving me the chance to bring. the African perspective on board. Of course.

Thank you for coming on. So let's keep in touch and yeah, we'll definitely email and talk in the future. No program. Thank you very much. All right, my friend.

Stay safe. All right. Bye. Yeah. I'm from where the golden diamonds are ripped from the earth Right next to the slave castles where the water is cursed From where police brutality's not half as nice It makes the hood in America look like paradise

Compared to the AIDS and fast a Caribbean slump African streets where the passports an American gun From where they massacre people and try to keep it quiet And spend the next 25 years trying to deny I'm from where they cut your hands off if you make a fist A niggas stole coke off because the job market doesn't exist Except slave labor, modern day, company store. And peacekeepers don't ever, ever, ever come here no more. From where the bombs

that they used to drop on Vietnam, still as children born deform, eight months before they gone. I'm from where they lost the true meaning of the Quran, because heroin is not compatible with Islam. And niggas know that, but grow that poppy seat anyway, because that fool's rap parachute does not come every day. I'm from where people pray to the guards of their conquerors and practically every president's a money lawyer. From where the only place democracy's acceptable is if America's candidate is electable and they might even have a black president but he's useless because he does not control the economy stupid lock and hold your gun where i'm from the third world born guerrillas hit and run where i'm from the third world sun you polluted everything

and now the third world's gone the water's poison where i'm from the third world son 700 children died by land is so revolution of come where i'm from the third world sun constant occupations Leave the third world talk. I'm from where the Catholic church is some racist shit. They help Europe and America, rape this bitch. They pray to white Spanish Jesus, whose face is this? But never talk about the black Pope Galacius. I'm from where Soviet weapons still decide elections.

Militaries like the mafia, you pay for protection. Catamite sex tawes with the country sells. And rich white businessmen make the best contel. Off from where they two pussy to come film survivors. And they murder Coca-Cola union organizers. out from where the justice system is putrido. Fuck government, niggas,

politics over Perico. Revelde, Conocido, Enterraido, Vivo, like other Argentino disappeared because Rico laws don't apply to the CIA

and motherfuckers make sneakers for a quarter a day. I'm from where they overthrow democratic leaders, not for the people, but for the Wall Street Journal readers. From where blacks, indigenous peoples and Asians

were once slaves of the Caucasians and it's amazing how they trained them trained them to be racist against themselves in a place they was raised and you kept us caged and destroyed our culture and said that you civilized us raped our women and when we were born you despised us gentrified us age and provocateur divide us and crucified every revolutionary messiah so i must start a global riot did not even your fake anti-communist dictators can keep quiet fuck your charity medicine try to murder me the immunizations you gave us were full of mercury so now i see the third world like the rap game so Nationalize the industry and take it over Lock and load your gun where I'm from the third world son In the many places but I'm third world born Guerrillas hit and run where I'm from the third world son You polluted everything and now the third world's gone

The water's poisoned where I'm from the third world sun 700 children died by the end of song Revolution will come where I'm from the third world son Constant occupation leaves the third world's home Concrete jump.