The Burkina Faso Revolution     

The workers and peasants of Burkina Faso accomplished a great deal in just a few years during their 1983-87 revolution. Under the political leadership of Thomas Sankara, they began to fight hunger, disease, illiteracy and economic backwardness imposed by imperialism in the former French colony. The revolutionary government carried out campaigns to draw women into social and political life.

The example set by Burkina’s toilers inspired working people and youth across Africa. At the time, the white supremacist regime in South Africa was being shaken to its core by rising anti-apartheid struggles and by the combined forces of Angolan and Namibian freedom fighters and Cuban internationalist combatants in Angola.

The course of Burkina’s workers and peasants posed a mounting threat to the propertied classes across Africa, as well as to the world’s mightiest capitalist powers, imperialist France above all. Acting in the interests of these enemies of the revolution, on Oct. 15, 1987, Blaise Compaoré led a military coup. He organized Sankara’s assassination and imposed a capitalist regime that enriched Burkina’s ruling classes and attracted foreign capital in gold mining and cotton production. During Compaoré’s 27 years in power, Burkina Faso became one of U.S. imperialism’s most servile client states in Africa.

As corruption multiplied at every level in Burkina, popular demonstrations of hundreds of thousands forced the hated regime from power in 2014. Many who took to the streets openly championed Sankara. Massive protests the following year turned back a coup by Compaoré’s forces.