The French edition of Thomas Sankara Speaks: The Burkina Faso Revolution 1983-87 is one of Pathfinder’s Books of the Month for February. In 1983 Sankara led an uprising in the former French colony of Upper Volta, bringing to power a popular revolutionary government, which mobilized peasants, artisans, women, workers and youth to carry out far-reaching social measures. They took control of their own destiny in one of the poorest countries in the world. Sankara was an outstanding communist, looking to the example of Fidel Castro and Che Guevara, the Marxist leaders of Cuba’s socialist revolution. He was assassinated in a counterrevolutionary coup in 1987. The excerpt is from “Dare to invent the future,” a 1985 interview with Jean-Philippe Rapp. Copyright © 2007 by Pathfinder Press. Reprinted by permission.
Thomas Sankara: [T]hey give us less than a year, for example, before our coffers are empty — before we’re no longer able to pay government employees and have to run to the International Monetary Fund or some other organization for help. But struggling along, for better or for worse, we’ll get through this storm and emerge on the other side with our heads high. Then they’ll set another deadline by which time, it seems obvious to them, we’ll fail. But we’ll hold our own through thick and thin. We’re proving over the long run and in real life that there are other game plans that can make it possible to bypass the classical methods of filling the coffers.
Jean-Philippe Rapp: But what more can the Burkinabe people do? Won’t it backfire on you if you demand too many sacrifices?
Sankara: Not if you know how to set an example. We’ve set up a Revolutionary Solidarity Fund to which thousands of Burkinabe contribute. Their contributions, though small individually, represent a considerable effort aimed at relieving our people of the need to beg for food aid. The fund has allowed us to ward off the most urgent problems, in particular the problem of survival faced by the population of the Sahel region.
Rapp: A related question is that of the foreign debt. At the conference of the Organization of African Unity (OAU) in Addis Ababa, the participants were quite divided on how to deal with the question of paying back this debt.
Sankara: As far as we’re concerned, we say very clearly: the foreign debt should not be repaid. It’s unjust. It’s like paying war reparations twice over. Where does this debt come from, anyhow? It comes from needs imposed on us by other countries. Did we need to build mansions or to tell doctors they would receive a fabulous salary at the end of the month? Or foster the mentality of overpaid men among our officers? We were coerced into running up very heavy debts, and the economic enterprises made possible by these loans have not always run smoothly. We entered into weighty financial commitments on their account — often suggested, proposed, organized, and set in place by the same people who lent us the money.
They have quite a system. First come the members of the assault squad, who know exactly what they are going to propose. Then they bring out the heavy artillery, and the price keeps going up. These are wonderful investments for the investors. They don’t put their money in their own banks because at home the returns aren’t good. They have to create the need for capital elsewhere and make others pay. …
Rapp: But does refusing to pay the debt make any sense if only one or two countries do it?
Sankara: The pressure to pay the debt does not come from the isolated usury of a single banker. It comes from an entire organized system, so that in the event of non-payment, they can detain your planes at an airport or refuse to send you an absolutely indispensable spare part. So deciding not to pay the debt requires we form a united front. All the countries should act together — on the condition, of course, that each one of us is open to looking critically at the way we ourselves manage these funds.
People who have contracted huge debts because of their own lavish personal expenses don’t deserve our support. We said this clearly in the message we delivered to the OAU: “Either we resist collectively and refuse categorically to repay the debt or, if we don’t, we’ll have to go off to die alone, one by one.”
Rapp: But this point of view was not unanimous?
Sankara: Though everyone understands the logic behind such a legitimate refusal to pay, each of us thinks he’s smarter, more cunning than the other. A particular government will skirt the need for collective action to go and see the moneylenders. This country is then immediately portrayed as the best organized, the most modern, the most respectful of written agreements. They’re given more loans, so further conditions can be imposed. When the discontent spills out into the streets, they suggest sending in the “heavies” to break those who won’t fall into line — and to put someone of their choice on the throne.
Rapp: Aren’t you afraid of a violent public reaction against your internal economic measures?
Sankara: The general support we’re finding as we impose measures that are not in themselves very popular shows the nature of our revolution. It’s a revolution directed not against any people or any country, but rather one that’s aimed at restoring the dignity of the Burkinabe people, at allowing them to achieve happiness as they define it. …
We have different values. We’re not the least bit embarrassed to say we are a poor country. …
When we receive a foreign ambassador who has come to present his credentials, we no longer do so in this presidential office. We take him out into the bush, with the peasants. He travels on our chaotic roads and endures dust and thirst. After that we can receive him, explaining, “Mr. Ambassador, your Excellency, you have just seen Burkina Faso as it really is. This is the country you must deal with, not those of us who work in comfortable offices.”