Sankara and the Burkinabé Revolution: Charisma and Power, Local and External Dimensions

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Abstract
Captain Thomas Sankara, Comrade President of Burkina Faso, was assassinated on 15 October 1987, allegedly in accordance with the wishes of Captain Blaise Compaoré, Major Jean-Baptiste Lingani, and Captain Henri Zongo. These three officers, said to have feared for their lives, had ordered the arrest of Sankara in order to avoid plunging their country into a blood-bath. The radio broadcast announcing the execution referred to Sankara as a ‘renegade’, a ‘traitor to the revolution’, ‘an autocratic mystic’, and a ‘paranoid misogynist’. It added that the ex-President's ‘high treason’ was illustrated by his trampling upon all organisational principles, his betrayal of the noble objectives of the democratic and popular revolution, his personalisation of power, and by his ambitious use of mysticism to solve the concrete problems of the masses. ‘This’, the broadcast concluded, ‘was inexorably leading us towards total chaos.’1 When he finally broke his silence, Compaoré, the alleged leader of the coup d'état, accused Sankara of ‘wanting to lead the world revolution’.

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