8/5/2023 0 Comments Upper volta colonial history“Under its current form, controlled and dominated by imperialism, debt is a skillfully managed reconquest of Africa, intended to subjugate its growth and development through foreign rules”. They are the same ones who used to manage our states and economies” Elaborating on debt as a form of neocolonial oppression Sankara continues: Those who lend us money are those who colonized us. In a speech delivered in 1987 at the summit of the Organization of African Unity to African heads of state held in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia which occurred mere months before his assassination Sankara explains: “Debt’s origins come from colonialism’s origins. Sankara, like so many others, was painfully aware of the utterly destructive role of debt as the primary lever of neocolonialism. “7 million inhabitants, with more than 6 million peasants infant mortality at 180 per 1,000 life expectancy of 40 years an illiteracy rate of 98 per cent, if literacy is considered to mean being able to read, write and speak a language one doctor for 50,000 inhabitants 16 per cent receiving schooling and lastly, a gross domestic product of 53,356 CFA francs, that is, just over $100 per capita.” In his 1984 speech to the General Assembly of the United Nations Sankara describes conditions before the revolution: The neocolonial Republic of Upper Volta Sankara grew up in was subsequently one of the poorest, most illiterate countries in the world. However, political independence did not equate to freedom from a new model of neocolonial French domination. In 1960, when Sankara was 11 years-old, his country gained political independence from French colonialism. It is the duty of communists to combat this epistemic violence and celebrate the legacy of Sankara and Pan-African revolutionary socialism. While calls for decoloniality have gained currency in both academic and activist circles in the West, African leaders in particular have been at the forefront actually overthrowing colonialism through struggle, such as Sankara, tend to be either completely ignored or dismissed through the racist tropes of totalitarianism or authoritarianism. Sankara’s major contributions today are not only the historical example he set and the part he payed in the liberation of his own country and others, but also to the way he primarily expressed his political practice pedagogically. What is available is a handful of speeches laying out the basic contours of his radical analysis and non-dogmatic revolutionary vision crafted for a popular audience. However, unlike most of his peers Sankara wrote no major works for revolutionaries to study and learn from. Sankara is considered to have been one of the world’s most notable pan-African socialist revolutionaries. A charismatic yet notably humble figure, Sankara is often referred to as the Ché Guevara of Africa. Like other influential socialists of the twentieth century Sankara’s life and anti-colonial and decolonial legacy continue to inspire anti-imperialist and Pan-African youth movements across Africa and beyond. Sankara, a fierce enemy of the global system of neocolonial, imperialist capitalism (as well as all forms of bigotry and oppression), was assassinated on October 15 , 1987, just four years after the people lifted him up as the president of their new revolutionary nation-state. Thomas Isidore Noël Sankara was born Decemin Upper Volta (today Burkina Faso), which, at the time, was a West African French colony.
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