People of Sahel inspire global movement against imperialism

By the Peoples Dispatch

From November 19-21, hundreds gathered in Niamey for the Conference in Solidarity with the Peoples of the Sahel and heard first hand from people who have been on the frontlines of the struggle against French colonialism.

Shouts of “Free, Free Palestine” and “Down with Imperialism” rang through the streets of Niamey as anti-imperialists from Niger and around the world marched together against Israel’s genocide on Thursday, November 21. The march culminating in the landmark Thomas Sanakra Memorial came at the conclusion of the three-day Conference in Solidarity with the Peoples of the Sahel, organized by the Pan-Africanism Today Secretariat and the West African People’s Organization.

The march was no symbolic event. Niger, Mali, and Burkina Faso have been in the frontlines of the struggle against imperialism over the past few years. After a series of military coups in the region, the new government took decisive positions against French troops and economic dominance in the region. Together, these governments have formed the Alliance of Sahel States, working together to defeat the impact of sanctions and terrorism. These measures have been strongly backed by people’s organizations in the region who see the struggle against French imperialism as a struggle for a second independence.

The spirit was reflected in the Niamey Declaration which was passed at the end of the conference. The delegates expressed support for the resolute peoples and leaders of the Alliance of Sahel States. The declaration commended “the governments emerging from recent coups for adopting patriotic measures to reclaim political and economic sovereignty over their territories and natural resources. These measures include terminating neo-colonial agreements, demanding the withdrawal of French, American, and other foreign forces, and undertaking ambitious plans for sovereign development.”

It noted that “these governments currently enjoy widespread support from their citizens, who drive and rally around these revolutionary actions. This unity is crucial for achieving democratic and patriotic ideals and is an aspirational development model for other African nations.”

The delegates declared their solidarity with “popular and revolutionary forces in the Sahel in their struggle for full and total sovereignty.”

Earlier in the day, delegates wrestled with the vital question of the path to continental unity at the final panel discussion of the conference. Kwesi Pratt Jnr, General Secretary of the Socialist Movement of Ghana, recalled the history of the Pan-Africanist struggle and said that the only path to unity is resistance. He said that the countries of Africa refused to take lessons on democracy from colonial and neo-colonial powers that had deposed and killed people’s leaders in coups. “Our only option is self-reliant development in cooperation with other countries which are victims of capitalism and imperialism,” he added.

Falmata Taya of the Nigerien organization M62 said that the struggle in Niger was being spearheaded by the youth and women. She recalled the role of the French forces in undermining the sovereignty of Niger and the divisive policies of the western power. “The people are united…all we want is to be treated as human beings.”

Giving an outline of key processes in recent years towards unity and the attempts by the western powers to subvert them, Kouessi Gilbert of the West African Peoples’ Organization, called to combat the “political, economic, and cultural imperialism that confronts all countries of Africa.” He stressed on the need to defy the artificial borders that were imposed by the colonial powers.

The conference was greeted by a host of organizations across the continent. The Tanzanian peasants’ organization MVIWATA expressed pride in the revolutionary path that the Sahelian states have taken, first to boldly make statements and actions to detach from colonial umbilical cord and secondly to forge alliance of the three states to defend the revolution.

“We are in particular encouraged by the actions that put the revolution in the hands of the people with a devolving responsibility to defend the gains, the revolution and the sovereignty of these African States,” the organization said.

This article originally appeared in People's Dispatch on November 24th, 2024

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Thomas Sankara

Thomas Sankara (1949-1987) was unique among late 20th century presidents in Africa and beyond. His political leadership was guided by a pro-people militant activism that brought together strands of radical anti-imperial Pan-Africanism, Marxist-Leninism, feminism, agro-ecological approaches to food justice, and more. Through his electrifying public speeches, his militant activism materialised as one grounded in the urgent and on-going need for concrete decolonization—a revolutionary process that Sankara understood to be protracted, necessarily experimental (in this way, ‘mad’), holistic, and centred on the intellectual liberation of everyday African people, who would be responsible for their own empowerment. For Sankara, women and the rural poor were unavoidably at the forefront of liberation projects. 

As such, Sankara, throughout his short life (he was just 37 when he was killed), sought to create the structural and cultural conditions through which Burkinabè people would assert their own projects, ambitions, and goals. Central to this was an explicit distancing from the kinds of economic and social approaches to policy which were conventional in the late Cold War—including foreign debt, socio-economic imperialism, and international development aid. 

During the revolutionary project that he led in the West African country of Burkina Faso from 1983 to 1987, the revolutionary government pursued ambitious and autonomous large- and small-scale initiatives to promote heath and decrease hunger and thirst in the country. Among these initiatives: mass child vaccination projects, tree-planting and re-forestation initiatives and the construction of a railroad to connect the country’s main cities which was built through collaboration at the grassroots by citizen-workers (international financial institutions refused to back the project). Each of these initiatives was oriented to ensuring that each Burkinabè had ‘two meals a day and access to clean drinking water’.

 

For Sankara, racial, gender, ecological, epistemic, food and economic justice were intrinsically connected. Revolutionary projects are therefore necessarily holistic: there would be no end to hunger without an end to imperialism, he said. There would be no revolution without an end to women’s oppression, he said. There would be no end to deforestation without an emancipatory educational system that re-centred values drawing from the indigenous political orientation of burkindlum* which fostered self-respect, pride, and honesty. 

 

  

The almost astonishing successes of the Burkinabè revolutionary project of the 1980s have received increased popular and scholarly attention in the last decade; this, after two decades of near-silence on and/or superficial and Eurocentric considerations of Sankara in scholarship written in English (there is a rich international scholarship on Sankara in French). 

The 15th of October 2017 marked the 30th anniversary of the assassination of Thomas Sankara and collective, popular ceremonies marking the moment were held in Burkina Faso, Canada, Italy and the US. Significant for such remembering of Sankara’s legacy is an awareness of the on-going absence of justice for his assassination alongside twelve of his collaborators. Sankara’s life and legacies remain critical for activists and young people organizing for justice today.

 

*Burkindlum is a Burkinabè political and ethical orientation that emphasises sacrifice, honesty and integrity in action. See Zakaria Soré (2018) “Balai Citoyen: A New Praxis of Citizen Fight with Sankarist Inspirations” in ‘A Certain Amount of Madness’: The Life, Politics & Legacy of Thomas Sankara, Murrey, Amber (ed.). London: Pluto Press.

 

 

Essential Reading (in English):

Sankara, Thomas (2007) Thomas Sankara Speaks. Pathfinder Press.
Harsch, Ernest (2014) Thomas Sankara: An African Revolutionary. Ohio University Press.
Murrey, Amber, ed. (2018) ‘A Certain Amount of Madness’ The Life, Politics, and Legacy of Thomas Sankara. London: Pluto Press.
Shuffield, Robin (2006) Thomas Sankara: The Upright Man. Documentary Film, 52 mins.

 

Further Reading (in English):
Battistoli, D.S. (2017) What Would A Sympathetic Critique of Thomas Sankara Look Like? Africa Is A Country.

BBC World Service, The Forum, “Sankara: An African Revolutionary,” December 2017.

Biney, Ama (2013) Revisiting Thomas Sankara, 26 Years Later. Pambazuka News. 

Murrey, A (2012) The Revolution and the Emancipation of Women: A Reflection on Sankara’s Speech, 25 Years Later. Pambazuka News, Issue 590.

Murrey, A (2015) A Political Biography of Thomas Sankara. The Palgrave Encyclopedia of Imperialism and Anti-Imperialism. Maty S and Ness I (eds.) London and New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

Murrey, A (2016) ‘Our Stomachs Will Make Themselves Heard’ What Sankara Can Teach Us About Food Justice Today. African Arguments. 

Murrey, A (2017) Remembering Thomas Sankara on the 30th Anniversary of His Assassination. Pambazuka News. 

Ray, Corina (2008) Who Really Killed Thomas Sankara? Pambazuka News. 

Reza, Alexandra (2016) New Broom in Burkina Faso? New Left Review 101.

 

Questions:

1. African feminist Patricia McFadden (2018) has argued that Sankara’s insistence in the importance of women’s emancipation in Africa was the most radical and dangerous element of Sankara’s revolutionary vision. Why might gender justice have been such a radical component of the revolutionary project?

2. Sankara’s memory burns strong in Africa today, where the project for decolonization remains unfinished. What lessons might his revolutionary leadership, militant presidency, and/or holistic approach to emancipation hold for other places in the world?

3. What does the slighting of the Burkinabè revolutionary project of 1983-87 and Sankara’s leadership in Anglophone scholarship reveal about the geopolitics of knowledge, in particular what does it reveal about the study of Africa more broadly?

Submitted by Amber Murrey. For questions, comments or other correspondence about Sankara, please contact: amber.murrey-ndewa@aucegypt.edu

Reprinted with permission from Global Social Theory.

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