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CHAPTER 1

Military Coup, Popular Revolution or Militarised Revolution?

Contextualising the Revolutionary Ideological Courses of Thomas Sankara and the National Council of the Revolution De-Valera N.Y.M. Botchway and Moussa Traore

INTRODUCTION

The view that the events in Upper Volta on 4 August 1983 marked a 'revolution' still provokes debate in academic and public spheres. The Burkinabè Revolution has been perceived as a 'pseudo-revolution' in some circles because it lacked the features of an 'orthodox' revolution which, according to Marx, is produced and conditioned by various stages of class struggles and social transformations with the working class at its centre. The Burkinabè Revolution was a military putsch (or coup) led by a group of charismatic Marxist army officers. This military putsch, however, had considerable popular support and came to power against a pro-imperialist regime.

This chapter revisits the political structure of Sankara's leadership and the historical episode that has come to be known as the Burkinabè Revolution. We look at Sankara's politics and philosophies (what might be called a philosophy of Sankaraism) alongside a consideration of socialism(s), including Nkrumahism and Marxism(s). We scrutinise the features of Sankara's ideas, like anti-imperialism, nationalism and populism, which informed the direction and policies of the revolution at the cultural and political levels through his government, called Conseil National de la Revolution (National Council of the Revolution, hereafter CNR) from 1983 to 1987. Through our analysis, we dismiss easy dualistic interpretations of the revolution as either a repetition of Marxist revolutions or as an imported phenomenon. Rather, we trace the origins of the revolution in order to re-evaluate whether 4 August indeed marked the beginning of a 'popular revolution'. We examine the source and orientation of the Sankara-backed revolution, given that it was informed by a militaristic engagement with Burkinabè politics. We give considerable attention to the role of the military in Sankara's blended populist-Marxist political policies in order to expose some of the complexities, paradoxes and limitations of Sankara's experiment in radical socialist-inspired social change.

Features of Sankara's ideas remain relevant for contemporary politics as they form part of a strategic base of two groups of contemporary actors: both the Sankarists who organise through registered political parties in Burkina Faso as well as the Sankarians who organise through collective and individual actions, demanding for a restructuring of Burkina Faso society and politics that draw on aspects of Sankaraism. Sankara spoke about the need for significant social change and defended it. He brought out the inner logic of that change; in rationalising it, he contributed intellectual views and acted upon them. Such philosophical endeavours and physical efforts were informed and animated by his own set of beliefs, generated from his experiences of Burkinabè society and culture as well as his knowledge of the political ideologies and economic philosophies of African and non-African thinkers.

Sankara's political philosophy as well as his praxis was informed by a plethora of revolutionary and radical ideas, including anti-imperialism, populism, Pan-Africanism, military nationalism, African Socialism and forms of Marxism. He was influenced by the concepts of pragmatism and pacifism. Sankara's philosophies and actions can serve as a social guide and praxis for social change, one that can perhaps be called 'Sankaraism'. The terms Sankarism (Sankaraism), Sankarists and Sankarians emerged after Sankara's assassination. Some have congregated around the political philosophy and praxis of this leader of a government that deemed itself as the spearhead of a process of social change; this political concept and social guide has been called 'Sankaraism'. Sankarism came into popular awareness in 2000 when the Union pour la Renaissance/Movement Sankariste (Union for Renaissance or Rebirth/ Sankarist Movement), led by lawyer Benewendé Sankara – who was no relative of Thomas Sankara – emerged. This party, which claimed to be Sankarist and averred that 'Sankarism' was its ideology, remained marred with divisions and misunderstandings over trivial issues.

People who believe in the populist, easy-to-relate-to revolutionary political leadership of Sankara, and who work to animate a process of sustainable social change in Burkina Faso, might call themselves Sankarists, in reference to forms of political discipleship to Sankara. The aim of Sankarists is to take political power and continue Sankara's work. Conversely, those who idolise him as an icon of social change, see him as a role model in life and admire his charisma and approve his philosopher-king leadership style are Sankarians or Sankariens (Le Jah 2015). Regarding the orientation of the Sankarien or Sankarian, the Burkinabè artiste Sams'K Le Jah explains that:

The difference lies in the fact that one can embrace Sankara's ideals without getting involved in politics. For instance, women who produce numerous types of indispensable goods, the local tailor who magnifies the value of the 'made in Burkina cloth' are people who can be called Sankarians; they continue Thomas Sankara's mission, even though they do not belong to any political party.

(Le Jah 2015; translation by author)

Sams'K Le Jah argues that one might adhere to Sankara's ideals without formally getting involved in politics. People who continue Sankara's work outside of the umbrella of formalised political parties (such as women who work to transform produces and products and people who make and promote dresses made in Burkina Faso) are Sankarians. Nevertheless, both Sankarists and Sankarians claim inspiration from Sankara, who coached and guided a process of fundamental change through a combination of ideas and deeds. Unlike Kwame Nkrumah (who fashioned concepts like Nkrumahism and Consciencism), Muammar al Qaddafi (who created the Third Universal Theory, which his Green Book articulated), Vladimir Lenin (who was the fountain head of Leninism) or Julius Nyerere (who expounded Ujamaa as a social guide), Sankara did not consciously create an ideology or fashion a concept (or social guide) when he was alive. Our task in this chapter is to excavate the complex political philosophy of Sankara within a context of a militarised revolution.

MILITARY COUP, POPULAR REVOLUTION OR MILITARISED REVOLUTION?

We contend that the founding myth of the regime of the CNR, which remained a largely military-led government, has been that it came to power through a popular revolution. This story raises questions about the nature of the revolution: ontologically, as the CNR was produced through a coup d'etat, how much does this shape the form of the revolution? The 'revolutionary' nature of 4 August continues to be debated (see Chapters 3 and 5, this volume). Sankara himself later attempted to rationalise the day as marking the beginning of a revolution that was both popular and democratic in Discours d'Orientation Politique, or the Speech of Political Orientation – a kind of manifesto of the revolutionary vision of the CNR on 2 October 1983.

Averring that both soldiers and civilians, 'comrade militants of the revolution', acted to bring into being a government that valued the role and power of the average citizen, Sankara emphasised the need for 'the people' to achieve bigger victories for the revolution. The revolution, he stated, had to progress with confidence to more resounding victories because it had 'logically evolved from the Voltaic people's struggle against long-standing enemies ... imperialism and its national allies; ... [and] backward ... forces. [It] is the culmination of the popular insurrection. [Therefore], simplistic ... analyses limited to repeating of pre-established schemas cannot change the reality' ('The Political Orientation Speech' in Sankara 1988: 30–54). He argued that the revolution 'came as a solution to social contradictions that could not longer be stifled by compromise' (ibid.: 32) in a society with 'feudal traditions' that fostered or encouraged certain forms of oppression.

It is clear from Sankara's first broadcasted radio address that it was military action that brought the CNR into national politics. He asserted that the army and paramilitary forces had intervened to restore independence and liberty to the country (Sankara, 'Struggle for a Bright Future', 4 August 1983: 21–23). The fundamental change in the government was effected through a coup d'etat. At the same time, radicalised soldiers and civilians deemed the episode of the coup as a heralding event, a beginning that only represented the genesis of a process and longer course. In other words, the coup signalled the emergence of a wider continuum of social changes: a revolution. For example, Valére Somé, a close friend of Sankara, saw the day as the ultimate result of the popular insurrection (Le Faso.net 2015). To him, the national political events in May 1983 (including the arrest of two army officers, Sankara and Lingani) drove students and youths to stage popular anti-government protests in Ouagadougou in solidarity with the detained soldiers (prior to 4 August). When Sankara and others were arrested again shortly after their release (because the government continued to deem them a threat), some of their supporters, like Somé, wanted une guerre populaire généralisée, a general popular war. Consequently, some soldiers decided to act to curtail the emergence of such general 'uncivil' popular war by overthrowing the government, with support from civilians, and ushering in a revolution, a process of change, of becoming, and making Sankara the leader of the revolution's CNR (ibid.).

This process of becoming was what the Sankara-led CNR came to represent in what was called the 'revolution'. As a form of social change, the revolution was guided and sustained by certain ideas and policies. Until Sankara was physically eliminated, the social change process had the figure, ideas and deeds of Sankara, guiding, underlying, polarising and operationalising it. Although the CNR was disbanded and the revolution process curtailed in 1987, the revolutionary interval in Burkina Faso embodied a period of high idealism and mass political activism, which, according to Paul Nugent, has seldom been seen in Africa, and has largely been airbrushed out of the official histories (Nugent 2004). Writing about the significance of the revolutionary interval, René Otayek points out that the CNR and its key instigator, Sankara, initiated a genuine historical fracture from centuries of hierarchical and exclusionary politics and social formations in Burkina Faso. The CNR was different from previous governments. In the view of Otayek, the fracture changed what he referred to as 'a multi-polar political landscape' (a landscape which had nurtured a clientelist and neo-patrimonial state system, producing a 'state of strain' from i960 to 1966 and a 'debonair state' from 1966 to 1980) and 'initiated the establishment of a state quite novel in the history of Burkina, a "strong state", a totalising state' (Otayek 1991 [1989]: 15). This 'strong state' was structured according to the politics and philosophies of Sankara and the revolution: a political philosophy that was unwavering in its assertion of a political orientation toward the masses of Burkinabè society, even though it had come to power through military action.

Sankara was a self-proclaimed Marxist and, even though he attested a profound admiration for revolutions that overturned misfortunes of dominated and exploited peoples, especially leftist revolutions (principally the Cuban one, which drew ideological rationalisation and inspiration from Marxism), he did not impose doctrinaire Marxism as the ideology of the revolution. While Sankara maintained that he was Marxist, he did not classify his political views and political actions as communist (see 'Who Are the Enemies of the People?', 26 March 1983, in Sankara 1988). He declared that, 'through discussion ... friendship with a few men ... my social experience ... reading, but above all to discussions with Marxists on the reality of our country, I arrived at Marxism' (Sankara, interview with Claudio Hackin, August 1987, in Sankara, 1988: 230).

NEGOTIATING MARXISM AND MILITARISM FOR SOCIAL CHANGE

A sizeable body of scholarly work considers the relationship between the military, African states and national politics during the numerous coups throughout the 1960s. Other works have also looked at the military in politics from the 1970s to the 1990s, the timeline within which Sankara's politics fall. Peter Karsten condenses this body of scholarship as 'identifying] economic distress, rates of capital investment, election frequency, literacy, years of schooling, and other such measures of economic, social or political development variables [as] predictive of the violent intervention of the military into domestic politics' (Karsten 1998: 223).

These studies present varying interpretations of the military in politics. While some hail the military as a political tool within nation building, others deem the military's role in politics to be a wrecker of political systems in Africa. The personalist (Baptope 1981: 4), corporatist (Welch 1987: 10), manifest destiny (Finer 1988: 21), Marxist and integrative theoretical models are some of the theoretical frameworks that make sense of military interventions across the continent. Sankara belonged to the category of coup-making and government changing African soldier leaders of the post-colonial period that Nugent refers to with the tongue-in-cheek expression, 'Praetorian Marxists' (Nugent 2004). Others in this category included Captain Marien Ngouabi in Congo-Brazzaville (Radu and Somerville 1988: 172–173), General Mathieu Kerekou in Benin (at the time Dahomey), Major Mengistu Haile Mariam in Ethiopia and Flight Lieutenant Jerry Rawlings in Ghana (Nugent 2004: 258). Given the typical apolitical disposition and strictly hierarchical character of the military, the radically egalitarian political agenda of Marxism and its anti-hierarchical orientation does not seem like a natural political philosophy for military actors and yet, Sankara and other trained officers were able to mobilise – albiet not unproblematically – Marxist-leaning social programmes.

The logic of this model, used and articulated by both scholar interpreters and leaders of puschist governments, presents the intervention of the military and their governments – the Praetorian (Soldier) Marxist juntas (military governments) – as part of the larger issues embodied in the crisis of underdevelopment in Africa. This larger crisis emanates from the peripherisation of Africa in the global capitalist system, colonialism and imperialism. Importantly, military intervention is justified under this model as part of or the face of a popular struggle, a revolution of the impoverished masses against a bourgeoisie capitalist ruling class system. The military, then, is the channel through which to create a popular rule and government that is socialist. In this trajectory of thought, African societies are seen to consist of propertied and non-propertied classes wherein state managers use state powers (including the coercive arms of the police and military) to advance and defend interests of the propertied class and their allies and impoverish the rest because of the dominant capitalist mode of production. Thus, this social dichotomy, based on and fertilised by social injustice and inequality, cultivates class antagonisms that delegitimise civilian regimes and create grounds for instability. Amidst these dire general societal conditions, the military, with a membership largely made up of elements of the masses, will thus draw the non-propertied class into the struggle and some military elements may see these horrendous conditions (and therefore a class antagonism) as a reason to intervene in politics. The military's role in a popular revolution becomes justified in such a context to protect the body politic from disintegration and to engineer a socialist social and economic order. Thus, the involvement of Praetorian Marxists in politics is rationalised, especially by soldiers, as a protector of popular will and aspirations as well as a logical outcome of a long period of a class struggle. These leaders drew on Marxism as a spatially, historically and culturally contextualised guiding sociology and philosophy that elucidated how society worked and how society could be changed, to explain their political actions and to frame a path and paradigm of national economic and political advancement.

(Continues…)

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Excerpted from "A Certain Amount of Madness"
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