Thomas Sankara (1949–1987) was the central leader of the popular, democratic revolution in the West African country of Burkina Faso (formerly Upper Volta) from 1983 to 1987.

Sankara entered military school in 1966. Continuing his training in Madagascar in the early 1970s, he was introduced to Marxism by students who had been part of the May 1968 upsurge in France.

In Upper Volta’s army, Sankara linked up with other soldiers opposed to the conditions in the country perpetuated by the imperialist rulers in Paris and elsewhere, with the support of local landlords and businessmens.

He was jailed briefly in 1982 after protesting the regime’s repressive policies. In the wake of a coup, he was appointed prime minister in January 1983. In May 1983 he and some of his supporters were arrested by President Jean-Baptiste Ouédraogo.

In August 1983, the Ouédraogo regime was overthrown in a popular uprising. Sankara became president of the new National Council of the Revolution, opening four years of revolutionary activity by peasants, workers, women, and youth. He was assassinated and the revolutionary government was overthrown in a coup by Blaise Compaoré on October 15, 1987.

Sankara’s speeches and writing are collected in:

Thomas Sankara Speaks (1988)

Women’s Liberation and the African Freedom Struggle (1990)

We Are Heirs of the World’s Revolutions (2002)

Other Contributors:

Mary-Alice Waters (1942– ), a member of the Socialist Workers Party National Committee since 1967, is president of Pathfinder Press and editor of New International magazine. She joined the Young Socialist Alliance in 1962 and Socialist Workers Party in 1964. She has helped lead the SWP’s work nationally and internationally, especially in defense of the Cuban Revolution as well as the fight for women’s liberation.

Waters was YSA national secretary, then chairperson (1967–68). She covered the 1968 student-labor uprising in France for the Militant and edited that working-class newsweekly from 1969 through the early 1970s.

She has edited more than thirty-five books on the Cuban Revolution as well as more than a dozen other titles. Waters has spoken in the United States and around the world on the Cuban Revolution and its lessons for working people and youth everywhere.

Her works include:

The Turn to Industry: Forging a Proletarian Party (2019, coeditor)

In Defense of the US Working Class (2019)

Is Socialist Revolution in the US Possible? (2016)

“It’s the Poor who Face the Savagery of the US ‘Justice’ System”: The Cuban Five Talk about Their Lives within the US Working Class (2015)

Cosmetics, Fashions, and the Exploitation of Women (1986, coauthor)

Rosa Luxemburg Speaks (1970, editor)

Michel Prairie (1951– ), a leader of the Communist League of Canada, is the editor of Thomas Sankara Speaks (2007).