₦airaland Forum

As President, he lowered his salary to only $
450 a month and limited his possessions to a
car, four bikes, three guitars, a fridge and a
broken freezer. A motorcyclist himself, he
formed an all-women motorcycle personal
guard. He required public servants to wear a
traditional tunic, woven from Burkinabe cotton
and sewn by Burkinabe craftsmen.





He was known for jogging unaccompanied through Ouagadougou in his track suit and posing in his tailored military fatigues, with his mother-of-pearl pistol.




When asked why he didn’t want his portrait hung in public places, as was the norm for other African leaders, Sankara replied “There are seven million Thomas Sankaras.” Sankara rejected the idea of foreign aid, saying that “he who feeds you, controls you.” Wheat production rose in just three years from 1700kg per hectare to 3800 kg per hectare, making the country food self-sufficient.






He spoke eloquently in forums like the Organization of African Unity against continued neo-colonialist penetration of Africa through Western trade and finance. He called for a united front of African nations to repudiate their foreign debt. He argued that the poor and exploited did not have an obligation to repay money to the rich and exploiting.






In Ouagadougou, Sankara converted the army’s provisioning store into a state-owned
supermarket open to everyone (the first
supermarket in the country). He forced civil
servants to pay one month’s salary to public
projects.He refused to use the air conditioning
in his office on the grounds that such luxury
was not available to anyone but a handful of
Burkinabes.






He sold off the government fleet of Mercedes
cars and made the Renault 5 (the cheapest car sold in Burkina Faso at that time) the official service car of the ministers. He reduced the salaries of all public servants, including his own, and forbade the use of government chauffeurs and 1st class airline tickets.






He redistributed land from the feudal landlords and gave it directly to the peasants.
Sankara was assassinated by agents of
imperialism in coup plot orchestrated by France
on October 15, 1987.





Pan-African Renaissance Source: NTA




cc: Lalasticlala, Mynd44, Seun

OP forgot to add he was executed by his closest friend, Blaise Campoaore. When someone told him Blaise was plotting a coup against him, he said it was a lie, but that if it was true, then he (Thomas) was as good as dead because Blaise knew everything about him, so there was no need to hide or fight back.
Blaise actually did kill him and hacked his body into pieces.
When asked by the foreign media during a press conference why he had killed his best friend, he said it was because Thomas was destroying the country and he wanted to save the people.
Cc.lalasticlala,Mynd44

Elruhamah:
OP forgot to add he was executed by his closest friend, Blaise Campoaore. When someone told him Blaise was plotting a couple against him, he said it was a lie, but that if it was true, then he (Thomas) was as good as dead because Blaise knew everything about him, so there was no need to hide or fight back.
Blaise actually did kill him and hacked his body into pieces.
When asked by the foreign media during a press conference why he had killed his best friend, he said it was because Thomas was destroying the country and he wanted to save his people.

Thanks for that bro that was cruel of him his end is really a sad one

Thomas Isidore Noël Sankara - Burkinabé military captain, Marxist revolutionary, pan-Africanist and President of Burkina Faso from 1983-87, was a true hero and visionary. A man ahead of his time. It was so sad that his life was cut short, before he could achieve his dreams for his nation.

He said:

"We have to work at decolonizing our mentality and achieving happiness within the limits of sacrifice we should be willing to make. We have to recondition our people to accept themselves as they are, to not be ashamed of their real situation, to be satisfied with it, to glory in it, even..." - Thomas Sankara.

"The enemies of a people are those who keep them in ignorance." - Thomas Sankara

"Comrades, there is no true social revolution without the liberation of women. May my eyes never see and my feet never take me to a society where half the people are held in silence. I hear the roar of women’s silence. I sense the rumble of their storm and feel the fury of their revolt..." - Thomas Sankara

"You cannot carry out fundamental change without a certain amount of madness. In this case, it comes from nonconformity, the courage to turn your back on the old formulas, the courage to invent the future. It took the madmen of yesterday for us to be able to act with extreme clarity today. I want to be one of those madmen. We must dare to invent the future..." - Thomas Sankara http://www.azquotes.com/author/12971-Thomas_Sankara

May his soul rest in peace!

Now that is a legend there.. But all I know is good people don't last.


So I have decided to interwoven my good in a cloud of unreadable signs.


You are remembered sankara.