THOMAS SANKARA LIVES!

Mukoma Wa Ngugi

Mukoma Wa Ngugi celebrates the lives of Thomas Sankara and Che
Guevara, and in doing so, asks us to remember all our other leaders
and heroes who died at the hands of colonialism and apartheid.

In April this year, we celebrated 50 yrs of Ghana's Independence.
This October, in addition to remembering the revolutionary promise of
Che Guevara executed forty years ago, we will also be remembering
that twenty years ago, Thomas Sankara was assassinated - a stark
reminder that we are still in the state Odinga Oginga called Not Yet
Uhuru. We will be remembering that if Africa suffers today, it is
because yesterday its best political minds, and its most fiery and
committed sons and daughters were assassinated. All for thirty pieces
of silver, for tea, coffee, oil, diamonds, gold, cobalt, uranium and
African sweat.

But we should also remember the living. Aziz Fall, the co-coordinator
of the International Justice Campaign for Sankara (ICJS) has been
receiving anonymous death threats since December 2006. They tell him
"stop or be stopped" "commit suicide or face execution" and in the
last one, he was informed that his family would be targeted. His
crime? Coordinating 22 lawyers dedicated to using legal means to find
the truth behind Sankara's assassination.

The ICJS helped Mariam Sankara, Thomas Sankara's widow, take her case
to the United Nations after, predictably, the legal system in Burkina
Faso stalled each time she appeared in court. Finally, in March 2006,
the United Nations Human Rights Committee ruled that Sankara's family
has "the right to know the circumstances of his death." The Committee
also argued that failure to correct the natural death entry on
Sankara's death certificate, refusal to investigate his death, and
"the lack of official recognition of his place of burial" pointed to
"inhumane treatment of Ms. Sankara and her sons" contrary to Article
7 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.

Dictators and your torturers all over the world take note! Article 7
declares: "No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman
or degrading treatment or punishment." In a strange way, the death
threats against Aziz further validate the UN ruling.

Victoria Mxenge, Ruth First, Steve Biko, Amilcar Cabral, Samora
Machel, Chris Hani, Mhodlane, Kimathi and many others dead at the
hands of colonialism and apartheid. But what makes the assassinations
of Sankara, Lumumba or Maurice Bishop of Grenada all the more painful
is knowing that they were betrayed by those closest to them Then,
without exception, they were succeeded by less able people- to say
the least. Their successors are egregiously guilty of violently
pulling back their societies miles behind the starting line.

After Lumumba, Mobutu -a common thief who under the guise of a
shallow nationalism - maimed, killed and stole in the Congo. In
Grenada, Bernard Coard's bloody counter-revolution allowed a
predatory U.S. to invade Grenada. And in Burkina Faso, each day we
see what President Blaise Compaore has done with the Sankara revolution.

Life expectancy is 47.9 years, adult literacy, 21.8 percent and
Burkina Faso now has the dubious distinction of being ranked the 3rd
poorest country in the world with 80 percent of its 13 million people
living on less than two dollars a day. In November of 2007, Compaore
will be running for presidency, again. I say give him five more years
to see if he can do it - Let him get Burkina Faso the coveted first
place title of poorest country in the whole world!

For a nation to heal, it must know and come to terms with the truth
of its past. And it must make good with the promise of that past. In
Kenya Dedan Kimathi was hanged and buried in an unmarked grave in
Kamiti Prison by the British in 1957 where the post-independence
government left him. Having set Kenya on neo-colonial rails and
rewarded the collaborators with land, then turned their backs on Mau
Mau veterans, both Kenyatta and Moi wanted what Kimathi stood for
forgotten. Compaore is afraid of the truth because Sankara is a
reminder of how far he has fallen from the promise of the revolution.
Compaore knows we know he cannot make good on Sankara's promise.

We have to remember our dead. But our presidents prefer gold
monuments and statues. Sometimes they cultivate heroes' acres without
growing freedom. Better the monument be societies that are free and
egalitarian. Instead of grand monuments, it is better we have nations
that would welcome the revolutionary dead. Because truth be told,
Nkrumah would not have been welcomed to Ghana's 50 year celebrations.
Kimathi would not be welcomed in today's Kenya and Sankara would be
assassinated again in today's Burkina Faso.

What if Sankara had grown old with us? Would he have become a
dictator as we have seen with many? We do not know. But we know how
he lived, we know what he died for and his promise. That is what
should matter.

Koni Benson, a friend and agitator, named her son Sankara because,
she said, "What Thomas Sankara did, tried to do and what happened to
him, should not be forgotten. Sankara is the history and the future
of the continent. He dared us to invent the future."

As we remember our dead - Let us also remember the living. We have to
dare to dream again. We have to dare to remember the past. And we
have to dare to act.


* Mukoma Wa Ngugi is the author of Hurling Words at Consciousness
(AWP, 2006) and Conversing with Africa: Politics of Change (KPH,
2003), and editor of the forthcoming, New Kenyan Fiction (Ishmael
Reed Publications, 2008). He is a political columnist for the BBC
Focus on Africa Magazine where a shorter version of this essay first
appeared.

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http://www.pambazuka.org
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