Thomas Isidore Noel Sankara was a Burkinabe military officer, Marxist revolutionary and Pan-Africanist who served as President of Burkina Faso from his coup in 1983 to his assassination in 1987.
50 Facts About Thomas Sankara
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Thomas Sankara is viewed by supporters as a charismatic and iconic figure of revolution.
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Aged 33, Thomas Sankara became the President of the Republic of Upper Volta and launched social, ecological and economic programmes and renamed the country from the French colonial name Upper Volta to Burkina Faso, with its people being called Burkinabe.
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Thomas Sankara welcomed foreign aid from other sources but tried to reduce reliance on aid by boosting domestic revenues and diversifying the sources of assistance.
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Thomas Sankara focused on a nationwide literacy campaign and vaccinating program against meningitis, yellow fever and measles.
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Thomas Sankara's government focused on building schools, health centres, water reservoirs, and infrastructure projects.
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Thomas Sankara combated desertification of the Sahel by planting over 10 million trees.
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Thomas Sankara set up Cuban-inspired Committees for the Defence of the Revolution.
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Thomas Sankara set up Popular Revolutionary Tribunals to prosecute public officials charged with political crimes and corruption, considering such elements of the state counter-revolutionaries.
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On 15 October 1987, Thomas Sankara was assassinated by troops led by Blaise Compaore, who assumed leadership of the state shortly thereafter and retained it until the 2014 Burkina Faso uprising.
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Thomas Sankara was born Thomas Isidore Noel Sankara on 21 December 1949 in Yako, French Upper Volta, as the third of ten children to Joseph and Marguerite Sankara.
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Thomas Sankara spent his early years in Gaoua, a town in the humid southwest to which his father was transferred as an auxiliary gendarme.
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Thomas Sankara applied himself seriously to his schoolwork and excelled in mathematics and French.
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Thomas Sankara went to church often, and impressed with his energy and eagerness to learn, some of the priests encouraged Thomas to go on to seminary school once he finished primary school.
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At the lycee, Thomas Sankara made close friends, including Fidele Too, whom he later named a minister in his government; and Soumane Toure, who was in a more advanced class.
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Thomas Sankara entered the military academy of Kadiogo in Ouagadougou with the academy's first intake of 1966 at the age of 17.
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Thomas Sankara invited a few of his brightest and more political students, among them Sankara, to join informal discussions about imperialism, neocolonialism, socialism and communism, the Soviet and Chinese revolutions, the liberation movements in Africa and similar topics outside of the classroom.
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In 1970,20 year old Thomas Sankara went on for further military studies at the military academy of Antsirabe in Madagascar, from which he graduated as a junior officer in 1973.
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Thomas Sankara became a popular figure in the capital of Ouagadougou.
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Thomas Sankara played in a band named Tout-a-Coup Jazz and rode a bicycle.
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Thomas Sankara was appointed Minister of Information in Saye Zerbo's military government in September 1981.
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Thomas Sankara differentiated himself from other government officials in many ways such as biking to work everyday, instead of driving in a car.
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In between those four months, Thomas Sankara pushed Ouedraogo's regime for more progressive reforms.
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Thomas Sankara was then arrested after the French President's African affairs adviser, Guy Penne, met with Col.
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The decision to arrest Thomas Sankara proved to be very unpopular with the younger officers in the military regime and his imprisonment created enough momentum for his friend Blaise Compaore to lead another coup.
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Thomas Sankara saw himself as a revolutionary and was inspired by the examples of Cuba's Fidel Castro and Che Guevara and Ghana's military leader Jerry Rawlings.
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Thomas Sankara's policy was oriented toward fighting corruption and promoting reforestation.
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Thomas Sankara gave it a new flag and wrote a new national anthem.
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Thomas Sankara launched a mass vaccination programme in an attempt to eradicate polio, meningitis and measles.
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Thomas Sankara's administration was the first African government to publicly recognize the AIDS epidemic as a major threat to Africa.
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Shortly after attaining power, Thomas Sankara constructed a system of courts known as the Popular Revolutionary Tribunal.
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Thomas Sankara's CDRs overstepped their power, and were accused by some of thuggery and gang-like behaviour.
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The failure of the CDRs, coupled with the failure of the Revolutionary Teachers programme, mounting labour and middle class disdain, as well as Thomas Sankara's steadfastness, led to the government partially weakening within Burkina Faso.
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Thomas Sankara viewed this arrangement as an obstacle to national unity, and proceeded to demote the Mossi elite.
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Thomas Sankara's government banned female genital mutilation, forced marriages and polygamy, while appointing women to high governmental positions and encouraging them to work outside the home and stay in school even if pregnant.
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Thomas Sankara promoted contraception and encouraged husbands to go to market and prepare meals to experience for themselves the conditions faced by women.
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Thomas Sankara recognized the challenges faced by African women when he gave his famous address to mark International Women's Day on 8 March 1987 in Ouagadougou.
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Thomas Sankara spoke to thousands of women in a highly political speech in which he stated that the Burkinabe Revolution was 'establishing new social relations' which would be 'upsetting the relations of authority between men and women and forcing each to rethink the nature of both.
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Furthermore, Thomas Sankara was the first African leader to appoint women to major cabinet positions and to recruit them actively for the military.
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Thomas Sankara personally disliked Malian President Moussa Traore, who had taken power by deposing Modibo Keita's left-leaning regime.
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At a rally held after the war, Thomas Sankara conceded that his country's military was not adequately armed and announced the commutation of sentences for numerous political prisoners.
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Thomas Sankara engaged in three major battles: against bush fires 'which will be considered as crimes and will be punished as such'; against cattle roaming 'which infringes on the rights of peoples because unattended animals destroy nature'; and against the chaotic cutting of firewood 'whose profession will have to be organized and regulated'.
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Thomas Sankara then thought of extending this vegetation belt to other countries.
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Thomas Sankara knew how to show his people that they could become dignified and proud through will power, courage, honesty and work.
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Thomas Sankara gave a speech marking and honouring the 20th anniversary of Che Guevara's 9 October 1967 execution, one week before his own assassination on 15 October 1987.
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On 15 October 1987, Thomas Sankara was killed by an armed group with twelve other officials in a coup d'etat organized by his former colleague Blaise Compaore.
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Thomas Sankara's body was riddled with bullets to the back and he was quickly buried in an unmarked grave while his widow Mariam and two children fled the nation.
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Compaore immediately reversed the nationalizations, overturned nearly all of Thomas Sankara's policies, rejoined the International Monetary Fund and World Bank to bring in 'desperately needed' funds to restore the 'shattered' economy and ultimately spurned most of Thomas Sankara's legacy.
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The exhumation of what are believed to be the remains of Thomas Sankara started on African Liberation Day, 25 May 2015.
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Twenty years after his assassination, Thomas Sankara was commemorated on 15 October 2007 in ceremonies that took place in Burkina Faso, Mali, Senegal, Niger, Tanzania, Burundi, France, Canada and the United States.