Exploring Thomas Sankara's Legacy

If there were two or three other historical figures

that you would want listeners of this podcast

to go look into and learn more about,

who would they be?

The first person I would say is Thomas Sankara.

He was the revolutionary leader of Burkina Faso

in the 1980s.

An extraordinary story.

One of the things he realized is

that the debt was being used

as an instrument of imperial control

in the Global South.

And so he called for collective debt cancellation

in the Global South,

especially in Africa, as a liberatory move.

I can imagine some people who would be unhappy with that.

There were people who were unhappy.

And in fact, it's interesting because

he actually raised this issue in the African Union

when he was giving a speech to his fellow heads of state.

And he was like, look,

if Burkina Faso escapes the debt on its own,

then I won't be here next year to speak to you.

He knew that his life was on the line.

But he said, if we do it together,

there's no way they can kill us all.

Well, three months later, Thomas Sankara was assassinated

in a French-backed coup and replaced with a brutal dictator

who governed the country for several decades after

as a stooge of the West.

But one of the things that Sankara said is he said,

we are the heirs of the world's revolutions.

We are the heirs of the world's revolutions.

I love this saying because it reminds us

that every good thing that we do have,

like what few democratic rights we do have,

what few equalities we do have, etc.

We're one through struggle, through class struggle,

through anti-colonial struggle, through feminist struggle, etc.

And we benefit from our ancestors' struggles.

And this should inspire us to take similar action

in our world today.

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