May 1, 2012
May 1, 2012
“When you are bearing arms that can spit fire and death, and when you can receive orders standing to attention in front of a flag, without knowing who will benefit from this order or this arm, you become a potential criminal who’s just waiting to spread terror around you. How many soldiers are going around such and such a country, and bringing grief and desolation without understanding that they are fighting men and women who argue for the same ideals as their own. If they knew! Children of workers who see their parents going on strike against reactionary regimes accept to fight for the reactionary leaders since they joined the army. So a solider without any political or ideological training is a potential criminal.
— Thomas Sankara (via tiocfaidharlulz)
Reblogged fromis minic a ghearr teanga duine a scornach
May 1, 2012
Reblogged from
May 1, 2012
Reblogged from
April 10, 2012
">“Mr. President:
I make no claim to lay out any doctrines here. I am neither a messiah nor a prophet. I possess no truths. My only aspiration is twofold; first, to be able to speak on behalf of my people, the people of Burkina Faso, in simple words, words that are clear and factual. And second, in my own way to also speak on behalf of the “great disinherited people of the world,” those who belong to the world so ironically christened the Third World. And to state, though I may not succeed in making them understood, the reasons for our revolt.”
-Thomas Sankara at the United Nations general assembly October 4, 1984
Reblogged from
you are only going to kill a man.
April 10, 2012
“
Our organisation (GRILA) and the revolution in Burkina Faso are the exact same age and we have many things in common. So we may sound pretty subjective when it comes to our assessment of what was achieved in those three years. Sankara tried to put into practice most of the key elements of our own philosophy; among other things, the destruction of all forms of racism and ethnocentrism, with the Bambaata summit and the anti-apartheid struggle; the respect of collective and human rights; the struggle against regimes allied with imperialist interests; a balance between rural and urban incomes; food self-sufficiency; the fulfilment of basic needs. A key issue for Sankara was the political, economic and social emancipation of women and the transformation of sexist mentalities. That particular aspect was crucial in a very traditional society where sexism was so with entrenched. Men were invited to go to the market once a week, women were appointed to key State positions, and civic rights and the constitution granted women important advantages.
While there were mistakes and contradictions due to the weakness of his alliances, Sankara was steadfast in focusing on other key issues as well, issues that are still cornerstones to our own work, namely, popular and civic participation, popular democracy and the promotion and empowerment of Africa’s youth. Sankara promoted self-reliant, ecologically sustainable development, and invited locals and foreigners alike to plant trees; the emergence of regional panafricanist states that were politically and economically accountable to their citizens, as evidenced by his attempts to unite with Ghana. Sankara was committed to fighting corruption, and personally served as a very modest example, refusing to live a life of luxury and reigning in any tendencies by those within his government toward ostentatious consumption.
— Aziz Fall
April 10, 2012
“As for our relationship with the political class, what relations would you have liked us to weave? We explained face to face, directly with the leaders, the former leaders of the former political parties because, for us, these parties do not exist any more, they have been dissolved. And that is very clear. The relationship that we have with them is simply the relationship we have with voltaic citizens, or, if they so wish, the relationship between revolutionaries, if they wish to become revolutionaries. Beyond that, nothing remains but the relationship between revolutionaries and counter-revolutionaries.
— Thomas Sankara
April 9, 2012
Thomas Sankara's Legacy: interview with Fidel Kientega, Sankara's foreign advisor
- Sankanu: I understand that Campaore tried to sabotage the 20th commemoration of Thomas Sankara’s death. However, international commemoration has been taking place throughout the year in Mali, USA, Canada, Switzerland, France, UK, here in Germany and many other countries. How was the commemoration proper in Burkina Faso?
- Kientega: It was similar to the day they killed Sankara. Campaore organised rallies to celebrate his 20-year rule. He wanted to keep the public away from our memorial events for Sankara. He hired buses and offered young people 2000 CFA (five U.S. Dollars) each as pocket money to attend his programmes. He offered free fuel to motorbike owners to attend his rallies. What happened was the young people took the money, the fuel and the buses and ran to our commemoration of Thomas Sankara’s death!
- Sankanu: Campaore wanted to steal the show but ended up paying people to remember Sankara (laughs).
- Kientega: Exactly. Even after 20 years of killing Sankara he cannot defeat him. The most interesting lesson is most of the young people were not born at the time of Sankara’s revolution and death. They heard about Sankara from their parents and elders. If Sankara’s revolution of 1983-1987 were a failure and a brutal dictatorship, the recollections of their parents would not have motivated them into immortalizing him.
April 9, 2012
“Our revolution is not a public-speaking tournament. Our revolution is not a battle of fine phrases. Our revolution is not simply for spouting slogans that are no more than signals used by manipulators trying to use them as catchwords, as codewords, as a foil for their own display. Our revolution is, and should continue to be, the collective effort of revolutionaries to transform reality, to improve the concrete situation of the masses of our country.
— Thomas Sankara - On fourth anniversary of Political Orientation Speech - October 2, 1987 (via upst8ofmind)
Reblogged fromyou are only going to kill a man.
April 9, 2012
“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.
— Thomas Sankara
