Mission Civilisatrice: Thomas Sankara and the ‘Transformation of Mentalities’ in the Burkina Faso Revolution

Abstract

ABSTRACT Thomas Sankara was an outstanding leader whose integrity and forthright attack on corruption placed him head and shoulders above his contemporaries. He was an Upright Man indeed. But it is less obvious what political lessons should be drawn from his praxis. This article, which is an exercise in political theory rather than historical scholarship, considers three related strands in Sankara’s thought, each of which speak to his ontology. Section I sets out the basic structures of power after the revolution, and Sankara’s understanding of the body politic. Sections II and III explore this further, through a discussion of two of the most important centres of power, the military and the popular courts, through which this alternative conception of politics was pursued. The article suggests that Sankara had no appetite for impersonal perpetually lived institutions. Despite his frequent attempts to moderate the repressive actions of his colleagues, at no point did Sankara ever question the goal of a politicized state controlled from the centre by a vanguard party—a totalizing vision in which human interests are reduced to the interests of the polis. For him, the political was simply a place within which a ‘conscious people’ (or their representatives) eliminated antagonism.