On this day in 1987, Burkinabe socialist president Thomas Sankara was assassinated at the age of 37. He was killed in a military coup, suspected to have had support from the US and France. Sankara became the President of Burkina Faso at the age of 33, he only lasted 4 years.
Sankara gained the love of his people because of his humble lifestyle, socialist programmes & economic prosperity, but also his confrontation with the national elite, as he stripped power away from them and for challenging Western imperialism and neo-colonialism in the continent.
In those 4 short years he:
• Lowered his salary to $450 a month, limited his possessions to a car, 4 bikes, 3 guitars, a fridge and a broken freezer.
• Sold off the government fleet of Mercedes cars & made the cheapest car in Burkina Faso the official service car.
• Vaccinated 2.5 million children against meningitis, yellow fever and measles in a matter of weeks.
• Initiated a nation-wide literacy campaign, increasing the literacy rate from 13% in 1983 to 73% in 1987.
• Redistributed land from the feudal landlords and gave it directly to the peasants.
• Planted over 10 million trees to retain soil and halt the growing desertification of the Sahel.
• Built roads and a railway to tie the nation together.
• Appointed women to senior positions, encouraged them to work and granted pregnancy leave during education.
• Opposed foreign aid, saying that “he who feeds you, controls you.”
• Called for a united front of African nations to repudiate their foreign debt, arguing the poor and exploited did not have an obligation to repay money to the rich and exploiting.
• Converted the army’s provisioning store into a state-owned supermarket open to everyone (the first supermarket in the country).
• Refused to use the air conditioning in his office on the grounds that such luxury was not available to anyone but a handful of Burkinabes.
“Our revolution in Burkina Faso draws on the totality of man's experiences since the first breath of humanity. We wish to be the heirs of all the revolutions of the world, of all the liberation struggles of the peoples of the Third World." - Thomas Sankara
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Depictions of historical victories over colonizers.
1: Native Hawaiians killed British colonizer Captain James Cook.
2: Hanging of French colonial soldier during the Haitian Revolution.
3: Ambon revolt of 1817 led by Kapitan Pattimura against the Dutch colonizers.
4: Philippine warriors kill Portuguese colonizer Magellan.
5: The Zulus killing the British Lieutenants Melvill and Coghill at the Battle of Isandlwana in 1879.
With 30+ cases, the White House had more new confirmed COVID-19 cases last week than Vietnam as a whole with only 5.
With 1,100+ cases total, Vietnam with over 96 million people, managed to contain the pandemic much better than most larger & wealthier countries like the U.S.
How has the Socialist Republic of Vietnam been so successful in fighting the coronavirus? (a thread)
• Early on the government made firm decisions to prioritise & preserve the health of its people even if it would come at the cost of the economy.
As Indonesian students and workers are rising up, here's a short history of the last mass uprising that took place in the fourth most populous country in the world: the one that toppled the US-backed right-wing dictator Suharto in 1998.
In 1965, General Suharto, backed by the CIA, came to power & oversaw the political genocide of up to 2 million Indonesian communists, trade unionists & other leftists, the jailing of a milllion more & destroying the largest communist movement outside of the Soviet Union & China.
Fearing a communist revolution, the US, UK and Australia supported Suharto in pushing aside the leftist nationalist Sukarno and establishing a 33-year repressive military dictatorship on the dead bodies of executed communists.
That time Malcolm X met Fidel Castro in Harlem 60 years ago on this day. (A thread)
A year after the Cuban Revolution, Castro and his delegation came to New York to attend the UN General Assembly, but the management of the Manhattan hotel the delegation booked now refused to house them after the US government already pressured other hotels to reject the Cubans.
Upon learning of their situation, Malcolm X invited them to come uptown to Harlem, to stay at the Black-owned Hotel Theresa, where Malcolm X said he would be greeted with open arms.