Burkina Faso military leaders turn to ‘Africa's Che Guevara' to rally struggling country
OUAGADOUGOU, Burkina Faso, May 21, (AP): The military rulers of Burkina Faso have turned to a man once known as "Africa's Che Guevara" as a way to rally a country struggling to defeat extremists and turning away from former Western allies. Hundreds of young people gathered over the weekend in the capital, Ouagadougou, for the opening of a mausoleum for legendary leader Thomas Sankara. "I'm the driver of the revolution!" one young man exclaimed with delight, sitting behind the wheel of the jeep that Sankara used during his presidency decades ago.
A charismatic Marxist leader who seized global attention by defiantly declaring his country could rely on itself, Sankara came to power in 1983 at the age of 33 after he and former ally Blaise Compaore led a leftist coup that overthrew a moderate military faction. But in 1987, Compaore turned on his former friend in a coup that killed Sankara in the capital - and later became president himself. Nearly four decades after his death, Sankara is being celebrated in Burkina Faso, a nation of 23 million people once known for its bustling arts scene and vibrant intellectual life - including Sankara's anti-imperialist and pan-African legacy.
"When I stepped inside the mausoleum, I felt the revolution,' said Timoté, a 22-year-old who said he came because of what he heard about Sankara at home and at school. Sankara's mausoleum, designed by Pritzker Architecture Prize-winning architect Francis Kéré, has been the project of current military leader Capt. Ibrahim Traore. Since taking power during a coup in 2022, Traore has presented himself as the new Sankara. He has named one of the main streets after the revolutionary leader, elevated him to the rank of Hero of the Nation and revived revolutionary slogans such as "Fatherland or death, we will win!' in most of his speeches. The mission of the mausoleum is "to keep the flame of the revolution alive and to remind the world of Capt. Thomas Sankara's fight to break the chains of slavery and imperialist domination,' Burkina Faso Prime Minister Jean Emmanuel Ouédraogo said as he read Traore's statement.
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