The renowned revolutionary and anti-imperialist leader Thomas Sankara was murdered on October 15, 1987, at the age of 37.
Sankara took power in the landlocked West African state of Upper Volta after a coup in 1983, changing the name of the former French colony to Burkina Faso (“the land of upright people” in Mossi, the language of the country’s largest ethnic group) the following year.
Sankara’s government, using a synthesis of Pan-Africanism and Marxist politics, initiated a string of far-reaching economic and social reforms that included nationalizations, land redistribution, reforestation, infrastructure and public housing construction, expanded access to education, vaccination campaigns, and advancing the rights of women by banning female genital mutilation, polygamy and forced marriages. His government, hewing to a foreign policy predicated on non-alignment, took on former colonial powers, as well as their satrap institutions, the World Bank and International Monetary Fund.
— source counterpunch.org | Kenneth Surin | Oct 20, 2021