Burkina Faso: from Thomas Sankara to popular resistance

SUMMARY

Arguably the résistance populaire across Burkina Faso in September 2015 against the coup led by members of the old regime was as significant as the uprising that toppled Blaise Compaoré in October 2014. This Briefing attempts to unpick the significance and extent of the popular resistance.

Acknowledgements

Leo would like to thank his friend and collaborator in Burkina Faso, Jean-Claude Kongo, and his comrades on ROAPE, Clare Smedley, Janet Bujra, Jörg Wiegratz and Graham Harrison for their comments and suggestions on earlier drafts of the Briefing.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Note on contributor

Leo Zeilig is an editor of ROAPE and coordinates our website: www.roape.net.

Notes

1. For reasons of space I am not discussing the attacks in Ouagadougou of 15 January 2016 that killed 30 people. The attack targeted two popular cafes and a large hotel in the city popular with Europeans and situated on the same crossroads. Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb claimed responsibility.

2. It was not until the end of the month that the disarmament of the RSP had really begun to take place.

3. All quotes from French-language sources in this Briefing were translated by the author.

4. The huge protests that unseated Compaoré’s regime in 2014 were to a large extent led by Balai Citoyen. If not central to galvanising the protests, those in Balai Citoyen were, in the context of the political vacuum after the fall of Compaoré on 31 October 2014, regarded as spokespersons for the insurrection. Political power fell briefly into their hands, with negotiations held momentarily on the streets with senior figures of the army on 1 November. The question of who should fill the political void was nervously discussed, before Balai Citoyen earnestly attempted to hand power to the army and the RSP’s second-in-command. The first days of the new dispensation in November 2014 saw an acute nervousness as army command and civic organisations, calling for calm, tried to settle the popular energy that erupted so dramatically in October. Much of this was captured on film in ‘A barefoot revolution’, published online by Deutsche Welle on September 8, 2015. Accessed April 15, 2016 at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0yWIakmSHIc.

5. On 18 September Chérif Sy proclaimed himself interim President of the Transition: see ‘The people take on the puschists’, Africa Confidential, September 25, 2015.

6. Remarkably, only 11 people were killed during these events, according to official sources

7. The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), the regional body, was divided. Many heads of state gave implicit support to the coup and proposed a compromise ‘solution’ that would have satisfied many of the grievances of the old regime. Certain members of the former regime – members of Blaise Compaoré’s party, Congrès pour la Démocratie et le Progrès (CDP) – had been excluded from standing in the elections scheduled for October. The ECOWAS deal proposed lifting these exclusions. On 21 September at an ECOWAS meeting in Abuja in Nigeria, the 13-point ‘compromise’ deal was rejected. The mobilisation of popular forces in the street continued to play a decisive role in the negotiations, the ‘compromise’ would not be accepted by those who had defeated the coup – it would be left to the people of Burkina Faso to decide their fate.

8. Despite the promising title, the paper’s report on the coup focused largely on the diplomatic efforts: see ‘How the people of Burkina Faso foiled a military coup’, The Guardian, September 25, 2015.

9. The largest employer is the Comoé Sugar Company, which employs 3000 workers.

Additional information

Funding

Research in Burkina Faso for this Briefing was funded by a small grant from the Review of African Political Economy.