Laraib Nisar
Fall’2020 proved to be the season of protests in Pakistan. Citizens crushed by food inflation, gas and power crises, and the general sluggishness of an economic slowdown are boiling with anger. With the PDM power shows across the country along with the protest of thousands of government employees in Islamabad it is evident that the public are coming out due to genuine concerns. The whole scenario indicates that despite many successes of the PTI government, some loopholes remain which pose a question mark on the over-all progress of the government. The current socio-economic situation of Pakistan is somewhat similar to that of Upper Volta before the legendary revolutionist Thomas Sankara came into power in 1983 and renamed his country as Burkina Faso (i.e. the land of upright man), by toppling the then government with an aim of eradicating corruption and the French supremacy. After seizing power, he immediately launched one of the most determined programmes for social and economic revolution ever attempted on the African continent. Due to his revolutionary nature and charismatic personality Thomas Sankara was often referred as “Africa’s Che Guevara“.
Within a short time span of four years, Burkina Faso saw new heights of development in all aspects. Thomas Sankara adopted a multi-faceted approach and his model addressed all the seemingly small but very crucial issues of the country at the time. Some of the remarkable steps he took included the initiation of a nation-wide literacy campaign which resulted in a 60% increase in the literacy rate (i.e. it jumped from 13% in 1983 to 73% in 1987), a campaign that vaccinated more than 2.5 million kids against meningitis, yellow fever and measles within a few weeks, a campaign for the plantation of 10 million trees to prepare for the upcoming climate change crisis beforehand.
Thomas Sankara was strictly against the elitist culture. He made all possible efforts to minimize the class discrimination and encouraged people to adopt simpler lifestyles. Being the president of Burkina Faso, he issued orders to sell off the government fleet of Mercedes and made the Renault 5 (the cheapest car sold in Burkina Faso at that time) the official service car of the ministers along with reducing the salaries of all public servants including himself, and forbade the use of government chauffeurs and 1st class airline tickets. He made compulsory for all the civil servants to donate one month’s salary for completion of public projects. He refused to use the air conditioning in his office since such luxury was not accessible to anyone but a few of Burkinabes. As the President, he lowered his salary to $450 a month and restricted his possessions to a car, four bikes, three guitars, a fridge and a broken freezer.
His foreign policies were centered on anti-imperialism, with his government avoiding all foreign aid, pushing for odious debt reduction, nationalizing all land and mineral wealth, and averting the power and influence of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank.
His major focus was on making Burkina Faso self-sufficient and self-reliant. Thomas was of the view that “he who feeds you, controls you”, hence he opposed foreign aid of any sort. One of his most remarkable steps in this regard was the direct redistribution of land from the feudal landlords to the peasants. Wheat production rose in three years from 1700 kg per hectare to 3800 kg per hectare, making the country food self-sufficient. Additionally, he obligated public servants to wear a traditional tunic, woven from Burkinabe cotton and sewn by Burkinabe craftsmen to promote the local industry and identity rather than foreign industry and identity. In Ouagadougou, Sankara transformed the army’s provisioning store into a state-owned supermarket open to all and sundry (the first supermarket in the country). He built roads and a railway to link the nation together, without foreign aid.
He was one of the first leaders who worked for women empowerment in Burkina Faso by appointing females to high governmental positions, encouraging them to work, recruiting them into the military, and granting pregnancy leave during education. He also outlawed female genital mutilation, forced marriages and polygamy in support of Women’s rights. Being a motorcyclist himself, he made an all-women motorcycle personal guard.
He understood the importance of regional alliances and spoke in forums like the Organization of African Unity against continued neo-colonialist infiltration of Africa through Western trade and finance. He called for a united front of African nations to repudiate their foreign debt. He argued that the poor and exploited did not have an obligation to repay money to the rich and exploiting.
The above-mentioned model of endogenous development can be the magic pill for the PTI government in order to fulfill its promise of a “Naya Pakistan.” Though the government is making efforts to tackle the problems it is facing and few of the initiatives do resemble Thomas Sankara’s efforts (e.g. tree plantations, women empowerment etc.) but the government needs to understand the fact that a multi-faceted and comprehensive strategy is the need of time. And though adopting this model of endogenous development and self-reliance isn’t easy, but someone has to take an initiative to bring change because bringing change has always been a hard nut to crack.
The author Laraib Nisar is a Defense and Strategic Studies’ graduate, working as a research intern at CRSS.
