Burkinabè revolutionary Thomas Sankara was assassinated in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, on this day in 1987—gunned down along with 12 close allies in a planned coup led by Blaise Compaoré, his former partner in the revolution. Within hours, Compaoré assumed power and was swiftly recognized by former colonial overlord France, securing international Western support.
Sankara arrived at what was believed to be a routine meeting. He arrived unarmed and with his hands raised, before being executed on site. His body was mutilated, buried in an unmarked grave, and a falsified death certificate claimed he had died of natural causes.
The assassination was followed by an organized campaign to wipe him from public memory. His name was banned, his speeches and writings were seized and destroyed, murals were painted over, and photographs were confiscated nationwide.
Sankara’s brutal assassination was not driven by internal rivalry. His government posed a direct challenge to the economic and political structures maintained by Western powers in West Africa. He rejected IMF adjustment programmes, denounced colonial debt before the OAU as a mechanism of domination, nationalized land to break the power of traditional chiefs linked to France, and placed women, workers and peasants at the centre of state policy. His anti-corruption body, the CPPC, began exposing the same military and commercial networks tied to French intelligence and West African pro-Paris governments.
Western governments did not carry out the assassination themselves, but those who did were rewarded. After taking power, Compaoré reversed Sankara’s policies overnight, reopened the country to international creditors and restored the privileges of the elite aligned with foreign interests. The killing of Thomas Sankara marked the violent restoration of a client state, enforced through assassination and maintained through deliberate historical erasure.
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