Rawlings to chair Sankara memorial project
Ghana’s former President, Flt Lt Jerry John Rawlings, has accepted an invitation from the government of Burkina Faso to chair a committee to institute a fitting memorial for the late Burkinabe leader, Thomas Sankara.
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He accepted the invitation when the Secretary General of the Burkina Faso Ministry of Culture and Tourism, Dr Stanlislas Bermile Meda, led a delegation to Accra last Saturday to deliver a formal request from the Burkinabe government.
Dr Meda told President Rawlings that he had been nominated because of his close relationship with Thomas Sankara, his sense of dedication to the masses and the fact that he oversaw the establishment of the Kwame Nkrumah Mausoleum.
The Burkinabe official said his government had decided to replicate the Nkrumah Mausoleum to honour Captain Sankara. The Nkrumah Mausoleum was inaugurated in July 1992.
In accepting the invitation, Flt Lt Rawlings said: “It is a privilege, an honour and a big responsibility. I do accept it and believe with the support of your government and the humble people of Burkina Faso, we should be able to come up with a monument befitting of Capt. Thomas Sankara.
“Captain Sankara was very much respected, very much adored and that has been consolidated over the years. What he stood for has remained an impetus that has been in Burkinabe and manifested in another liberation,” President Rawlings said, referring to the popular public uprisings in October 2014 and September 2015.
Displeasure
The former President, however, expressed his displeasure at the fact that what was originally established as a national monument for Nkrumah had been reduced to a family burial place by the reburial of Fathia Nkrumah under the same monument.
Describing it as a deliberate political mistake, Flt Lt Rawlings said, “Nkrumah like a good number of patriots on the continent, had his enemies who disliked him with passion. He was not perfect but it’s a wonder he survived as long as he did with both internal and external enemies after him. He is the founder of the nation and does not deserve to have a degraded mausoleum.
“And how some of Nkrumah’s believers could have sat down and watched the burial of Nkrumah’s wife under the same monument is something that shocks and surprises me up till this day,” the former President said.
Rise to prominence
Captain Thomas Sankara rose to prominence in 1983 when he took power in a popular uprising. He renamed his country Burkina Faso from the French colonial Upper Volta and pursued a self-sufficiency drive, consisting of land reform, prioritising education through a national literacy campaign and the promotion of public health through a massive immunisation drive. He was overthrown and assassinated in a coup d’état in 1987.
Known as a strong revolutionary, Sankara’s name has been the silent force behind the recent popular uprisings in 2014 when long-serving President Blaise Compaore was chased out of office.