Tuesday, April 19, 2011

Me and Blaise Compaore (payback is a bi**h!)

I was in high school in '86 when Thomas Sankara arrived for the Non-Aligned Summit that was held in Zimbabwe. He literally shook the place up. He even upstaged the usual centre-of-attention, Muammar Gaddafi. For the duration of the summit his name was on everyone's lips as folks asked, "who is this Sankara fellow?" That's how I became a Pan-Africanist, living in a country where few knew (or had heard of) "Upper Volta", or were even familiar with what is known as Francophone Africa.

Now, 25 years later, it appears that me and Blaise Compaore have a rendezvous with history. I've been waiting for this moment, literally, for a quarter of a century. When the demise of Blaise is announced, I'll savour the moment like no other. The evil conspiracy of French President (Francois Mitterrand) and his official boot-licker (Blaise Compaore), literally shattered one of the greatest experiments in positive upliftment ever attempted on African soil. I hope the gallant people of Burkina Faso bury Blaise Compaore in a shallow grave; the same dog's grave that Thomas Sankara was (initially) buried in. What goes around always comes around.