Burkina Faso

A History of Power, Protest, and Revolution

Ernest Harsch

• Publisher: Zed Books
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781786991386
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: African History
• Index: History

In October 2014, huge protests across Burkina Faso succeeded in overthrowing the long-entrenched regime of their authoritarian ruler, Blaise Compaoré. Defying all expectations, this popular movement went on to defeat an attempted coup by the old regime, making it possible for a transitional government to organize free and fair elections the following year. In doing so, the people of this previously obscure West African nation surprised the world, and their struggle stands as one of the few instances of a popular democratic uprising succeeding in postcolonial sub-Saharan Africa. For over three decades, Ernest Harsch has researched and reported from Burkina Faso, interviewing subjects ranging from local democratic activists to revolutionary icon Thomas Sankara, the man once dubbed 'Africa's Che Guevara.' In this book, Harsch provides a compelling history of this little understood country, from the French colonial period to the Compaoré regime and the movement that finally deposed him.

1
INSURGENT CITIZENS AND THE STATE

For more than a quarter-century Burkina Faso’s legislature sat prominently at the heart of the capital, Ouagadougou, a representation of dominance by the country’s ruling elites. But now the walls of the former National Assembly are soot-blackened, its windows shattered, and the skeleton of a fire-gutted vehicle sits just inside the main gate. The charred ruins were left by angry demonstrators who sacked and burned the building in a popular insurrection that ousted an autocratic president, Blaise Compaoré, during the last two days of October 2014. Although elections were held a year later, the new legislators met elsewhere in temporary quarters, with no plans to restore the former seat of parliament. Rather, they chose to transform it into a museum and monument, a lasting reminder to future generations that the insurgent action of ordinary citizens—their “transformative violence,” as the official museum agreement termed it—can oblige rulers to respect “the sovereign people’s will, democracy, and freedom.”¹

Like many others, the people of Burkina Faso embrace their historical symbols. Almost a century before the October 2014 insurrection, in 1915‒16, there was an anti-colonial uprising by the peoples of the west, bloodily suppressed by French forces. There was also a January 1966 outpouring in Ouagadougou that brought down the nation’s first president, followed by an August 1983 takeover by a revolutionary alliance led by Thomas Sankara. The contemporary name of the country, Burkina Faso (formerly Upper Volta), and its people, Burkinabè, date from that revolutionary era. Many local political thinkers and activists cite this heritage of revolt in explaining the Burkinabè people’s readiness to challenge oppressive authority.

Powerholders and those contesting power usually use different, competing representations. State officials generally employ those that uphold order, project power, promote a myth of omnipotence, or instil fear in potential challengers. These worked for Compaoré for twenty-seven years, one of the longest reigns in contemporary Africa. Domestically, he dominated the political scene with a combination of coercion, corruption, and periodic electoral displays that usually delivered vote margins of 80 percent or more. He also depended on powerful backers in France, the United States, and the major international financial institutions.

Yet people’s fear of the state eventually eroded. It took many months for popular contention to build up, but when the end came, it came suddenly. Some activists likened the Compaoré regime to a baobab tree: long-lived, with a very broad, solid trunk, but beneath the soil a root system that was rather shallow. When the tree toppled over, exposing its underlying weakness, an ecstatic citizenry could at last celebrate the possibility of a more democratic future.

The tremors extended beyond Burkina Faso’s borders. Other African countries also had recently been experiencing widespread agitation spurred by persistent poverty, corruption, social exclusion, profiteering, or elections that offered few real choices. But it was still rare (other than in the exceptional cases of Egypt and Tunisia in 2011–11) for popular mobilization to actually bring down an entrenched autocracy. Just as activists across the continent and elsewhere in the world closely followed the Arab Spring revolts for encouragement and to draw possible lessons for their own struggles, they were inspired by the achievement of the Burkinabè people. That example was all the more attractive in that it was able to avoid the kind of democratic reversal or civil war that afflicted Egypt and most other Arab Spring countries. When Compaoré’s former presidential guard tried to stage a military coup in September 2015, Burkinabè again poured into the streets to defeat the putschists, and then went on to hold genuinely democratic elections two months later.

Among other questions, this book explores how the people of Burkina Faso got to that point. The acumen, determination, and flexibility of activist networks and their ability to mobilize ever larger numbers of citizens were important in preparing the way to the insurrection. So were the blunders of Compaoré, who appeared oblivious to the growing power of the streets and effectively provoked the uprising by trying to hang onto his position in blatant defiance of the constitution. But there were other factors as well, including Burkina Faso’s particular history of rebellion. Less obviously, some likewise lay in the way the state and its institutions grew and developed over time and how that process influenced the changing forms and expressions of citizen action.

BETWEEN COERCION AND LEGITIMACY

On a continent of many weak and fragile states, the one in Burkina Faso was in certain respects especially feeble. Unlike some, it did not collapse or descend into civil war or debilitating ethnic conflict. But the size of the Burkinabè state was exceptionally limited, whether measured by the ratio of civil servants to population, the resources in its treasury, or the reach of state institutions beyond the capital and a few other main towns. Although the bureaucracy was not overly corrupt, it was lethargic, inefficient, and unmotivated. Before the 1980s most citizens had only the most sporadic contact with any state agent, even a tax collector. Public schools and health facilities were available almost exclusively to city dwellers, and not even all of them.

The greatest weakness was in state authority. Many citizens, if they thought about the state at all, did not regard it as particularly legitimate. They did not see themselves as owing allegiance to or being served by those who occupied government offices, presided over courtrooms, or rode around in military vehicles. As in most African countries, the basic problem derived from the state’s colonial origins. The territories incorporated into then Upper Volta were conquered by French expeditionary forces and the institutions founded to manage the local population were crafted by the colonial office in Paris, to serve the economic and political interests of the metropole. Since Upper Volta was far inland and had little known natural wealth at the time, those French interests were in fact limited, lending a certain ambivalence to the colonial enterprise. First created as a separate colony in 1919, Upper Volta was broken up in 1932 and its components attached to three neighbouring colonies, and then reconstituted yet again in 1947. For local Voltaic employees of the colonial state, this territorial uncertainty made it harder to conceive a shared proto-national “imagined community” that could aspire to independent statehood.²

Yet it did become independent in 1960, largely because of changing French policies, rather than any great domestic pressure. The new state’s shallow roots among the people it governed contributed to a series of pathologies typical of many former colonial territories. Its external sovereignty was heavily constrained by the many French administrators still staffing the civil service and technical ministries, large and regular French financial contributions to the state budget, and multiple political ties with France and its closest regional allies, such as the government in neighbouring Côte d’Ivoire. Within the country, the state’s limited reach and authority led it to perpetuate the colonial-era policy of “indirect rule”: relying on traditional chiefs to ensure the compliance of their subjects in the countryside, where the state administration was largely absent. What loyalty there was to the political authorities in Ouagadougou came from extensive systems of patronage in which scarce resources were doled out selectively to favoured clients. The weakness of central state and political institutions also meant that political leadership often became personalized. Much of the country’s post-colonial history was dominated by just a few figures, whatever the political complexion of the government: Sangoulé Lamizana, Thomas Sankara, Blaise Compaoré.

Finally, the state’s limited legitimate authority meant that officeholders relied excessively on coercive authority, that is, the power of their police, soldiers, courts, and prisons. The distinction was first drawn by some of the earliest scholars of state formation, but continues to be employed by contemporary analysts of African states.³ Essentially, legitimate authority rests on commonly shared beliefs or social contracts that give citizens confidence that state officials will make decisions in their long-term interests. When such confidence exists, people obey government instructions not only out of fear or because of immediate material benefits, but because they think those directives are in some fashion just and socially beneficial. But when legitimacy is lacking, outright compulsion may be the only way to get people to comply.

The coercive tilt of state authority was evident in most African countries following independence, expressed dramatically in a succession of military coups and single-party regimes. They ensured a momentary order, but permitted little free expression. Upper Volta was thus typical, experiencing its first military takeover in 1966. For nearly half a century after that, every head of state had his origins in the armed forces, a trend that only ended with the first post-Compaoré elections of November 2015. Although they may sometimes be long-lasting, states that depend largely on coercion are inherently fragile. With weak social foundations, they are rigid, find it hard to adapt to changing circumstances, and may crack under the pressures of economic crisis.

Sometimes rifts at the political centre provide openings for reformers keen to modernize the state and widen the social bases of state authority. Such a process began in Upper Volta in the early 1980s. The next three decades were marked by two dominant and contrasting examples of resolute state-building, each with a different approach to social engagement and the challenges of authority: the brief revolutionary regime of Thomas Sankara (1983‒87) and the long reign of Blaise Compaoré (1987‒2014).

The Sankara government attempted to strengthen the state by reducing corruption, extending its institutions deeper into the countryside, bypassing traditional chiefs in favour of direct interaction with citizens, and asserting greater state sovereignty in international affairs. Although it was quite coercive against recalcitrant elements of the old political and social elites, it simultaneously created locally elected popular committees and encouraged mobilization by previously marginalized sectors of the population: youth, women, workers, urban poor, and, above all, rural folk. In a conscious effort at nation-building, the revolutionary government also promoted a new national identity, one that was both proudly African and encompassed all the country’s diverse ethnic groups. That revolutionary project succeeded in altering the contours of the state and of social and political life, but was itself unable to survive the hostile reaction of domestic conservatism and imperial alarm in Paris and other Western capitals.⁴

Compaoré, once a close ally of Sankara, staged a military coup that killed his predecessor. He pursued a more conservative direction in economic and social policy and relied heavily on coercion, with critics subjected to imprisonment, torture, exile, and death. After several years, domestic and foreign pressures obliged the authorities to adopt the formal trappings of representative democratic institutions. But that search for electoral legitimacy fell short. Instead of a competitive party system, Compaoré fashioned a dominant party-state that marginalized effective opposition and regularly manufactured huge pro-government vote margins. Meanwhile, the regime reverted to some of the standard features of pre-revolutionary Upper Volta: a renewed reliance on rural traditional chiefs, rampant corruption that enriched those closest to power, a patronage machine that tied the state bureaucracy to the ruling party, the co-optation of potential challengers, and a resumption of close political ties with France and other Western powers. Compaoré’s system was “semi-authoritarian,” argued Burkinabè scholar Augustin Loada. Those desiring change either grew disillusioned with the seeming impossibility of real reform or concluded that violence was necessary to break the impasse. Loada cited one activist’s reaction to a series of minor government concessions in the 1990s, “If we didn’t burn or break things, much would never have changed in this country.”⁵

Although tainted by an autocratic executive, state institutions as such continued to grow in size, geographical reach, and function. In the process, sectors of the state became more modernized, with some officeholders acquiring a professional outlook and creating pockets of resistance to corruption and the arbitrary use of power. In turn, such contention within the state widened openings for the emergence of new notions of citizen action, as ordinary Burkinabè became better organized across the country.

CITIZEN AWAKENING

Despite official representations, the state in Africa and elsewhere is not usually a solid entity acting with a common purpose. Its institutions function with varying degrees of effectiveness and capacity, and while usually following the lead of the central authorities, sometimes act autonomously or at cross-purposes. Nor is the state immune from social influences. State institutions and agents interact with members of society in many official and unofficial ways: ensuring compliance with laws, levying taxes, providing public services, soliciting bribes, and so on.⁶ Members of various social groups function both inside and outside state institutions. States may help mould societies, but are themselves shaped by social pressures and processes.⁷

Citizenship lies at the heart of state‒society relations. The concept defines citizens’ obligations and rights, in exchange for state protection and other benefits. The particular balance between duties and rights and that between what is expected of the state and of its citizens vary considerably. Sometimes those understandings are enshrined in a written constitution, sometimes hammered out more informally in practice. Economic and social inequalities often impede the ability of poorer citizens to exercise their rights, while venal and autocratic rulers may not fulfil their expected obligations. The struggle for full and effective citizenship is thus a constant one.

In colonial Upper Volta, only resident French nationals and a tiny handful of educated and culturally assimilated Africans were accorded the rights of (French) citizenship. For everyone else, the accent fell heavily on obligations: to pay oppressive “head” taxes, grow cotton, perform compulsory labour, and serve in the French army. Shortly before independence a restricted right to vote was introduced, to elect representatives to France’s West African territorial assembly. That franchise widened after independence. But in practice voters had little choice, since an increasingly repressive government had banned most formal political opposition, while in rural areas traditional chiefs simply ordered their subjects to cast ballots for the ruling party. As in other African countries, independence did not bring full citizenship to rural residents, but effectively left them consigned to the status of subjects in an ongoing system of indirect rule.⁸

Little changed until the revolutionary era of the 1980s. Sankara and his colleagues never contemplated representative elections to a national legislature, and in fact outlawed the established political parties of the old elites. Yet inspired by notions of participatory democracy, they encouraged the creation of popular Committees for the Defence of the Revolution (CDRs). Operating in urban neighbourhoods, workplaces, and rural villages, they not only had mass memberships but also elected their officeholders openly. In rural areas, villagers for the first time were able to act beyond the influence of traditional chiefs, making the committees especially popular among youths, women, ethnic minorities, and lower social castes. Many years later, despite the abusive reputation of some CDRs and the later reintroduction of elected representative institutions, the efforts of the Sankara era to solicit active involvement by ordinary citizens was widely seen as positive. “To this day, Burkina Faso largely defines itself on the basis of the democratic principles born during the revolution,” declared a commentary in the official state-owned daily on the thirty-third anniversary of Sankara’s seizure of power.⁹

Such views persisted partly in reaction to people’s experience with the Compaoré regime. The constitution permitted formally open elections, multiple parties, and a wide range of basic political and human rights, including those of assembly, expression, and the press. But those freedoms were frequently violated as the ruling party blocked the emergence of strong opposition parties, rural chiefs again pressured their subjects on the authorities’ behalf, and student protesters, trade unionists, outspoken journalists, and others were occasionally shot or imprisoned. Nevertheless, official constitutional guarantees, public pressures, and rifts among the elites hindered the regime’s ability to stifle independent thought and expression. Those limitations in turn provided “political opportunities” for regime challengers.¹⁰ As a result, a vibrant civil society numbering many hundreds of organizations develo...

Table of contents

• Cover
• About the Author
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Acronyms
• 1. Insurgent Citizens and the State
• 2. Uneasy Colonial Roots
• 3. Ministries of Plunder
• 4. From Crisis to Revolution
• 5. Refashioning the State
• 6. On Fragile Ground
• 7. Mobilization from Above and Below
• 8. Coup and “Rectification”
• 9. “Democracy” with a Heavy Hand
• 10. Enrichment in a Land of Poverty
• 11. Tug of War within the State
• 12. Contention in the Streets
• 13. From Confrontation to Insurrection
• 14. A Troubled Transition
• 15. A New Burkina Faso?
• Notes
• References
• Index