This study is about four interrelated key issues, namely, critique of Thomas Sankara as a
political figure and erstwhile president of Burkina Faso; examination of Pan-Africanism as a
movement, theory, ideology and uniting force for Africans and people of African descent
globally; evaluation of leadership and governance lessons drawn from Burkina Faso’s August
1983 revolution, its successes, challenges, and shortcomings, and lastly; it draws socioeconomic and developmental lessons from the Burkina Faso experience under Sankara’s
administration during the brief period from 1983 until his untimely assassination on 15 October
1987. The ousting of Blaise Compaore in October 2014 brought to the fore Sankara’s long
buried and suppressed legacy, and this is what, in part, led to me deciding to do a systematic
and thorough study of Sankara and the Burkina Faso Revolution. Two theories were used in
the study – Pan Africanism and Afrocentricity - because they together centre and privilege the
African people’s plight and agency and the urgent need for Africans to find solutions to their
own problems in the same way Sankara emphasised the need for an independent endogenous
development approach in Burkina Faso. Methodologically, a Mixed Methods Research (MMR)
approach was employed so as to exploit and leverage the strengths of each individual approach
and due to the complex nature of the phenomena studied. The study argues that the nerve centre
of developmental efforts in Burkina Faso was a self-propelled, self-centred, and endogenous
development model which placed the agency and responsibility, first and foremost, in the hands
of Burkinabe people themselves using their own internal resources to improve their lives.
Secondly, agrarian reforms were designed in such a way that they formed the bedrock of
economic self-reliance and industrial development in Burkina Faso. Lastly, overall findings of
the study indicate that the revolutionary cause and intervention in all critical sectors such as
education, health, and the economy were prioritised and the pace at which these sectors were
overhauled was crucial. Implication of these findings for development in Africa is that
development cannot be externally imported either through foreign direct investments or
through a straight-jacket policy transfer where African countries often borrow European
economic policies and try to implement them in drastically different contexts and historical
epochs. / Political Sciences / Ph. D. (Philosophy)
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:netd.ac.za/oai:union.ndltd.org:unisa/oai:uir.unisa.ac.za:10500/26595 |
| Date | 09 1900 |
| Creators | Leshoele, Moorosi |
| Contributors | Gumede, Vusi |
| Source Sets | South African National ETD Portal |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
| Format | 1 online resource (xix, 311 leaves) : color illustrations, color graphs, application/pdf |
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