FrancAfrique,
26 Years After
Sankara Was
Killed, French
Pen on DRC,
Mali
& CAR
By
Matthew
Russell Lee
UNITED
NATIONS,
October 15 --
Twenty six
years ago
today, Thomas
Sankara was
overthrown and
killed in a
coup led by
Blaise
Compaore, who
still
holds on as
Burkina Faso's
president.
It
was under
Sankara that
the country's
name change
from "Upper
Volta" to
Burkina Faso,
land of the
upright.
History
records two
meetings of
Sankara and
France's
Francois
Mitterand. At
the Vittel
conference,
Mitterand
stared
stony-faced
ahead as
Sankara spoke
of
seeking
foreign
relations with
countries
beyond France.
And
later, after
South African
apartheid
leader Pieter
Botha had
visited
France,
Sankara
criticized
Mitterand to
his face in
Ouagadougou,
after
Mitterand
drove through
the streets
waving at the
crowd. Soon
the Compaore
coup would
kill Sankara,
and France and
Boigny would
congratulate
Compaore. The
rest is
history.
How
different is
it, really,
when Francois
Hollande is
driven through
Bamako, or now
Laurent Fabius
through
Bangui? How
much time has
been
wasted, how much
of
FrancAfrique
under-developed
and by
design?
Sure, Sankara
had some idea
that didn't
work. But
could the
Central
African
Republic be
any worse off
than it has
been under
France?
And
new
colonies, too:
France has
laid claim to
the Democratic
Republic
of the Congo,
controlling
the Security
Council's
recent trip
there,
down
to which media
could go on the "UN" plane.
France
for over
sixteen years
has controlled
UN
Peacekeeping,
now most
outrageously
through Herve
Ladsous, twice
spurned, who
was France's
Ambassador to
the UN during
the Rwanda
genocide,
arguing for
the
escape of genocidaires
into Eastern
Congo.
Consider
that
on the
Security
Council France
"holds the
pen," drafts
first and thus
controls, the
following
files:
Burundi,
Central
African
Republic, Cote
d'Ivoire,
Democratic
Republic of
the Congo,
Great Lakes,
Mali. Plus
ca change.
What
has been
accomplished,
for
example for
CAR? What
would Thomas
Sankara say?
On this day,
and
going forward,
we must ask.
Watch this
site.
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