Word: sankara
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...mark the first anniversary of the military coup that brought him to power in 1983, Captain Thomas Sankara changed the name of his landlocked West African country (pop. 7.3 million) from Upper Volta to Burkina Faso, which in the local Mossi and Dioula languages means "Land of Upright Men." The old moniker was no longer appropriate, said Sankara, because it was chosen not by Africans but by white French colonists. Last week Sankara, 37, a popular and charismatic leader who was every inch an upright man, was himself replaced. He was ousted and killed in a bloody rebellion...
...coup was announced over national radio following an outbreak of gunfire near the presidential palace in Ouagadougou, the capital. Government officials said Sankara was shot to death and hastily buried, along with a dozen others killed in the coup, in a mass grave on the capital's outskirts. Members of the murdered President's family watched the burial in tears. A populist who religiously consulted with village leaders before embarking on new policies, Sankara made personal probity a point of honor in a country that has had more than one corrupt leader since winning independence in 1960. He boasted that...
...leader evidently shaped his regime into more of a one-man show than his fellow coup leaders found tolerable. Following Sankara's execution, Radio Ouagadougou accused him of having built up a "concentration of power" and of harboring the "ambitions of a madman." In seizing power last week, Compaore, 36, the Minister of State and Justice, used the same special commando unit he placed at Sankara's disposal in 1983. Western diplomats in Burkina Faso expect him to be a less flamboyant leader than Sankara but to continue most of his policies. Despite the death of their author, the national...
...president, he called himself a "progressive" among Third World leaders and his speeches reiterated the themes of social justice, integrity and austerity. Sankara is knowledgable in the teachings of Marx, Lenin and Mao, and tried to build a collaboration between soldiers and peasant farmers...
...first anniversary of his coup, Sankara changed his country's name from Upper Volta to Burkina Faso, which was translated as "Land of the Upright...