Word: sankara
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...leaders, Ghana's Flight Lieut. Jerry Rawlings, 37, and Burkina Faso's Paratroop Captain Thomas Sankara, 35, are striving to reverse years of economic decline, corruption and injustice. In this, they represent a large improvement over men who have given black African leadership the image of brutality and profligacy. Idi Amin, for instance, ruled Uganda with blood and bluster from 1971 to 1979, and Jean-Bedel Bokassa, the self-proclaimed "Emperor" of the Central African Republic, held his country in terror between 1966 and 1979, flogging and mutilating his opponents...
...contrast, Rawlings and Sankara lead by example and exhortation. Says the Rev. Samuel Batsa, president of the Accra-based National Union of Catholic Diocesan Priests: "The smiles have come back here in Ghana after a long, long time." Rawlings, the Roman Catholic son of a Scottish father and Ghanaian mother, seized power in 1979, then relinquished it four months later to an elected government. He took control again in 1981, accusing the government of corruption: "There is no justice in this society, and so long as there is no justice, let there be no peace." Since then, Rawlings has moderated...
...countries in Africa, with a per capita income of $210 a year. Its 6.7 million people have been suffering from recurring drought that has caused widespread hardship and political instability. This month Upper Volta shed the name that the French bequeathed along with independence 24 years ago. President Thomas Sankara, 34, who seized power last year, decreed that his country would hence forth be known as Burkina Faso...
...series that has kept cartographers busy as independent African nations shed their colonial past. The new name was derived from two of the country's main languages. In More, spoken by some 3 million people, burkina means "ancestral home" faso means "those who are dignified" in Dioula. Sankara also redesigned the flag and commissioned a national anthem that can be performed with traditional instruments. "Our new name represents a psychological and spiritual change,"explains Minister of Environment and Tourism Basile Guisso. "It will help revolutionize the way people think and help them deal with the modern world...
...expressed open admiration for Gaddafi overthrew the pro-Western government of President Jean-Baptiste Ouédraogo in nearby Upper Volta. Street fighting in the capital city of Ouagadougou left five dead and 15 wounded. Ouédraogo was replaced by a "National Council of Revolution" headed by Thomas Sankara, 35, a brash, charismatic army captain. In the past, Libya has also made trouble by attempting to undermine pro-Western governments in Niger, Senegal and Tunisia...