On the afternoon of October 15, 1987, Thomas Sankara walked into a meeting at the Conseil de l’Entente in Ouagadougou wearing his trademark red beret and fatigues. The building, a military headquarters tucked into the center of Burkina Faso’s capital, was familiar to him. He had led meetings there. Delivered speeches there. Reshaped a country from there. But this day was different. The air was tight with unease. Some of the soldiers avoided eye contact. A few of his comrades had failed to show. Outside, armed men were already moving into place. What happened next took only minutes. A burst of gunfire. Screams. Silence. When it cleared, Sankara and twelve of his companions were dead. Their bodies were quickly buried in unmarked graves. No one issued a statement. No one claimed responsibility. The revolution was over.
Sankara was thirty-seven years old when he was killed. In just four years as president, he had become one of Africa’s most striking leaders — not for how long he ruled, but for how differently. He rode a bicycle to work, refused to accept foreign aid with strings attached, and banned government officials from flying first class. He renamed the country from Upper Volta to Burkina Faso — “Land of Upright People.” He fought corruption, cut his own salary, and pushed women’s rights in a way few African leaders ever had. He was bold, sometimes reckless, always principled. And he made enemies.
To understand his death, you have to understand how isolated he had become — not just internationally, but among those he trusted most. Especially Blaise Compaoré.
Compaoré had been Sankara’s friend and closest ally. They had trained together in the military. They rose together through the ranks. When Sankara took power in a 1983 coup, it was Compaoré who helped make it happen. He was a constant presence at Sankara’s side, the quieter one, more reserved but equally ambitious. Over time, though, their paths diverged. Sankara grew sharper in his critique of global capitalism, denouncing the IMF, World Bank, and neocolonialism. He called out the debts imposed on Africa as modern chains. He accused Western powers of meddling, not helping. These views won him admiration abroad — and hostility in return.
France, the former colonial ruler of Burkina Faso, grew wary. President François Mitterrand once praised Sankara publicly, but diplomats quietly expressed concern. Sankara had blocked French firms from exploiting local resources. He had grown close to Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi and Cuba’s Fidel Castro. His pan-Africanism was radical and confrontational. And it was working. At home, he was loved by many — but he was also shaking the wrong tables.
Compaoré, meanwhile, began to see Sankara not as a comrade but as an obstacle. He had married into a powerful family with ties to elite business and military circles. He met regularly with foreign envoys. By late 1987, the distance between the two men was no longer just political — it was personal. People close to the presidency said they barely spoke in private. And others, including some in the military, had begun to whisper about Sankara’s rigidity, his refusal to compromise, his dangerous enemies abroad.
When Sankara walked into that meeting room in October, he likely knew something was coming. His security detail had been reduced. His requests for reinforcements had been ignored. Yet he stayed. Perhaps out of pride. Perhaps out of principle. What is certain is that he didn’t run.
The gunmen who killed him were part of a commando unit linked directly to Blaise Compaoré. Within hours, Compaoré appeared on state radio. He didn’t deny Sankara’s death. Instead, he claimed it had been necessary — a “tragic accident,” the result of a “fratricidal struggle.” He declared himself the new leader and immediately began undoing Sankara’s reforms. Land redistributed to peasants was returned to traditional chiefs. Programs focused on self-reliance were shut down. The revolutionary tribunals Sankara had used to fight corruption were abolished. Foreign aid resumed.
For the next 27 years, Compaoré ruled Burkina Faso without interruption. No investigation was opened into Sankara’s death. No monument was built. His name was banned from official discourse. Mentioning him in public became risky. But in private, he remained alive — in songs, in stories, in the eyes of young activists who remembered or learned what he had tried to build.
It wasn’t until 2014, when Compaoré was forced from power by a popular uprising, that the country began to ask again: who really killed Thomas Sankara? And why?
The official answers began slowly. First came the exhumation of Sankara’s body. Then DNA tests. Forensics confirmed what many already believed — he had been shot multiple times, likely at close range. Witnesses came forward. A few members of the hit squad confessed their roles. Some named names. Others stayed quiet.
In 2021, nearly 34 years after the assassination, a military court in Ouagadougou finally opened a trial. It was the first of its kind — not just for Burkina Faso, but for a continent long accustomed to coups without consequences. The courtroom was stark, the mood subdued. No cameras were allowed. Families of the victims sat in the front row. The man at the center of it all, Blaise Compaoré, was not there. He was living in exile in Ivory Coast, shielded by citizenship granted during his escape. Still, he was tried in absentia.
The court found Compaoré guilty of complicity in Sankara’s assassination. He was sentenced to life in prison, along with several others, including his former security chief. The judgment was historic. But the truth it uncovered was partial. Questions still remain about the full role of foreign powers — about the conversations held in back rooms, the assurances whispered between diplomats, the intelligence shared or withheld.
Documents declassified in France show that French intelligence services were closely monitoring Sankara in the months before his death. A parliamentary inquiry launched in Paris acknowledged that France bore some “political responsibility” for the environment that led to his killing, but stopped short of confirming direct involvement. No French official has been charged. No apology has been issued.
For many Burkinabé, justice came too late — and only in pieces. The men who pulled the trigger are old now. Some are dead. Compaoré remains in exile. And Sankara, whose face once adorned murals and classroom posters, has become both a martyr and a warning. A reminder of what can happen when a leader refuses to bend — not just to internal pressure, but to the weight of the world outside.
His grave has since been marked properly, his remains reburied with honor. People visit. Schoolchildren leave flowers. Young revolutionaries speak his name again in public, unafraid.
But the facts don’t settle easily. Sankara was killed because he refused to be bought. Because he made others uncomfortable. Because he believed a better Africa had to be built with clean hands, even if it meant fewer allies. The people who killed him — directly and indirectly — didn’t just want him gone. They wanted his memory erased. They failed.
Yet the question still lingers, quiet but sharp: if Sankara had lived, what kind of continent might we be living in now?
It is a question without comfort, an answer we will never fully know. What remains is the silence after the shots, the dust of a buried truth, and the voice of a man who once said, “While revolutionaries as individuals can be murdered, you cannot kill ideas.”
