![]() ![]() ![]() Although the French had taken governmental control over Burkina, the Mossi chiefs still had power to do pretty much as they pleased in the villages.My grandfather was chief when i was young and my uncle is now chief. One of the major changes he has made was take power away from the chiefs of the Mossi kingdom. He had a vision of Burkina as a place where people would want to live and began making radical changes that excited the younger generations and angered many elders. During the four years that Sankara was President, he headed what was truly a post-colonial movement in Burkina. In 1984 Upper Volta's name changed to Burkina Faso, a phrase originated from Moore language-"burkindi," meaning integrated and "faso," meaning coutry in Bambara.We also adopted a new flag with red to represent the blood of the people lost during the colonization, green to represent the beauty of the land and yellow star in the middle to represent hope for the people of Burkina. With Sankara as President, the country underwent a social revolution. Blaise Compaore helped get Sankara released from jail and the two organized a millitary coup d'etat in August of 1983. Sankara was arrested because he talked about colonial oppression and that the people need to find a way to separate from imperialistic countries.Another reason of Sankara's arrest is that he was very popular with the mass-When Sankara would finish his opening speech and hand the micriphone over to the President for the main address, the crowd who had been hanging on Sankara's ever word would start to leave or would stop paying attention. In 1983, President Jean-baptiste Ouedraogo arrested the radical socialist Prime Minister, Capitain Thomas Sankara. From 1960 through 1982 there were a series of presidents overthrown by military coups. Upper Volta won independence on August 5th,1960 from French, who had been rulling the new country through Mossi kingdom, who still had authority over the people, especially those in the villages. I can't help but wonder if there is also a lingering distrust of schools because of the traumatic experience caused by the forced Catholic schooling of children during colonization. However, during colonization these pits were used to hide children from the Catholic nuns who came and basically kidnapped village children to put them in Catholic schools in order to "save" them.Currently,less than half of school aged children are enrolled in school even though public school is free and required for all up to age seven.This is do to the cost of sending a child to school who could be earning money for the family. Thes pits were originally dug for the women to have a cool place to sit in a circle and work on their weaving. In the village of Tengrela (South-West of Burkina Faso) where I grew up, there are pits dug into the ground, about five feet deep and ten feet wide with the opening just wide enough for one adultto climb down a ladder. Over the next thirty years, the French moved the boundaries of Upper Volta and the surrounding territories several times before establishing the current borders in 1947 (with the exception of one piece that was given to Mali, but subsequently taken by military action by Burkina Faso in 1985).This short history of sixty years of colonial oppression does not do justice to the experience of the people who lived under French rule, and I do have one colonial story about it. After five years of Mossi resistance, the French finally gained control of the capital, Ouagadougou, in 1901 and established the colony of Upper Vlolta in 1919. In fact, Burkina's history in just the past fifty years since gaining independance from France is full of coups, assassinations, covert military action and mixed relations with other West African countries.īefore getting into Burkina's history since the independence, I should offer a brief chronology of its history before and during French colonial rule.īefore French invasion in 1896, the area including Burkina Faso was under the Mossi kingdom, which originated in present day Ghana and moved into other areas as its empire grew over the eight hundred years of its rule. It is true that Burkina is not known for its millitary force, but neither is it a benign country without any reason to worry about its security. BURKINA FASO Presented by: Gerald Horacek and Issa Touīrukina Faso has a violent and fascinating history that can only be fully grasped if one has an understanding of the effects of colonization and post-colonization. ![]()
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