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Vol. 82/No. 11 March 19, 2018
(Books of the Month column)
Sankara: ‘The foreign debt is unjust, should not be repaid’
Below is an excerpt from Thomas Sankara Speaks, one of Pathfinder’s
Books of the Month for March. Sankara led the revolution in Burkina Faso
from 1983 until his assassination in 1987. Workers and peasants in this
West African country established a popular revolutionary government that
began to fight the hunger, illiteracy and economic backwardness imposed
by imperialist domination, and the oppression of women inherited from
millennia of class society. This excerpt is from “Dare to Invent the
Future,” a series of interviews conducted in the capital Ouagadougou in
1985 by Swiss journalist Jean-Philippe Rapp. Copyright © 1988, 2007 by
Pathfinder Press. Reprinted by permission.
RAPP: A related question is that of the foreign debt. At the conference
of the Organization of African Unity (OAU) in Addis Ababa, the
participants were quite divided on how to deal with the question of
paying back this debt.
SANKARA: As far as we’re concerned, we say very clearly: the foreign
debt should not be repaid. It’s unjust. It’s like paying war reparations
twice over. Where does this debt come from, anyhow? It comes from needs
imposed on us by other countries. Did we need to build mansions or to
tell doctors they would receive a fabulous salary at the end of the
month? Or foster the mentality of overpaid men among our officers? We
were coerced into running up very heavy debts, and the economic
enterprises made possible by these loans have not always run smoothly.
We entered into weighty financial commitments on their account — often
suggested, proposed, organized, and set in place by the same people who
lent us the money.
They have quite a system. First come the members of the assault squad,
who know exactly what they are going to propose. Then they bring out the
heavy artillery, and the price keeps going up. These are wonderful
investments for the investors. They don’t put their money in their own
banks because at home the returns aren’t good. They have to create the
need for capital elsewhere and make others pay.
Do we really need to smoke this or that brand of cigarette? They’ve
convinced us, “If you smoke such-and-such brand you’ll be the most
powerful man on earth, capable of seducing any woman.” So we took up
smoking, and got cancer as a bonus. The most privileged among us have
gone to Europe to be treated. And all to give a second wind to your
tobacco market.
RAPP: But does refusing to pay the debt make any sense if only one or
two countries do it?
SANKARA: The pressure to pay the debt does not come from the isolated
usury of a single banker. It comes from an entire organized system, so
that in the event of nonpayment, they can detain your planes at an
airport or refuse to send you an absolutely indispensable spare part. So
deciding not to pay the debt requires we form a united front. All the
countries should act together — on the condition, of course, that each
one of us is open to looking critically at the way we ourselves manage
these funds. People who have contracted huge debts because of their own
lavish personal expenses don’t deserve our support. We said this clearly
in the message we delivered to the OAU [Organization of African Unity]:
“Either we resist collectively and refuse categorically to repay the
debt or, if we don’t, we’ll have to go off to die alone, one by one.”
RAPP: But this point of view was not unanimous?
SANKARA: Though everyone understands the logic behind such a legitimate
refusal to pay, each of us thinks he’s smarter, more cunning than the
other. A particular government will skirt the need for collective action
to go and see the moneylenders. This country is then immediately
portrayed as the best organized, the most modern, the most respectful of
written agreements. They’re given more loans, so further conditions can
be imposed. When the discontent spills out into the streets, they
suggest sending in the “heavies” to break those who won’t fall into line
— and to put someone of their choice on the throne.
RAPP: Aren’t you afraid of a violent public reaction against your
internal economic measures?
SANKARA: The general support we’re finding as we impose measures that
are not in themselves very popular shows the nature of our revolution.
It’s a revolution directed not against any people or any country, but
rather one that’s aimed at restoring the dignity of the Burkinabè
people, at allowing them to achieve happiness as they define it.
In other countries happiness and development are defined by ratios — so
many hundred pounds of steel per inhabitant, so many tons of cement, so
many telephone lines. We have different values. We’re not the least bit
embarrassed to say we are a poor country. Within international
organizations we’re not at all afraid to get up and speak and to block
discussions in order to gain a reduction of a dollar or two in the dues
or contributions countries must pay. We know this irritates a good many
delegations that are capable of throwing thousands, if not millions, of
dollars out the window.
When we receive a foreign ambassador who has come to present his
credentials, we no longer do so in this presidential office. We take him
out into the bush, with the peasants. He travels on our chaotic roads
and endures dust and thirst. After that we can receive him, explaining,
“Mr. Ambassador, your Excellency, you have just seen Burkina Faso as it
really is. This is the country you must deal with, not those of us who
work in comfortable offices.”
We have a wise and experienced people capable of shaping a certain way
of life. While elsewhere people die from being too well-fed, here we die
from not having enough food. Between these two extremes there is a way
of life to be discovered if each of us meets the other halfway.
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