Thomas Sankara
1949-1987 · Liberation · Prominent
Sankara was a Burkinabe army officer, a Marxist and a pan-Africanist who ran Burkina Faso for four years. Refuse your foreign debts together, he told the other African heads of state. At home he pushed development without outside help: mass literacy and vaccination campaigns, women's rights, an end to forced marriage, and a new name for the country, Land of Upright People. A coup killed him in 1987, aged 37.
Signature
The position Sankara is most identified with in the Profiler:
- Order
- strongly leans Horizontal
- Economy
- State Socialism / Developmentalism
Positions on the 10 axes the sources answer
- Order
- strongly leans Horizontal (94 on a 0–100 scale from Vertical to Horizontal)
- Truth
- leans Objective (84 on a 0–100 scale from Subjective to Objective)
- Opposition
- strongly leans Sublation (6 on a 0–100 scale from Sublation to Concurrence)
- Nature
- leans Harmony (71 on a 0–100 scale from Mastery to Harmony)
- Polity
- leans Illiberalism (12 on a 0–100 scale from Illiberalism to Liberalism)
- Ethics
- mildly leans Means (69 on a 0–100 scale from Ends to Means)
- War
- mildly between Pacifism and Militarism (56 on a 0–100 scale from Pacifism to Militarism)
- Ignorance
- strongly leans Bondage (3 on a 0–100 scale from Bondage to Bliss)
- Conviction
- mildly between Uncertain and Certain (58 on a 0–100 scale from Uncertain to Certain)
- Allegiance
- mildly leans Global (66 on a 0–100 scale from Local to Global)
10 of 20 axes are left blank: the sources do not answer them, or Sankara refused the framing. Nothing is imputed; a blank is not a middling score.
Foundational questions
- Government
- Vanguardism
What is your ideal form of government? - Highest Good
- Freedom
What is the highest good? - Good and Evil
- Dialectical
What is the fundamental nature of good and evil? - Knowledge
- Pragmatic Test
What is the ultimate foundation of knowledge? - Ethics Basis
- Virtue
What is the ultimate basis of ethics? - Time
- Linear Progressive
What is the fundamental shape of time? - Economy
- State Socialism / Developmentalism
What is the ideal organization of economic life? - Authority
- Collective Will
What is the legitimate source of authority? - Law
- Revolutionary
What is the ultimate source of legitimate law? - Death
- Living Memory
What happens at death? - Human Nature
- Socially Constructed
What is human nature? - Primary Bond
- Class
What is your primary bond and loyalty?