Save Our Trees, Our Environment, Our Lives
By Thomas Sankara
INTRODUCTION:
Thomas Sankara was an anti-imperialist and revolutionary leader who led a Revolution in Burkina
Faso in the 1980s, as the people of that West African country struggled to overcome poverty, hunger,
illiteracy, and all the ills of underdevelopment and oppression. He came to power as president of
Burkina Faso (formerly Upper Volta) in August 1983. He was murdered in a counterrevolutionary
coup d’état on October 1987, organized by his former colleague Blaise Compaoré in order to bring
back the French imperialist order to the country.
During his presidency, and under his leadership, Burkina Faso became an independent nation. He
left an example of revolutionary change in a semi-colonial country through progressing the rights
of women, the working class and peasantry, and youth and elderly. Until his last day in office
he organized and led popular, grassroots campaigns against poverty, for literacy, and especially
against corruption. His ideas and leadership example continue to inspire millions of people in
Africa and all around the world to seek an end to the misery and injustice created by capitalism
and imperialism.
“As for our relationship with the political community, what relations would you have
liked us to have had? We explained face to face, directly with the leaders, the former
leaders of the old political parties because, for us, these parties do not exist any more,
they were dissolved. And that is very clear. The relationship that we have with them is
simply the relationship we have with voltaic citizens, or, if they want it, the relationship
between revolutionaries, if they want to become revolutionaries. Apart from that, there
remains nothing any more but the relationship between revolutionaries and counterrevolutionaries.”
“I would like to leave behind me the conviction that if we maintain a certain amount of
caution and organization we deserve victory. You cannot carry out fundamental change
without a certain amount of madness. In this case, it comes from nonconformity, the
courage to turn your back on the old formulas, the courage to invent the future. It took
the madmen of yesterday for us to be able to act with extreme clarity today. I want to
be one of those madmen. We must dare to invent the future.”
Ladies and gentlemen:
I say all this not to shower unrestrained and unending praise on the modest, revolutionary
experience of my people with regard to the defense of the forest and the trees, but rather
to speak as explicitly as possible about the profound changes occurring in relations
between man and tree in Burkina Faso. I would like to depict for you as accurately as
possible the deep and sincere love that has been born and is developing between the
Burkinabè man and the trees in my country.
In doing this, we believe we are applying our theoretical conceptions concretely to
the specific ways and means of the Sahel reality, in the search for solutions to present
and future dangers attacking trees the world over. Our efforts and those of all who
are gathered here, the experience accumulated by yourselves and by us, will surely
guarantee us victory after victory in the struggle to save our trees, our environment, in
short, our lives.
Excellencies; Ladies and gentlemen:
I come to you in the hope that you are taking up a battle from which we cannot be absent,
since we are under daily attack and believe that the miracle of greenery can rise up out
of the courage to say what must be said. I have come to join with you in deploring the
harshness of nature. But I have also come to denounce the one whose selfishness is the
source of his neighbor’s misfortune. Colonialism has pillaged our forests without the
least thought of replenishing them for our
tomorrows.
The unpunished destruction of the
biosphere by savage and murderous
forays on the land and in the air continues.
Words will never adequately describe
to what extent all these fume-belching
vehicles spread death. Those who have
the technological means to find the
culprits have no interest in doing so, and
those who have an interest in doing so
lack the necessary technological means.
They have only their intuition and their
firm conviction.
We are not against progress, but we
want progress that is not carried out
anarchically and with criminal neglect
for other people’s rights. We therefore
wish to affirm that the battle against the
encroachment of the desert is a battle to
establish a balance between man, nature,
and society. As such, it is a battle that is
above all political, one whose outcome is
not determined by fate.
The establishment in Burkina of a
Ministry of Water, in conjunction with
our Ministry of the Environment and
Tourism, demonstrates our desire to place
our problems clearly on the table so that
we can find a way to resolve them. We
have to fight to find the financial means
to exploit our existing water resources
— that is to finance drilling operations,
reservoirs, and dams. This is the place
to denounce the one-sided contracts
and draconian conditions imposed by
banks and other financial institutions
that preclude our projects in this area.
These prohibitive conditions bring on
traumatizing indebtedness robbing us of
all meaningful freedom of action.
Neither fallacious Malthusian arguments
— and I assert that Africa remains
an underpopulated continent — nor
those vacation resorts pompously and
demagogically called “reforestation
operations” provide a solution. We
are backed up against the wall in our
destitution like bald and mangy dogs
whose lamentations and cries disturb
the quiet peace of the manufacturers and
merchants of misery.
This is why Burkina has proposed and
continues to propose that at least 1 percent
of the colossal sums of money sacrificed
to the search for cohabitation with other
planets be used by way of compensation to
finance the fight to save our trees and life.
While we have not abandoned hope that
a dialogue with the Martians could result
in the reconquest of Eden, we believe
that in the meantime, as earthlings, we
also have the right to reject an alternative
limited to a simple choice between hell or
purgatory.
Explained in this way, our struggle to
defend the trees and the forest is first
and foremost a democratic struggle that
must be waged by the people. The sterile
and expensive excitement of a handful
of engineers and forestry experts will
accomplish nothing! Nor can the tender
consciences of a multitude of forums and
institutions — sincere and praiseworthy
though they may be — make the Sahel
green again, when we lack the funds
to drill wells for drinking water just a
hundred meters deep, and money abounds
to drill oil wells three thousand meters
deep!
As Karl Marx said, those who live in a
palace do not think about the same things,
nor in the same way, as those who live in
a hut. This struggle to defend the trees
and the forest is above all a struggle
against imperialism. Imperialism is the
pyromaniac setting fire to our forests and
savannah.
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