Vol. 71/No. 42      November 12, 2007

Thomas Sankara led the revolution that took place in the West African country of Burkina Faso from 1983 to 1987. Under his leadership, workers and peasants established a popular revolutionary government, which took steps to fight the hunger, illiteracy, and economic devastation imposed by imperialist domination, as well as the millennia-old oppression of women.

Revolutionary Burkina Faso extended a hand of internationalist solidarity to people engaged in struggle against imperialism, especially in Palestine, Nicaragua, and Western Sahara. Sankara championed the struggle against the apartheid regime in South Africa and established fraternal ties with revolutionary Cuba. He was assassinated in an October 1987 coup that overthrew the revolutionary government.

Seven people purchased the new book at an October 13 commemoration of Sankara’s assassination that drew 55 people in Toronto, and 25 people did so at a similar event two days later in Montreal attended by 200 people. Another dozen people left their names to buy the book later. Fifteen other Pathfinder books and pamphlets and five subscriptions to the Militant were also sold at these events.

The publication of Thomas Sankara parle was mentioned twice in a front-page article in the October 15 Le Devoir, a Montreal daily. The article reported on the events in Ouagadougou, the capital of Burkina Faso, surrounding the 20th anniversary commemoration of Sankara’s assassination and announced the night’s event in Montreal.

Before the Montreal event, the book’s editor, Michel Prairie, was interviewed for the weekly Global TV program “Afromonde.” This resulted in a five-minute presentation of Thomas Sankara parle by columnist Nadine Mbemba on the October 20 broadcast.

That evening Prairie was interviewed live for 30 minutes on the book and the legacy of the Burkina Faso revolution for a program called “Giramundo,” broadcast by community radio station CKIA from Quebec City.

So far five bookstores have ordered 13 copies of the book, most of them in French-speaking Quebec. One bookstore in Quebec City, in addition to ordering four copies of Thomas Sankara parle, ordered 20 other Pathfinder titles in French and English.

Opportunities for selling the book and other Pathfinder titles remain significant in the coming period. A November 9-10 conference in Toronto, with participants from Canada and the United States, will discuss the campaign to free five Cuban revolutionaries jailed in the United States for almost a decade because of their defense of the Cuban Revolution.

In mid-November Pathfinder will have a booth at the annual Montreal Book Fair, which typically draws more than 100,000 people, and at the conference of the Middle East Studies Association, also in Montreal.
 

A major bookstore in Paris, the Forum outlet of the FNAC chain, set up a special display on Africa featuring Thomas Sankara parle and other pamphlets by the revolutionary leader. Pathfinder supporters have thus far met with buyers in 27 bookstores in five cities, and telephoned buyers in another 25 stores in various cities.

The October issue of Le Monde Diplomatique published excerpts of Sankara’s 1984 address, “Freedom can be won only through struggle,” published in the Pathfinder book. And a large color ad placed in the October 16 issue of the Communist Party daily L’Humanité has led to 11 orders of the book, including one from Guadeloupe, a French colony in the Caribbean. Livres hebdo, the main book trade review in France, included the new title in the listings of its October 12 issue.

At two events featuring films and talks about Sankara, sales were brisk. On October 13 in the city of Clermont-Ferrand, at a day of “Solidarity with African peasants,” which drew 200 people, 13 copies of the new book sold along with 18 other books and pamphlets. A special evening on Sankara in Paris October 15, attended by 150, brought sales of 12 new books and 6 Sankara pamphlets.

Six workers at the Peugeot auto plant in the Paris suburb of Poissy have purchased the new book so far. One is Oumar Ndiath, 56, originally from Senegal. He has been showing Thomas Sankara parle and selling it to other West African immigrants. Another person who bought the title traveled to Burkina Faso in October and offered it to a friend there, a supporter of Sankara’s political ideas. This person in turn spent the next two evenings reading aloud from the new book with invited friends in his home. On his return to France, the original purchaser enthusiastically called up Pathfinder supporters to order more copies, saying “Keep up the good work!”  
 
 
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