footnote 2 Ouagadougou, the largest city, has a population of one and a half million. Eighty per cent of government expenditure is covered by international aid. Apart from gold and agricultural land, it has relatively few exploitable resources, and remains one of the world’s poorest states. With a population of seventeen and a half million as of 2014, Burkina Faso covers 275,000 landlocked kilometres, and is surrounded by six West African countries: Mali, Niger, Benin, Togo, Ghana and Ivory Coast. Finally, what are the prospects for Burkinabè politics now, after an election in 2015 which suggested no real rupture with the past? I will place this moment of popular resistance in context by giving a historical account of the Compaoré regime and the ways in which it sucked virtually all meaning from the procedural architecture of Burkinabè democracy, and by tracing the alternative traditions of dissent and protest on which the recent upheaval drew. Many concerns of the protagonists echoed those of an earlier anti-colonial period in African intellectual history. The images of the revolt against Compaoré that reached an international audience showed a youthful popular uprising that articulated a palpable scepticism towards the existing, institutionalized modes of democracy in Burkina Faso, seeking to nurture alternative forms of participatory citizenship. The text that follows sets out to make sense of these events against the backdrop of modern Burkinabè history, with particular attention to the meaning attached to the language of ‘democratization’ today. Although they have not attracted anything like the same attention in the Western media, the Burkinabè protests bear comparison with the overthrow of Ben Ali in Tunisia and Mubarak in Egypt-not just in their scale and militancy, but in their equivocal outcome: some of the old regime’s functionaries could soon be found at the head of Burkina Faso’s post-Compaoré government. The mobilization against Compaoré was one of the most important popular movements in Africa since the end of the Cold War, and its regional reverberations are likely to be felt for years to come. After 27 years in power, Compaoré admitted defeat around noon on 31 October 2014. Compaoré’s regime came to an end that day. Ordinary citizens sat in the chairs of the National Assembly. Eventually, on the 30th, a huge crowd-the opposition claimed it was a million strong-marched on the parliament building and breached its security cordon.

Thousands marched, holding wooden cooking spatulas and megaphones in the air. Sérémé and her colleague Juliette Kongo organized a major women’s protest in the capital Ouagadougou on 27 October. As well as Balai Citoyen, other social movements mobilized, among them the Mouvement Ça Suffit (‘That’s Enough’), along with trade unionists and established opposition politicians such as Zéphirin Diabré and Saran Sérémé, who had formerly been members of Compaoré’s ruling party. Balai was founded by prominent musicians: Smockey, a rapper, and the reggae artist Sams’K Le Jah, whose music helped to energize the mainly young crowd-60 per cent of Burkinabès are under 24. Many demonstrators were injured at least thirty were killed.Ī group called Balai Citoyen (‘Citizens’ Broom’) played a key role in the protests. Compaoré clung on, sometimes defiant, sometimes pleading: suggesting reforms, appealing for stability, issuing reminders about the importance of the rule of law. Others simply read: ‘Blaise, Get Out.’ Pressure had been building all year among citizens of the impoverished West African state, and by October the mood had hardened. footnote 1 Many of their placards displayed photographs of Thomas Sankara, Compaoré’s revolutionary predecessor. I n late October 2014, hundreds of thousands of people poured onto the streets of Burkina Faso, incensed by Blaise Compaoré’s bid to change the constitution and seek a fifth presidential term.

Broom standing up on its own 2016