Marco Werman: After 28 years, a nation is free at last to mourn the assassinated ‘Che of Africa’

"We've chased out all the bad guys." 

I was on the radio yesterday in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso. Not my voice. I was being talked about by radio host Mustapha Thiombiano who, like me, was recalling this day 28 years ago.

Twenty-eight years ago on that day, I was sitting in a soundproof radio studio in the center of Ouagadougou, the capital of the West African nation. I was interviewing a man named Mustapha Thiombiano. He had just opened Horizon FM, Africa's first private radio station. In a country with no real political opposition, it was a risky move for the then-president, Captain Thomas Sankara, to allow Thiombiano to broadcast, even if it was a mostly-music station.

Around 4:30 p.m., we were done speaking, and Thiombiano and I emerged from the cool of the studio into his main office.  The windows were open, and though it was near Ouagadougou's central market, there was an unusual hubbub and noise. Lots of shouting, moped horns, tires screeching. Thiombiano seemed disturbed, agitated, and got on the phone. Less than half a minute later, he slammed down the receiver.  "There's been a coup. I think Sankara may be killed. You better go."

Out in the streets, unsure where to go, I got on my moped and verged into a frantic crush of traffic fleeing the center of the city: red lights disobeyed by everyone, near collisions in the late afternoon dust and a sense of dread in the eyes of the drivers who, despite four other coups d'etat in the former Upper Volta since independence, had never known a bloody one or an assassinated president.

It would be confirmed the next morning that Sankara was dead. He and his comrades had been ambushed during a cabinet meeting only about ten blocks away. A grenade thrown in their room, flushing them outside where they were machine-gunned on the lawn. Their bodies were hauled to a potter's field on the edge of the city.

Just this week, Sankara's body was exhumed and we now wait for DNA tests to confirm that it is indeed his. Though the bullet holes in the bones leave little doubt.

It was a grim and discouraging moment in the history of Burkina Faso. This man described as "the Che of Africa" brought a lot of hope and pride to his people. As Mustapha Thiombiano told me yesterday, "Everybody misses him, they want him back. But you can't really bring back a dead person." Still, he and a lot of other Burkinabe believe that those DNA tests will confirm some bigger narrative about the 1987 coup. 

"The truth is coming," said Thiombiano.

However, this particular week is filled with elation for many of the natio's residents. It is the first year that people can at last publicly mourn him, and speak openly about Sankara, he who led with tough love. That's because last October, the man who overthrew Sankara, his former best friend and second in command, Blaise Compaore, was himself overthrown by an army propelled by angry young citizens. Compaore had been in charge for 27 years and wanted more. An interim government came into the void, but it too faced an army mutiny last month by one of Compaore's former lieutenants, an army major named Gilbert Diendere. His rule collapsed after a few weeks, and a military judge said today that he faces crimes against humanity for his deadly, failed power grab.

For now, things seem to be back in the hands of an interim government until elections are held next month.

When I reached Mustapha Thiombiano today in Ouagadougou, he was driving around town, just like I remember him in his old Suzuki, and he said everyone there is relaxed.  "Everything is good, people are happy. We finally got rid of those motherf*****s!" he said, still fully in command of his American slang, which he picked up years ago after several sojourns in the US. "So everybody is happy about that."

He also told me that Sankara's widow, Mariam, has come back to Ouagadougou, which may be the best litmus test of how the ejection of Compaore from the country has mellowed the mood. It used to be unwise to pay respects to the Sankara grave in that potter's field on the anniversary of the coup. There were suspicions that spies would take note of who was still a Sankara sympathizer.

Today, no, said Thiombiano. "You can say whatever you want to say now. You can say it loud." Before during the Compaore days, you'd have to look around you to see who was listening, he said. 

"It's not like that anymore. Many kids went out to the cemetery. It was like a festival,"

"You should have been here today."

I wish I had been.