On December 29, 2015 Mr. Roch Marc Kabore was sworn in as president of the West African nation of Burkina Faso. The urgency for good governance and self-rule has intensified in some African nations since the popular protest which ended Burkina Faso’s 27 years of dictatorship under President Blaise Compaore in October 2014. During and after the revolution, remaining constitutionally irreverent, African leaders took notice and began following every move of civil society groups to avoid similar surprises in their own countries.
African tyrants purposefully ignore lessons from past and recent history. Still, they should not disregard the advice of the similarly minded former dictator of what is now the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Mr. Joseph Désiré Mobutu Sese Seko. At the United Nations meeting on October 4, 1973, he cried out for an end to apartheid in South Africa saying: “A fruit falls when it is ripe. But before the hurricane or the storm of history, ripe or not, it falls anyway”
Click here to download “A Journey of a Nation from Tyranny to Democracy“, a reflection and a short summary of how the people of Burkina Faso removed a dictator from power after 27 years of oppression.
Picture Credit: www.lefaso.net
