Thomas Sankara et la condition féminine: un discours révolutionnaire?

1.2 ARGUMENTS.

In its speeches Thomas Sankara makes use of multiple arguments of a sociocultural, ideological and political nature

1.2.1. Sociocultural arguments

The president of CNR makes a point of defining his matter before giving the a report on the places and proposing solutions.

If the Women's Liberation is essential like « a requirement of the future », Sankara specifies that the emancipation is not a mechanical equality between the man and the woman. She is opposed to the adoption of male practices like that to drink and smoke. The acquisition of diplomas by the women automatically does not lead them to the ridge of the emancipation^111(*) the true emancipation is that which make the woman worthy, responsible and actress for a social qualitative change. To speak about war of sexes, according to Sankara, indicates of a bad interpretation of feminism. « (...) they are a war clans and classes to be carried out together in the complementarity »^112(*), T- it affirms. Only the behavior of the men caused it against direction : « (...) it should be admitted that it is well the attitude of the men which makes possible such an obliteration of the significances and authorizes by-there all the semantic audacities of feminism (...)^113(*) «.

Sankara is brought to affirm that the words are not innocent, that they translate a mentality, a state of mind. The fight of the women against the machism wants to be a right combat. The lamentable situation that the women in the company know, is inherent in the seizure of power by the men. The machism made of the woman a being to do everything. The woman constitutes the Third World persecuted beside the man and of the child. Occupying the third rank in the company, the woman is excluded by the laws in the education and personal freedom, fields of application. She undergoes the exploitation of classes and that of sexes. According to Sankara, the man, the sovereign and the Master, egoist and lazy, illustrate themselves as a fine strategist to monopolize greater profit, without the least effort, in the division of the tasks according to the sex. Sankara condemns theology and philosophy for their prejudices anti-feminists. Indeed, doesn't the genesis refuse a gasoline with the woman? The woman contrary to the man, is not with the image of God. As for Plato, it doubts like the woman: animal or human. Aristote is clear in its assertion, the women are « monsters ». The leader of the revolution burkinabé opposes these thinkers and recognizes a humanity with the woman. He deplores the type of education exempted with the girl who makes of her an eternal slave. « With future the woman, the company, like only one man and it is the place well there to say it strikes, inculcates standards without exit. Psychic corsets called virtues create in it a spirit of personal alienation, develop in this child the concern and the predisposition to alliances. »^114(*) The traditional practices contribute to consolidate this situation: « The rites and the obligations of tender helping, our sisters grow, increasingly exploited (...) »^115(*). Sankara supports that the defects which are in the women come from education: a conditioning with the tender, the eternal dependence. In spite of the importance of the woman in the company, it is réifiée:

« woman-source of life but woman as an object. Domestic servile mother but. Feeder woman but woman-alibi. Taillable with the fields and corvéable with the household, however appearing without face and voice. Woman-hinge, woman-confluence but woman in chain, woman-shade in the male shade. »^116(*)

In this speech of an exemplary rhythmic swinging marrying the antithesis, Sankara opposes two realities, the woman essential with the correct operation of the company in its role of reproductive, central pivot in the social structure and the woman denied, chosifiée, returned to the state of shade. The poetic character of these creations of words around the woman term, such as woman source of life, woman-alibi, woman-hinge, woman-shade could not cover with an modest veil the political denunciation made by Sankara.

The woman does not even have her body. Forced by maternity and the esthetic forms, the woman is unable to be carried out and of « to forge a musculature known as of man »^117(*). Sankara doubts the advantage of the guns of coquettery which the company imposes to the women. It is the case of the excision, scarifications, cuttings of teeth, the perforations of lips which carry damage to the physical integrity of this one.

The woman undergoes the oppression of the traditions hard. The unmarried mother is scorned. The sterile woman is marked. The excision makes devastations. The woman is victim of the male emigration which holds it in loneliness, if it is not in the celibacy.

Sankara, in the same dash, condemns the man, more or less progressist, who devotes himself to adultery by attending prostitutes. Its wages are intended for the maintenance with its mistresses. It is happy to have misused the women and holds of the matter devaluing on them: « meanly materialists, liars, cancanières, intrigantes, jealous. »^118(*)

According to the revolutionary leader, male inconsistency the woman answers by another made alienation of inaccuracies and petty remarks. « Reports, chatterings, sets of scrap, side glances and envieux follow-ups of scandalmongering on the coquettery of the others and their private life »^119(*) They are plunged in the futility and the lapse of memory which appear as weapons against a multiform suffering. The lapse of memory becomes one « antidote with the sorrow, an attenuation of the rigors of the existence, a vital protection »^120(*) Sankara precise: « The same attitudes are found in the males placed under the same conditions »^121(*) is to say that the same causes would involve the same effects. It thus is not of female nature, but well about a social determinism which carries out the woman to adopt certain attitudes.

Sankara calls with the introduction of a new company in which the men and the women will enjoy the same social rights. « To modify in-depth the image which they are made of themselves » must be the way to define the new relationship between the men and the women. Triumph of the reign of freedom and the equality, end of « all the systems of hypocrisy which consolidate the cynical exploitation of the woman »^122(*), the abolition of the system of slavery which the woman undergoes cannot be reached without the upheaval of the relations of being able between the man and the woman. Conscious that the women constitute 52% of the population, Thomas Sankara sighs: « that never my eyes do not see a company, that never my steps do not transport me in a company where the half of the people is maintained in silence »^123(*).

It notes nevertheless that the transformation of mentalities is moving. The women adopted a new language and denounce their enemies: the male, the culture imperialist and feudality. They are « ready maintaining to release itself »^124(*) and their weapons for the decisive combat sharpen.

* ¹¹¹ GAKUNZI (D), COp cit., p 64.

* ¹¹²) GAKUNZI (D), COp cit., p. 226.

* ¹¹³ GAKUNZI (D), COp cit.. pp. 226-227

* ¹¹⁴ GAKUNZI (D), COp cit., p 230

* ¹¹⁵ Ibid, p 230

* ¹¹⁶ GAKUNZI (D), COp cit, p 231

* ¹¹⁷ GAKUNZI (D), COp cit., p. 233.

* ¹¹⁸ GAKUNZI (D), COp cit., p. 228.

* ¹¹⁹ GAKUNZI (D), COp cit., p. 228.

* ¹²⁰ GAKUNZI (D), COp cit., p. 222.

* ¹²¹ GAKUNZI (D), COp cit., p. 228.

* ¹²² GAKUNZI (D), COp cit., p. 222.

* ¹²³ GAKUNZI (D) COp cit., p 245.

* ¹²⁴ GAKUNZI (D), COp cit., p. 116.