Thomas Sankara et la condition féminine: un discours révolutionnaire?

CHAPTER I :

WITH THE SOURCES OF THE FEMINIST SPEECH OF SANKARA

The feminist speech of Sankara does not appear in the evolution of the African political thought ex nihilo. The burkinabé leader is the heir to theorists who preceded it in the way by the female emancipation « opened with all the winds of the will of the people and their revolutions, also informing us certain terrible failures which led to tragedies failures with the humans right, we want to preserve each revolution only the core of purity »^66(*).

The references are as much drawn from the Russian Revolution of 1917 than of the French revolution. To find the sources of the thought sankarist is a very full research, since it is possible to identify at the same time political traditions in which implicit Sankara of manner and the precise texts fits which the leader acknowledges to take as a starting point on the ideological level.

1.1 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION

That the French revolution was a point of reference for the Revolutionists of XIXe and XXe century is undeniable.

The work, the Chains of the slavery of Marat, incentive the people with a toughening of the revolution, it did not inspire more one ? In the field of the feminist claims, Condorcet and Olympe de Gouges remain emblematic figures which marked the revolutionary spirits.

For Condorcet, the women represent half of humanity. No political progress, no regeneration of the company is possible without them. It attacks the old order to transform the company radically. Conscious that the law can transform mentalities, Condorcet is invested since 1789 for the installation of a suitable legislative structure. Such measurements were to return justice to the women. It claims the equal rights between the sexes. « Is not this step in quality to be sensitive capable of reason, having ideas morals which the men have of the rights ? »^67(*).

Exclusion, according to him, is obscurantist. The argumentation based on reasons of a physiological nature is ridiculed. Condorcet specifies that the woman does not have a behavior or of capacity which would distinguish it from the whole of humanity. It affirms that one benefitted from anatomical and physiological arguments to mask the catch of being able of the men on the women. The limits which one can observe on the intellectual level are not ascribable with their intelligence, with their mode of reasoning but well with educational, social and cultural data.

The instruction is the key word of Condorcet. In Memories on the state education (790), it poses like principle : « the defect of instruction of the women introduces into the families a contrary inequality with their happiness »^68(*). The instruction is thus the access road to the future equality.

Olympe de Gouges, since 1791, borrows the same way as Condorcet. It asserts the political equality for the women in the name of nature, therefore principles of the revolution^69(*).

Olympe de Gouges works out in « Declaration of the women's rights and of the citizen » which is articulated like the Declaration of the rights of man^70(*). It fights for the access of the women to the management of the public thing beside the man. Its Declaration is an instrument to achieve this goal : « I offer an invincible means to raise the heart of the women, it is to join them to all the exercises of the man, if the man is obstinated to find this means impracticable, that it shares his fortune with the woman, not with her whim, but by the wisdom of the laws. The prejudice falls, manners are purified »^71(*)

This revolutionist builds his declaration in sixteen articles which propose the undeniable role of the woman in the management of the city. The woman must profit, like the man, of the protection of the law. Article I relates to the equality between the sexes : « The woman is born free and remains equal to the man in rights «^72(*). Article IV requires a reform of the laws to return justice to the women : « Freedom and justice consist in thus returning all that belongs to others, the exercise of the natural rights of the woman has terminals only perpetual tyranny that the man opposes to him : These terminals must be reformed by the reason and natural laws.  ». Only the virtues and the talents of the citizen or the citizen must explain his access to the places and public employment. Article XI breaks with the old order. It approaches the freedom of expression of the thoughts and the opinions and proclaims the women's right to make known that the child is also it his. « The free communication of the thoughts and the opinions is one of the most invaluable rights of the woman, since this freedom ensures the legitimacy of the fathers towards the children. Any citizen can thus say freely, I am mother of a child who belongs to you, without a barbarian prejudice forcing to dissimulate the truth, «. Olympe de Gouges asserts the participation of all the components of the company in the development of the constitution. It concludes its declaration in these terms : «The constitution is null, if the majority of the individuals who make the nation, did not cooperate with the drafting. »

Instruction, political emancipation, will to register the woman in the revolutionary process which starter is as many major topics than one find in the thought of Sankara and its political program.

* ⁶⁶ MARTENS (L), COp cit., p. 250.

* ⁶⁷ CONDORCET, Letter of a middle-class man of Newhaven, 1789, Quoted by KRIEF (H) in a course intended for the students of MAST1 (License) of the department of Arts and Communication (FLASHS-U.O). The course is entitled  : Romantic speech and ideologies, academic year 1997-1998.

* ⁶⁸ City by KRIEF (H) in the romantic course Speech and ideologies, indicated higher.

* ⁶⁹ GENGEMBRE (G), A your feathers citizens  ! Writers, journalists speakers and poets, of the Bastille in Waterloo Paris. Gallimard, 1988, p. 171.

* ⁷⁰ GENGEMBRE (G), COp cit., p.172

* ⁷¹ GENGEMBRE (G), COp., cit., p. 171.

* ⁷² GENGEMBRE (G), COp., cit., p. 172.