Blaise Compaoré

Blaise Compaoré (born February 3, 1951, Ouagadougou, Upper Volta, French West Africa [now in Burkina Faso]) is a military leader and politician who ruled Burkina Faso from 1987, seizing power following a coup. He resigned on October 31, 2014, following days of violent protest.

Compaoré was born into a family of the Mossi ethnic group, one of the dominant ethnic groups in Upper Volta, and was raised in the town of Ziniaré, near Ouagadougou. He attended military college in Yaoundé, Cameroon, and received paracommando training in Rabat, Morocco. From 1978 to 1981 he served as head of section and later company commander in an Upper Volta paracommando regiment. Compaoré was given charge of the national commando training centre at Po in 1981. He became deeply embroiled in national politics in 1982 when his friend and colleague, Capt. Thomas Sankara, resigned from his government post to protest policy decisions. A year later, when another power struggle saw Sankara put in prison, Compaoré mustered the support of the commando unit at Po and, with Ghanian and Libyan help, led a coup on August 4, 1983, that installed Sankara as head of state. Along with Compaoré and Sankara, two other military officers—Comdt. Jean-Baptiste Lingani and Capt. Henri Zongo—helped organize the coup and the resulting regime, and all held positions of leadership in the country. Compaoré served as minister of state at the presidency (1983–87), essentially making him second in command in the regime, and also as minister of state for justice (1985–87).

Personally quiet and self-effacing, Compaoré seemed content to leave the public business of politics in Upper Volta (renamed Burkina Faso in 1984) to the more charismatic Sankara and the other two coup organizers. That changed in 1987, when disagreements over security and other strategic issues reportedly precipitated an October 15 coup, led by Compaoré, Zongo, and Lingani, that brought Compaoré to power. Sankara was killed during the takeover, and Compaoré, who professed not to have planned the coup with much advance notice, was said to have been devastated by the unexpected death of his friend.

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African Leaders: Part One

Compaoré served as the head of state in the new regime, which focused on economic liberalization and, later, limited democratic reform. Zongo and Lingani held prominent positions in the regime until 1989, when, after disagreeing with Compaoré over economic issues, they were accused of plotting against him and were subsequently executed, leaving Compaoré free to follow his own agenda. Multiparty politics resumed with the promulgation of a new constitution in 1991, and a presidential election was held later that year. Compaoré, who had resigned from the military in order to run for president as a civilian, was elected to a seven-year term. He had run unopposed, however, because opposition candidates, who were protesting Compaoré’s refusal to hold a national conference on political reform, boycotted the election. He was reelected in 1998 in an election that was again boycotted, although this time by only the major opposition candidates; he was also reelected in 2005 and 2010.

In the international community in the years after Compaoré seized power, he faced a difficult task in overcoming his reputation as the murderer of Sankara, who had attracted a considerable following throughout western Africa, and in the 1990s Compaoré was accused of being involved in civil conflicts in Sierra Leone, Liberia, and Angola. However, he became a respected regional leader who often mediated disputes in other western African countries. He also served as the chairman of various regional bodies, including the Organization of African Unity (predecessor to the African Union), the Economic Community of West African States, and the West African Economic and Monetary Union.

In addition to the election boycotts in 1991 and 1998, Compaoré faced other controversy and popular unrest. His eligibility to stand in the 2005 election was disputed by opposition parties, who cited the passage of a constitutional amendment in April 2000 that reduced a president’s term to five years and stipulated that it was renewable only once. They claimed that Compaoré, who had already served two terms, was not eligible to run. Compaoré, in turn, argued that the law could not be applied retroactively, a viewpoint that was upheld by the country’s Constitutional Council. The suspicious death in 1998 of Norbert Zongo, a prominent journalist known for speaking out against Compaoré’s administration, generated periodic episodes of unrest that continued into the 2000s. Unpopular political and economic developments also led to protests, including those in 2006, 2008, and the unprecedented level of unrest of 2011.

A plan to abolish presidential term limits by amending the constitution—which would allow Compaoré to potentially serve additional terms as president—was announced in October 2014. It proved to generate the most serious challenge to his 27-year rule. Burkinabés took to the streets en masse to demonstrate against the proposed amendment. On October 30 the protests became more violent, with demonstrators setting fire to public buildings, including that which housed the National Assembly. Compaoré responded to the unrest by declaring a state of emergency, dissolving the government, and promising to hold talks with the opposition, but that did little to end the protests. Later that day the head of the armed forces reaffirmed the dissolution of the government, proclaimed the dissolution of the National Assembly, and declared that a transitional government would be established. Compaoré initially insisted that he would stay on as head of the transitional government, but, after that proposal met with much resistance, he resigned on October 31. He went into exile, taking up residence in neighbouring Côte d’Ivoire.

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In April 2021 a military tribunal in Burkina Faso charged 14 people, including Compaoré, in relation to the circumstances of Sankara’s assassination in 1987. Compaoré was charged with having been complicit in murder, having attacked state security, and having concealed a corpse. He refused to participate in the proceedings, however, and was tried in absentia when the trial began on October 11. The tribunal’s verdict, announced on April 6, 2022, found Compaoré guilty, and he was sentenced to life in prison.