In Burkina Faso, the figure of Thomas Sankara has long since ceased to be a mere chapter of national history. It now occupies a central place in the political narrative advanced by Ibrahim Traoré’s administration. Behind the official tributes, the military ceremonies and the construction of a mausoleum, one question keeps resurfacing: is the present leadership gradually appropriating Sankara’s image in order to consolidate its own legitimacy?
The parallel is not merely a matter of outside interpretation. It is visible in the government’s own communication.
A legacy claimed by the state
In 2026, the Burkinabè authorities now organise a military ceremony dedicated to Thomas Sankara every month, an initiative presented as having been established on Ibrahim Traoré’s instruction. Official discourse goes further still: during a tribute held in February 2026, the president’s chief of staff declared that Sankara’s “torch” is from now on carried by Ibrahim Traoré.
This staging of historical continuity raises a fundamental question: does Ibrahim Traoré simply wish to honour Sankara, or does he seek to present himself as the man who has taken up and continued his struggle?
The distinction matters.
Thomas Sankara belongs to the history of Burkina Faso and to the memory of millions of Africans. But there also exists a family memory, sustained in particular by his widow Mariam Sankara, his children, his brothers and his sisters. On this matter, the relationship between the family and the transitional authorities has never been as consensual as the official account might suggest.
February 2023: the dispute over reburial
The most telling precedent dates back to February 2023.
After the exhumation of the bodies of Thomas Sankara and his twelve companions, the government decided to proceed with their reburial at the site of the former Conseil de l’Entente, which had become the Thomas Sankara Memorial. The choice carried heavy symbolism: it was precisely there that Sankara and his companions were assassinated on 15 October 1987.
The Sankara family objected.
Three alternative sites put forward
On 16 February 2023, Mariam Sankara, her two sons Philippe and Auguste, together with the brothers and sisters of the late president, appealed directly to Ibrahim Traoré and asked him to abandon the decision. They proposed three other locations: the Dagnoën cemetery, the Garden of Friendship and the Yennenga Garden.
The disagreement then became public.
A burial held without the family
The family considered that the decision had been taken without genuine consensus and refused to take part in the ceremony. On 21 February, it confirmed that it would be neither present nor represented at the burial.
On 23 February, the ceremony went ahead regardless.
The authorities moved forward. The family remained at a distance.
This sequence is essential to understanding what followed, since Traoré’s administration would progressively turn Sankara’s memory into a central element of its own political narrative.
From monument to institution
Since that period, Sankara’s institutional presence has only intensified.
The mausoleum intended for Thomas Sankara and his twelve companions was built on the memorial site. Ibrahim Traoré laid its foundation stone on 15 October 2023, ahead of its inauguration in May 2025. The project is officially presented as a means of preserving and promoting the political legacy of the father of the August 1983 revolution.
In 2026, this memorial policy acquired a further dimension with the introduction of monthly military ceremonies.
Through such initiatives, the authorities no longer merely commemorate Sankara. They organise, institutionalise and stage his memory.
Here lies one of the major political stakes.
Ibrahim Traoré can thus appear, within the official account, as the man who has at last fully rehabilitated Sankara, restored his memory and taken up his struggle.
Government rhetoric openly suggests as much. In June 2026, at a tribute held at the memorial, the minister of foreign affairs declared that Sankara’s torch is carried “with dignity and commitment” by Ibrahim Traoré.
Such a presentation mechanically brings the two figures together in the collective imagination: Sankara, the assassinated revolutionary; Traoré, the young captain presented as the one taking up the torch.
The intimate dimension the state cannot absorb
This is precisely where the family’s position becomes central.
For those close to Thomas Sankara, his legacy cannot be reduced to an instrument of political communication or to a backdrop for legitimising power.
Sankara’s body, his remains, the place of his burial and the memory held by his family carry an intimate dimension that the state cannot entirely absorb.
Yet since 2023 the authorities have taken control of a large part of the institutional staging of that memory: the reburial, the mausoleum, the military ceremonies, the official tributes, the speeches on sovereignty and the constant references to the revolution.
The paradox is striking: the power that today claims Sankara’s political inheritance is also the one with which part of his family found itself at odds over how his remains should be handled.
It is not a matter of asserting that Ibrahim Traoré personally seeks to “take” Sankara from his family. Such an intention would belong to interpretation and would require further evidence.
But the facts allow another observation: the regime is gradually constructing a narrative in which Ibrahim Traoré appears as the political heir of Captain Sankara and as the man who has taken up his struggle.
This construction is not insignificant.
It allows the current authorities to inscribe themselves within an extraordinarily powerful revolutionary lineage in Burkina Faso. It also provides them with a historical reference capable of giving ideological depth to their own discourse on sovereignty, pan-Africanism and independence.
Researchers have moreover noted the frequency with which Traoré invokes Sankara’s memory and the way his political discourse echoes certain themes associated with the former president, notably sovereignty and the rejection of external dependency.
To whom does a political memory belong?
In the end, this is the most sensitive question of all.
Thomas Sankara is not merely a statue, a mausoleum or a military ceremony. He is also a family history, a painful memory and a political struggle whose interpretation cannot be imposed by decree.
The transitional authorities may legitimately honour his memory. They may restore sites, organise ceremonies and preserve his archives. But another question remains: can they, in the name of that rehabilitation, present themselves as the natural custodians of his heritage?
The precedent of 2023 shows, in any case, that the Sankara family has not always accepted the authorities’ choices regarding that memory.
And that is where the ambiguity of the current narrative lies.
By repeatedly presenting himself as the one who “carries the torch” of Sankara, Ibrahim Traoré risks allowing the memory of a man assassinated in 1987 to slide toward another story: that of a contemporary government seeking to inscribe its own name in the continuity of the revolution.
Sankara left behind a body of work and a body of thought. Traoré is today building his own power. Between the two, the memory of Thomas Sankara has become a major political stake.
