Leader toppled in Army coup

Press, 6 August 1983, Page 11

Leader toppled in Army coup

NZPA-Reuter Abidjan, Ivory Coast Leftist military officers have staged a coup d’etat against Upper Volta’s military President, Major Dr Jean-Baptiste Ouedraogo. Ouagadougou radio reported that a national revolutionary council had been set up by the man who instigated the coup, Captain Thomas Sankara, a paratrooper and former Prime Minister. The radio called on the population to neutralise any resistance from the previous military rulers and to set up revolutionary committees throughout the country to support the new Government.

People in Ouagadougou, the capital, contacted by telephone said that automatic weapons gunfire had been heard in several districts of the city yesterday, including near the Presidential Palace, the radio building, and the Gendarmerie (paramilitary police). Major Ouedraogo, a moderate Army doctor, seized power in a coup in November and later removed a group of Left-leaning military officers led by Captain Sankara, who was elected Prime Minister in February.

The national radio said that the council had imposed a national curfew and closed the country’s borders. The coup in the desperately poor West African State was the latest in a series of take-overs since it gained independence from France in 1960. The first Government of the land-locked State of 6.9 z million people and no natural resources was overthrown in 1966 by the Army, backed by the traditionally

militant trade unions. Power was returned to civilians in 1970 but there was another coup four years later. The trade unions forced out the military in 1978, although the outgoing military leader, General Sangoule Lamizana, was subsequently elected President.

Lieutenant-Colonel Saye Zerbo ousted him in 1980 and was himself overthrown in November by Major Ouedraogo. He purged the Army and promised a speedy return to Constitutional Government.

Major Ouedraogo, aged 42, a Catholic, led a moderate faction, favouring continued links with France, Upper Volta’s main source of foreign aid, and proWestern African nations.

But Captain Sankara tried to radicalise the Government. He was sacked and arrested in May after he invited the Libyan leader, Colonel Muammar Gadaffi, to the country without telling his President. Captain Sankara, aged 34, who was subsequently freed from house arrest, said in his broadcast announcing the coup that Major Ouedraogo’s Government had represented the interests “of the enemy of the people.” Upper Volta is among the world’s poorest nations whose people make a living through subsistence farming. Per capita income is estimated at only SUSIBO ($275) a year.

The amount it collects in foreign aid and soft loans is larger than its annual budget. It has a chronic trade deficit, despite remittances from half a million exiles living in neighbouring Ivory Coast.