{"id":420942,"date":"2011-05-06T08:36:57","date_gmt":"2011-05-06T08:36:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ghanamma.net\/2011\/05\/06\/uprising-in-burkina-faso-why-no-cameras\/"},"modified":"2011-05-06T08:36:57","modified_gmt":"2011-05-06T08:36:57","slug":"uprising-in-burkina-faso-why-no-cameras","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2011\/05\/06\/uprising-in-burkina-faso-why-no-cameras\/","title":{"rendered":"Uprising in Burkina Faso – Why No Cameras?"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\"Fahamu<\/a><\/p>\n

Tendai Marima<\/p>\n

5 May 2011<\/p>\n

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opinion<\/p>\n

Commenting on the Western media’s preference towards coverage of particular uprisings across North Africa, Tendai Marima<\/strong> asks ‘what makes Burkina Faso’s crisis so un-newsworthy that it is easily swept under the news pile?’<\/em><\/p>\n

When most major international news networks finally caught up with the final climactic moments of the Tunisian revolution, it seemed as though, between racing to get last-minute flights to Tunis and playing catch-up with other news agencies that had been reporting on Tunisia since December, the world’s major media players made a collective ‘never again’ resolution to never or try not to ignore any developing story again. Having gotten over the failure to cover the fall of Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali from day one, Algeria, Libya and Egypt all jostling to take centre stage in popular uprisings were brilliant opportunities for a media that had missed out to cover up. In the end, Egypt proved ripe for revolution and so for 18 days, in spite or in remembrance of 800 civilian casualties, the Egyptian people successfully toppled the Mubarak regime.<\/p>\n

As hundreds of thousands gathered in communal points all over Egypt chanting down Mubarak, to a far lesser extent similar popular protests went down in Cameroon, Angola, Gabon and Burkina Faso. All of these received marginal coverage. Even C\u00f4te d’Ivoire was at one point was rightly dubbed ‘the forgotten war’. It did not fit the media template of a sexy, tech-savvy, populist revolution, as that which had been constructed of Egypt. Instead C\u00f4te d’Ivoire had the uncomfortable but familiar look and feel of a Rwanda genocide-lite. It was a messy, bloody struggle for power between rebel and patriot factions in a country most educated people outside of Africa would struggle to find on a map. C\u00f4te d’Ivoire, the world’s largest cocoa producer and native home of soccer stars Didier Drogba, Salomon Kalou and Yaya Tour\u00e9 has the misfortune of being a country with little global influence and of lesser strategic importance than Egypt or Libya to the (mostly anglophone) countries that have historically determined which international news stories are to be prioritised.<\/p>\n

And now that the French troops have assisted Alassane Ouattara in deposing the resistant Laurent Gbagbo from the presidency, most of the TV crews and cameras have gone. Field correspondents and NGOs continue to file dispatches of fighting in the streets of Abidjan and ongoing atrocities committed in the forests in the western side of the country, but the world’s eyes have moved on. Not to Burkina Faso next door, but elsewhere, where more thrilling stories of revolution beckon.<\/p>\n

But what makes Burkina Faso’s crisis so un-newsworthy that it is easily swept under the news pile?<\/p>\n

The beginnings of the crisis in the little West African nation parallel events in tiny Tunisia where it took an individual catalyst in a small town to set things off. On 20 February, in an industrial town called Koudougo, bigger than Sidi Bouzid, a student named Justin Zongo was taken into police custody after an alleged dispute with a female classmate. A few days later, Zongo was pronounced dead and according to official police reports, the cause of death was meningitis. His family and friends rejected this and claimed Zongo’s death was due to police brutality. This led to a series of protests by students in four towns, Koudougo, Koup\u00e9la, Pouytenga and Po, and they were met with violence by the police. In an effort to contain the demonstrations, the government temporarily closed all schools and the national university. Although Compaor\u00e9 pleaded for peace and national dialogue, a death toll of six protesters sent a different message to the student movement. The Africa Report states that the Association Nationale des Etudiants Burkinab\u00e9 (ANEB)’s student representative, Mahamadou Fayama, the movement wanted to ‘denounce the climate of terror that the police have created’.<\/p>\n

The student chants of ‘Blaise d\u00e9gage’ and ‘Tunisia is in Koudougo’, urging Compaor\u00e9 to step down from 23-year rule, spread to junior army officers in the military barracks of Lamizana. On 22 March the courts ruled against five soldiers for assaulting a young designer whom they claimed had made sexual advances towards another soldier’s wife. Their disgruntled military colleagues took the streets of the capital, Ouagadougou, and went on a rampage. Although the government tried to assuage the gun-toting military men by pardoning and releasing their counterparts, by the end of March the spirit of mutiny had gone viral. Scores of junior soldiers demanded their salaries, which as yet had been unpaid by the government. The mayor’s home was vandalised; in some parts of the capital, market stalls and shops were looted and in the east of the country more soldiers joined the uprising as well as members of the Presidential Guard. Speaking to L’Ev\u00e9nement, a bi-weekly local paper, one soldier expressed a dejectedness at the heart of the mutiny which was likely felt by many soldiers:<\/p>\n

‘I just returned from Darfur. Our contingent has been deployed since no other country wanted to go, that is to say, 7 km from the Chadian border. This is the corridor for many rebels in both countries. We are the Burkinabe who have managed to secure the area. We have built in less than six months roads, bridges and schools. Everyone congratulated us for that. When we go, people applaud us. The UN congratulated us. That we came home and we do not care about us. First, they are our superiors that cut money from our mission. Following is a mayor [of Ouagadugou] who tells traders deal with us as “military thieves.” You see that, it hurts.’<\/p>\n

So far none of Compaor\u00e9’s pleas to restore order have worked and the mutiny’s snowball effect continues to grow. There are reports that, despite the soldiers’ lawlessness in some cities, the youths and some traders have united with revolting army officers. In Koudougo on 18 April, the youths are said to have set fire to the ruling party’s local offices, while by contrast in the capital, market traders burnt several government buildings in retaliation for acts of vandalism by state troops. On 23 April it was reported that the soldiers upped their game and seized the southern town of Po, which is home to a state military school where Compaor\u00e9 himself trained.<\/p>\n

In a more hardened response, Compaor\u00e9 has reacted to the military-led dissent by imposing a nationwide night-time curfew and firing the whole government, including the army chief. Last week he appointed Burkina’s ambassador to France, Luc Adolphe Tiao, as prime minister, while he doubled as president and minister of defence. True to dictator form, Compaor\u00e9, like Hosni Mubarak of Egypt, has blamed foreign conspiratorial forces for the unrest and he has gotten rid of everyone else, except the problem, himself and his corrupt system. Appointing himself minister of defence when he is already supreme chief commander of the armed forces adds another fancy title to his name and gives the impression he’s a superhuman who can juggle three cabinet roles. But superhuman ability or not, a display of megalomaniac tendencies will not heal the rift between the army and the government, or quieten feelings of resentment among oppositional regiments. If Compaor\u00e9’s cosmetic changes and payouts to the soldiers prove unsatisfactory, now that the opposition and civil society have called for nationwide demonstrations on 30 April they would do well to join forces with the mutineers and instil some sense of order and discipline so that the ousting of Compaor\u00e9 and not looting from civilians becomes every protester’s goal. Such a union would ensure the movement reaches the critical mass needed to topple the regime. But should Compaor\u00e9 restore complete order, the eight weeks (and counting) of nationwide unrest will make it much harder for him to prevent his departure in the future should things escalate again. The continual playing out of mutiny and retaliation on state property signifies a loss of fear of repercussions for damaging state property and it also symbolises a loss of control and authority by the former army captain who has previously used the army to crush unrest like the food riots of 2008.<\/p>\n

This dramatic story of Africa’s top cotton producer is deserving of more attention, especially in the context of unrest on the African continent as a whole. All of the protests, from Cape to Cairo, with their own distinct set of local conditions, are linked to food security, economic instability and political dispossession – be it by ballot or dictatorship. There is a widespread feeling of continental discontent, but international and national pundits are so busy putting out possible fires of revolt in ‘sub-Saharan Africa’ with their analyses that the Burkina uprising has gone by largely unnoticed, and yet in two months mutineering soldiers and youth have stirred up serious trouble for the Compaor\u00e9 regime – and possibly regionally too. Should Compaor\u00e9 fall, it will have a significant impact on the fledgling administration of his neighbouring ally, Alassane Ouattara in C\u00f4te d’Ivoire, which Compaor\u00e9 played a key diplomatic role in ensuring.<\/p>\n

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\nUprising in Burkina Faso – Why No Cameras?<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Tendai Marima 5 May 2011 opinion Commenting on the Western media’s preference towards coverage of particular uprisings across North Africa, Tendai Marima asks ‘what makes Burkina Faso’s crisis so un-newsworthy that it is easily swept under the news pile?’ When most major international news networks finally caught up with the final climactic moments of the Tunisian revolution, it seemed as though, between racing to get last-minute flights to Tunis and playing catch-up with other news agencies that had been reporting on Tunisia since December, the world’s major media players made a collective ‘never again’ resolution to never or try not to ignore any developing story again. Having gotten over the failure to cover the fall of Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali from day one, Algeria, Libya and Egypt all jostling to take centre stage in popular uprisings were brilliant opportunities for a media that had missed out to cover up<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":420938,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-420942","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-local-news"},"yoast_head":"\nUprising in Burkina Faso - Why No Cameras? - Ghanamma.com<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2011\/05\/06\/uprising-in-burkina-faso-why-no-cameras\/\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:title\" content=\"Uprising in Burkina Faso - Why No Cameras? - Ghanamma.com\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:description\" content=\"Tendai Marima 5 May 2011 opinion Commenting on the Western media's preference towards coverage of particular uprisings across North Africa, Tendai Marima asks 'what makes Burkina Faso's crisis so un-newsworthy that it is easily swept under the news pile?' When most major international news networks finally caught up with the final climactic moments of the Tunisian revolution, it seemed as though, between racing to get last-minute flights to Tunis and playing catch-up with other news agencies that had been reporting on Tunisia since December, the world's major media players made a collective 'never again' resolution to never or try not to ignore any developing story again. 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When most major international news networks finally caught up with the final climactic moments of the Tunisian revolution, it seemed as though, between racing to get last-minute flights to Tunis and playing catch-up with other news agencies that had been reporting on Tunisia since December, the world's major media players made a collective 'never again' resolution to never or try not to ignore any developing story again. 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