By Jeanne Hefez
Le Balai Citoyen is the youth-led popular movement that led mass insurrections in Burkina Faso in October 2014, bringing to an end Blaise Compaoré’s 27-year rule and subsequent flight to Ivory Coast.
The name translates as “citizen broom”, given to community cleaning groups created under Thomas Sankara to “clean” the country during his fateful presidency, 1983-1987. Self-defined as a “pressure group organizing for the political health of Burkina Faso and against ill-governance”, Balai Citoyen counts “tens of thousands of members”, with clubs throughout Burkina Faso and satellites in neighbouring countries.
Beyond the removal of Compaoré, Balai Citoyen has mobilized popular masses around social issues plaguing Burkina Faso: rampant corruption, power cuts, fuel price increases, land grabs and more. While Balai Citoyen has not prioritised drawing up an alternative political project, it is fuelling a rapid radicalisation of the youth, and increasingly drawing rural populations to its assemblies.
In March 2015, Amandla! interviewed Zinaba Rasmane, head of National Coordination for Balai Citoyen, at the ruins of the National Assembly, which was burnt down the night Compaoré fled on October 30. The Coordination Committee of the Balai Citoyen, elected annually, has 12 members and five advisers, with a political back office of roughly 30 individuals used as permanent resources (lawyers, jurists, academics, bankers and journalists).
Amandla!: You have said that Le Balai Citoyen aspires to “pave the way for significant improvements for the working people of Burkina Faso and to sweep away decades of state criminality and impunity.” Can you tell us where the movement is today and how you think you’ll achieve this in the long run?
Zinaba Rasmane: After leading the popular insurrection that chased away Compaoré, we are currently in a phase of transition and focusing on the upcoming elections of October 2015. Using the slogan “after your revolt, your vote”, we’re attempting to revive civic participation and generating interest in politics.
After the blood and sweat that was shed for the rescuing and re-appropriation of our democracy, we are busy ensuring that everyone, rural populations, the youth and the women, will register and vote. We are especially intensifying our organizing with the youth who are eligible to vote for the first time, and running civic and political education schools at both local and national levels. We’re also in constant dialogue with our comrades and satellite offices in Togo, Senegal, Benin…. It’s a political process that extends across our national borders.
A!: What are the main demands around which you are organizing? How would you define your strategy?
ZR: We’re focusing on two fronts. Our first priority is to allow for a new form of Burkinabe citizen to emerge. We’ve seen the slow decay of the youth’s political energy and consciousness over the past decades because of entrenched corrupt political practices that have succeeded in demobilizing young people.
The youth has become eager and accustomed to receiving shirts and hats, easy money from politicians, tea and maize bags, and a whole range of trinkets and goodies. We want the youth to gain back ownership of the political exercise, not by simply voting, but through the thorough examination and analysis of the different political programs offered to them by the different parties.
Our second front of action is that we’ve become a vigilante group for any form of corruption and financial state deviations. We’re teaching young people to remain watchful of corruption. Kicking Compaoré out doesn’t mean that we’ve ended the Compaoré system! So we’re ensuring that there are no financial crimes committed and looking into past state assassinations and the gross tax evasions and land grabs that were allowed to endure under his rule. It’s a critical exercise, vital to our practice.
What we’re aiming to create in the long run is a dynamic of pan-African struggle that will inspire other youth and civic groups across Africa. We’re already extremely proud to be the first youth group to have prevented a change in the Constitution, and in that way, we’re sending strong political messages throughout the region. We’re hoping that people in Cameroon, Togo, Benin and Congo will also stand up against their dictators with our assistance and finally grab the bull by its horns.
A!: What sort of mechanisms of inquiry are you putting in place? How are you ensuring state transparency on budgets and expenditure?
ZR: We are asking for a whole range of transparency measures to be put in place for the handling and managing of the public good and for all state spending. Politicians have to give us concrete measures of trust and faith, and that will only come through the absolute readability of budgets, the transparency of their reports and in the establishment of clear targets that will have to be reached with efficiency.
We don’t want the transition to be all over the place and we will obviously be demanding drastic social reforms. The elections are just a first step in our organizing. We are welcoming the opening up of closed legal cases where state, political and financial crimes have taken place, most notably the murder of former president Thomas Sankara and journalist Norbert Zongo.
Over and beyond this criminal state impunity, we’re examining the organized plunder and shameless daylight robbery of our people that has been occurring through significant tax evasions, deals on resources with no redistributive ends, endless privatization, land and rights given to privileged familial clans. This all needs to stop immediately.
A!: What are the priority reforms in your view?
ZR: We have major social needs in Burkina Faso: in education, health, public transport and telecommunications. We’re looking into tackling these priority issues, as well as strategizing around our massive youth unemployment problem and ensuring that our rural populations who are feeding our cities themselves get to eat.
We’re humbly aware that we cannot achieve absolute equality during a time of transition, but what we can do now is to slow down the pace of state expenditure in order to recreate a climate of trust between the people and the government, between the administration and the administered. This is the priority topic that we are workshopping in the rural areas: we’re looking into defining deliverables that our next government will have to reach.
A!: Would the majority of your members label themselves as Sankarists, socialists or pan-Africanists?
ZR: Not at all! The majority of our members are simply proud to have led the popular insurrection and to belong to a movement that has become an efficient pressure group. This is what we are for now: fighting corruption.
I don’t call myself a Sankarist because of the various Sankarist political parties that have emptied the label of its real meaning, but I do think of myself as an heir of Thomas Sankara. This means that I have to be a constant model of integrity and that I have to develop strict political positions regarding all matters that are impeding my nation from acquiring its dignity, while fighting the feudal pressures of imperialism that are oppressing and repressing us as a nation.
A!: Why are there so few women within your ranks?
ZR: There are a number of social determinants that are preventing women from participating in our movements, even if they intellectually or politically agree with what we’re doing. They’re burdened by patriarchal tradition.
Within Balai Citoyen we are currently dividing ourselves into smaller groups of 10-15 leaders. We’re thinking of making some of these groups exclusively for women, to show that we’re not entirely male-dominated and that there is a place for them in this struggle. We do have some women in our leadership and national structures.
Like Sankara, we are convinced that our victories will be swifter and greater once women are fighting by our side. Don’t forget that on the evening of the 27th of October, the women were the first ones to press into the police barricades: they gave us the resolve and courage to fight through the night of the 28th, and to push on through until Compaoré fled.
Jeanne Hefez is an activist living in Cape Town. She is the former Editorial Assistant of Amandla! and a member of the Editorial Collective.
