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NIGEL FLANAGAN remembers ‘The African Che’ 35 years on from his assassination

THIRTY-FIVE years ago this month, one of Africa’s greatest revolutionaries was murdered by former comrades. 

“The African Che,” as he was known, was shot down in a coup d’etat by soldiers who were rebelling against his socialist transformation of Burkina Faso, a landlocked and poor remnant of the French colonial empire in west Africa.

He is less well known than Che, but his legacy across Africa is immense. T-shirts with his image on will appear all over Africa on demonstrations, picket lines and protests, but of course he is much less celebrated in the West.

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