FRIDAY 13th of June pierces human history with a deep, dark and deadly wound that would forever define the Guyanese nation. 

Today, Georgetown hosts an incisive judicial probing of that wound, focusing a laser quest on why we would always mark this day with sadness in the Guyanese soul, and mourning in the Guyanese heart.
For this day in 1980 forever transformed Guyana. Friday 13th of June, 1980, saw the nation plunge to its darkest depth. In an instant, Georgetown sank from its quiet pastoral rest, world famous for its floral Garden City, its picture-perfect natural beauty on the edge of the Atlantic Ocean, into the dusk of death, host of the deadliest political assassination in the history of the English-speaking Caribbean.
Although Grenada was to see serious political crimes in 1983, the bomb blast that reverberated across Georgetown on Friday 13th of June 1980 would echo through not only Guyana’s history, but across Africa and Europe and the Caribbean.
International news that fateful night of Dr. Walter Rodney’s death from the bomb that blew up in his lap as he sat in his car outside the Camp Street jail shocked the world, and forever changed the socio-political history of Guyana.
The loud explosion caused chaos and confusion in Georgetown, as fear descended on the city. News spread across the nation slowly, because the Government of the People’s National Congress (PNC) had banned independent media, with the Catholic Standard, an underground publication of the Catholic Church, the only source for credible news. Only the State media operated, reporting the news severely biased to the Government, even claiming Dr. Rodney had accidentally blown up himself.
Less than a year before, on July 14, 1979, a political mob of fanatic religious zealots carrying out political orders of PNC Government operators had stabbed and killed Father Bernard Darke in Georgetown. Father Darke was a Catholic Priest who worked as a Journalist for the Catholic Standard. The newsletter’s new Editor, Father Andrew Morrison, had to be careful, for the political and social atmosphere in Guyana had plunged to its darkest, deadliest period.
Dr. Rodney had mobilised the Guyanese masses across ethnic and other divides into a unified, cohesive national force that became vociferous in its strenuous opposition to the dictatorial PNC Government.
With political leaders such as Eusi Kwayana and Dr. Rupert Roopnarine, Dr. Rodney formed the political party, the Working People’s Alliance (WPA), and launched a serious national offensive against the regime of the PNC.
The WPA became victim, and suffered physical and verbal attack, beatings, harassment and political murders, but none of this deterred Dr. Rodney in his quest to wrest Guyana from the iron-grip of a draconian PNC Government. The country was descending into socio-economic poverty of the worst sort, with basic food items banned by the Government, with the Guyana Defence Force and Guyana Police Force and other State agencies carrying out clandestine human rights abuse and harassment of political opponents of the Government and private citizens, with the Public Service descending into grotesque corruption that would become culturally entrenched in the national psyche, with all independent media banned and freedom of expression denied, with the PNC enacting a new Constitution that vested massive unchecked power in the hands of an Executive President.
In this scenario, Dr. Rodney entered the political fray to free his native Guyana, returning from social activism in Africa and the Caribbean to free his own nation.
His party, the WPA, faced immense pressure. On November 18, 1979, members of the Guyana Police Force shot and killed its activist, Ohene Koama in South Georgetown. The WPA said then that Koama was unarmed and accused the Police of murder. Three months later, on February 25, 1980, just after the country had declared itself a Cooperative Republic, with a new Constitution under an Executive President with omnipotent judicial powers, the WPA saw Police shoot and kill another of its members, Edward Dublin.
Undeterred, Dr. Rodney stepped up his anti-Government revolution, only for it to end on that ignoble day, Friday 13th June, 1980.
Guyanese turned out in great numbers at Dr. Rodney’s funeral in Georgetown, with one estimate noting that 35,000 people joined the funeral procession.
That day, Friday 13th June, 1980 ranks as the darkest, ugliest day in the history of Guyana. The nation was to live with the source of that deadly bomb blast of that day shrouded in mystery for another 34 years.
That same day, the United Nations Security Council passed a resolution demanding the release of Nelson Mandela from the dank dungeon of a racist South African jail. And even as the UN was pronouncing on the historic human rights declaration, Guyana was assassinating its own populist political leader.
Dr. Rodney was no ordinary politician. He had made a defining mark on the world stage, becoming famous for his intellectual foresight, depth of thinking as a historian, and eminent scholarship of global recognition.
His books were stirring hearts and minds across Africa, Europe, and the newly independent Caribbean states.
He was well-positioned to play a leading role on the world stage, championing the rights of the underclass, the underprivileged and the under-developed peoples of the world.
He had made significant social and political statements in Jamaica, Zimbabwe, Tanzania and England.
His life course already charting a path that would define history, with his formidable intellect and penchant for action, for mobilising the masses, rather than armchair philosophising as a mere academic, Rodney returned to his native Guyana with the zeal and passion to lead revolutionary change.
His death on that dark day, Friday 13th of June, 1980, transformed Guyana’s history.
Why did he die? Why was he assassinated? Who killed him?
Those questions sat dormant for 34 years.
Now, the world marks the 34th year of that fateful Friday 13th, and finally justice is on the way for Dr. Rodney: President Donald Ramotar convened the Walter Rodney Commission of Inquiry, now in session, to probe this dark era of Guyanese history.
With distinguished, eminent Jurists from Barbados, Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago, the Commission has become the talking point of the nation, with the global Diaspora showing keen interest as well, as live streaming broadcasts the hearings across the world.
Finally, the nation is answering the dark mysterious questions that so long shrouded Dr. Rodney’s brutal assassination in undertone speculation and rank suspicion that the PNC Government had played a crucial role in his demise.

HOW we treat our own reflects the kind of people we are, the state of our heart as a nation. How kind, compassionate and caring do we treat each other? Are we being our brother’s keeper, living out the embracing of each other as Guyanese?
Today, Patricia Rodney, along with her three children Shaka, Kanini and Asha, live in the United States of America. They live there because 34 years ago they fled their home in Guyana with terror in their hearts after a bomb blast instantly killed Dr. Walter Rodney as he sat in his car in Georgetown.
On that fateful day, Friday, June 13, 1980, Guyana saw its populist world famous intellectual and scholar die in a bomb blast on the streets of Georgetown. The nation had turned a corner, sacrificing its political innocence at the altar of raw ambition for political power.

DISTINGUISED IN HISTORY
WORLD history records an outstanding, distinguished roll of great Guyanese, sons and daughters of the Guyanese homeland who made defining marks on the world stage.
High on that illustrious list of great Guyanese thinkers ranks the name Dr. Walter Rodney. And, with profound sadness, the Guyanese nation Friday 13th of June marked the 34th year since the political assassination of our foremost political revolutionary and profound freedom fighter.
When he was assassinated, “protests over Dr. Rodney’s assassination also came from all over the world, even from a number of Governments, including those of Michael Manley of Jamaica and Maurice Bishop of Grenada, as well as the Communist Party of Cuba. Many statements from international bodies and even governments implicated the PNC in the assassination, but to these accusations, the (then) ruling party issued strong denials of any responsibility,” a report on Dr. Rodney’s demise said on the guyana.org web portal.
The Internet is filled with articles, scholarship papers, historical records and commentary of all sorts surrounding the assassination of Dr. Rodney. His death ranks as a global talking point, even today. Universities in several countries sponsor and host lectures and talks in his name and his honour.
Dr. Rodney’s reputation and legacy continue to grow. He has become an international icon, a symbol of social justice, intellectual integrity, and champion of the under-privileged peoples of the world, particularly Africa.
Yet, for 34 years, social justice eluded his widow, Patricia Rodney, who now resides in the United States of America, and his three children, also residents of the US.
Today, the Presidential Commission that President Donald Ramotar convened, to probe how and why such a grotesque political crime happened on the streets of Georgetown, seeks to provide that social justice to the Rodney family, the Guyanese nation, international academia, and the world.
The Guyanese nation is finally cleansing its soul of this deadly stain on the body politic.
With his working class groundings and passion for social justice, Dr. Rodney returned to Guyana to find that his own nation was caught in the firm grip of an oppressive political system, only now not of a foreign colonial class, but of a political oligarchy of his native people, his own kind. He started to fight against this horror. This political system manifested itself under the PNC Government, and imposed itself with a vice-like grip on every facet of life in the country, using the doctrine of socialism to control the commanding heights of the economy, engaging in widespread abuse of human rights, and denying citizen any form of independent media and freedom of expression.
Upon his entry on the local political scene, he found a ready and willing ally in Dr. Cheddi Jagan and his People’s Progressive Party (PPP). Dr. Jagan had already made a huge impact on developing a political struggle against the institutionalized political dictatorship of the PNC, with a strong focus on free and fair elections.
Rodney, through his intellectual discourses, became astute at penetrating the PNC constituency, which resisted Dr. Jagan and the PPP, as ethnic insecurities became a national problem.
It meant, therefore, that the Jagan-Rodney combination was winning the hearts and minds of the Guyanese population. The PNC saw this as a real threat to its hold on absolute socio-economic power and its own political survival. The PNC used its instinctive authoritarian tendencies, responding to the threat with a determined strategy to silence Dr. Rodney.
This ploy to rid the political playing field of Dr. Rodney’s astute, popular leadership became a rallying cry of the PNC, when, in a rousing speech at the Party’s biennial congress of 1979, the PNC leader warned Dr. Rodney and the WPA to “make their wills”, and avowed that “war has been declared between the gladiator and the lion, and there will be only one survivor, and it will not be the WPA. Rather, it will be the PNC.”
Such warnings came back to haunt the Guyanese nation when Dr. Rodney died in the bomb blast, with worldwide suspicion rampant, that the PNC Government had a hand in the political assassination.
In Dr. Rodney’s death, a great Guyanese suffered with his life for the cause of social justice in his homeland, fighting not against the old colonial masters whose inhumane abuses his scholarship had researched so thoroughly, but against a political dictatorship foisted upon his own nation, by his people’s own leader, in their own independent country.

Books by Dr Walter Rodney
(Source: thewalterrodneyfoundation.org)

The Groundings with My Brothers.
Chicago:  Research Associates School Times Publications, 1996. Also: London: Bogle-L’Ouverture Publications, 1969.

Guyanese Sugar Plantations in the Late Nineteenth Century.
(Georgetown, Guyana): Release Publishers, 1979.

How Europe Underdeveloped Africa.
Baltimore, MD: Black Classic Press, 2011.
Also: Washington, D.C.: Howard University Press, 1974 German translation, Berlin, 1975 Portuguese translation, Lisbon, 1975 London: Bogle-L’Ouverture Publications Dar es Salaam: Tanzania Publishing House, 1972

West Africa and the Atlantic Slave-Trade.
Africa Research Group Reprint, Harvard, 1970. Also: Nairobi, Kenya: East African Publishing House, 1967. Swahili translation, Foundation Publisher, Nairobi, 1974.

A History of the Guyanese Working People, 1881-1905.
Baltimore, MD: The John Hopkins University Press, 1981.

History of the Upper Guinea Coast 1545-1800.
Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1970.

Kofi Baadu Out of Africa
(children’s book) Georgetown, [Guyana]: [s.n.]

Lakshmi Out of India
(children’s book) Georgetown, Guyana: The Guyana Book Foundation, 2000.

Walter Rodney Speaks: The Making of an African Intellectual
Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, 1990.

World War II and the Tanzanian Economy
[Ithaca, N.Y.]: African Studies and Research Center, Cornell University, 1976.

Books About Dr. Walter Rodney

(Source: walterrodneyfoundation.org)

Walter Rodney, Poetic Tributes
London:  Bogle-L’Ouverture, 1985. Alpers, Edward A. and P.M. Fontaine (Eds.)

Walter Rodney: Revolutionary and Scholar: A Tribute.
Los Angeles: Center for African-American Studies and African Studies Centre, University of California, 1982. Campbell, Horace.

Rasta and Resistance: From Marcus Garvey to Walter Rodney.
Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, 1985. Gabriehu.

Dangerous Times:  The Assassination of Dr. Walter Rodney
Brooklyn, NY:  Gibbi Books, 2003. Lewis, Rupert Charles.

Walter Rodney’s Intellectual and Political Thought
Barbados: Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1998. Salkey, Andrew.

Joey Tyson.
London: Bogle-L’Ouverture Publications, 1974.

Films About Walter Rodney

1. Jones, Lewanne.  In the Sky’s Wild Noise.  [1983.]
2. Roopnaraine, Rupert, and Martin Carter.  The Terror and the Time.  [Guiana Shield Media Project, 2006].
Facts about Walter Rodney
(Source: walterrodneyfoundation.org)

1. Walter Rodney was born in Georgetown, Guyana on March 23, 1942.

2. Walter Rodney came from a working class family. His father Edward was a tailor and his mother Pauline was a seamstress.

3. Walter Rodney was married to Dr. Patricia Rodney and had three children Shaka, Kanini and Asha.

4. Walter Rodney attended Queen’s College, the top male high school in Guyana, and in 1960 graduated first in his class, winning an open scholarship to the University of the West Indies (UWI). He pursued his undergraduate studies at UWI Mona Campus in Jamaica, where he graduated with 1st class honors in History in 1963. Rodney then attended the School of Oriental and African Studies in London where, at the age of 24, he received his PhD with honours in African History. Rodney’s thesis, A History of the Upper Guinea Coast, was published by Oxford University Press in 1970.

5. As a student in Jamaica and England, Walter Rodney was active in student politics and participated in discussion circles, spoke at the famous Hyde Park and, participated in a symposium on Guyana in 1965. It was during this period that Walter came into contact with the legendary CLR James and was one of his most devoted students.

6. Walter Rodney was multi-lingual. He learnt Spanish, Portuguese, French and Swahili which was necessary to facilitate his research.

7. Walter Rodney’s first teaching appointment was in Tanzania before returning to the University of the West Indies, in 1968.

8. Rodney combined his scholarship with activism and became a voice for the under-represented and disenfranchised – this distinguished him from his academic colleagues. He took his message of Black Power, Black Liberation and African consciousness to the masses in Jamaica. In particular he shared his knowledge of African history with one of the most rejected section of the Jamaican society- the Rastafarians. His speeches and lectures to these groups were published as Grounding with My Brothers, and became central to the Caribbean Black Power Movement.

9. Rodney’s activities attracted the Jamaican government’s attention and after attending the 1968 Black Writers’ Conference in Montreal, Canada he was banned from re-entering the country. This decision was to have profound repercussions, sparking widespread riots and revolts in Kingston on 6 October 1968, known as ‘the Rodney Riots.’

10. Having been expelled from Jamaica, Walter returned to Tanzania after a short stay in Cuba. There he lectured from 1968 to 1974 and continued his groundings in Tanzania and other parts of Africa. Walter Rodney became deeply involved in the African Liberation Struggles at that time.

11. Walter Rodney’s participation in African Liberation Struggles influenced his second major work, and his best known –How Europe Underdeveloped Africa. It was published by Jessica and Eric Huntley of Bogle-L’Ouverture in London, in conjunction with Tanzanian Publishing House in 1972.

12. Walter Rodney established an intellectual tradition which still today makes Dar es Salaam one of the centers of discussion of African politics and history. Walter wrote the critical articles on Tanzanian Ujamaa, imperialism, on underdevelopment, and the problems of state and class formation in Africa. Many of his articles which were written in Tanzania appeared in Maji Maji, the discussion journal of the TANU Youth League at the University.

13. Walter Rodney was a Pan-Africanist. He developed close political relationships with those who were struggling to change the external control of Africa and was very close to some of the leaders of liberation movements in Africa. Together with other Pan-Africanists, he participated in discussions leading up to the Sixth Pan-African Congress, held in Tanzania, 1974. Before the Congress he wrote a piece: “Towards the Sixth Pan-African Congress: Aspects of the International Class Struggle in Africa, the Caribbean and America.”

14. In 1974, Walter Rodney returned to Guyana to take up an appointment as Professor of History at the University of Guyana, but the government rescinded the appointment.

15. Walter Rodney joined the newly formed political group, the Working People’s Alliance, emerging as the leading figure in the resistance movement against the PNC government. During this period he developed his ideas on the self emancipation of the working people, People’s Power, and multiracial democracy.

16. On July 11, 1979, Walter, together with seven others, was arrested following the burning down of two government offices. He, along with Drs Rupert Roopnarine and Omawale, was later charged with arson

17. From that period up to the time of his murder, Rodney lived with constant police harassment and frequent threats against his life he nonetheless managed to complete four books in the last year of his life: An academic work: A History of the Guyanese Working People, 1881-1905; A political call to action; People’s Power, No Dictator, and two children’s books: Kofi Baadu Out of Africa and Lakshmi Out of India.

18. On Friday 13 June 1980, a remote control bomb, disguised in a walkie-talkie, handed to Walter Rodney by a senior military officer, Gregory Smith, was the weapon used to assassinate him. The bomb exploded in Walter Rodney’s lap while he sat in a car with his brother in Georgetown, ending his life. He was 38 years old.
Written By Shaun Michael Samaroo