BRILLIANT historian-politician, Dr. Walter Rodney, killed in an elaborate assassination plot 30 years ago today, has left important lessons for Guyanese and the world from his struggles for the working class.
This was the central message from the feature speaker at a public lecture Friday at the National Library in Georgetown as a series of commemorative activities for the slain Rodney continued.
Assistant Professor of Caribbean and African Diaspora Studies at Arizona State University in the United States, Dr. David Hinds, said Rodney was the most important political person who emerged in the 20th century in Guyana and contended that the political culture which assassinated him was still very much alive today.
Rodney was a bitter critic of the former People’s National Congress (PNC) government led by the late President Forbes Burnham and died when a remote controlled bomb exploded in his lap while he was sitting in his car with his brother Donald.
A former army sergeant, Gregory Smith, was identified as the army’s electronics expert who gave Rodney the bomb disguised as a ‘walkie talkie’ which exploded as Rodney was testing the device on Smith’s specific instructions. Smith fled to French Guiana where he remained until he died several years ago.
Among those at the anniversary lecture were People’s Progressive Party (PPP) General Secretary, Mr. Donald Ramotar; Deputy Vice-Chancellor at the University of Guyana, Mr. Tota Mangar; Dr. Rupert Roopnaraine and others from the Working People’s Alliance (WPA) which Rodney co-founded.
“Not only did he (Rodney) rekindle the independence hype at a period when fear and political barbarianism had taken over, but he also spoke to the world,” Hinds said of Rodney.
He recalled that Rodney faced many challenges upon his return to Guyana from Tanzania in 1974, including how to convince African-Guyanese that an African-Guyanese government (PNC) was not working in their best interest.
Hinds said that although Rodney stressed non-violence, he did not rule out defending one’s life if it was under threat. “Violence for Rodney was the last resort,” he said.
He recalled that some critics have argued that while Rodney was a brilliant academic, he was a naïve politician. Others, he said, have speculated whether or not Rodney would have been able to win an electoral contest in Guyana.
He said that Rodney has been criticized for his alleged encouragement of the use of violence as a political tool and yet others have suggested that the WPA’s decline after Rodney’s assassination reflected both his enormous influence and his weakness.
Hinds said a big lesson that can be drawn from Rodney’s political involvement is that inter-ethnic solidarity is possible if it is mobilized outside of the struggle for political office.
“Rodney succeeded largely because he explained power as belonging to the people and not to the politicians. He re-conceptualized the meaning of power in a way that minimized the fears of both (the African and East Indian) groups”, he said.
A second lesson of Rodney’s activism in Guyana is the importance of political flexibility in the face of authoritarian governance, he said.
Third, Hinds said, Rodney’s intervention in the country proved the effectiveness of the self-activity approach. “He relied on the initiatives and energies of the people…,” he said.
According to Hinds, Guyana, in many respects, has been and remains a unique political space and while it has much in common with the other Anglophone Caribbean countries and with other ethnically divided societies, it has some peculiarities that set it apart from the others.
Hinds attributed this to the complex mix of ethnicity, race and ideology and the way in which these have separately and together penetrated the mass consciousness.
Rodney was sharply critical of the ‘middle class’ for its role in the post-independence Caribbean.
He was also a critic of capitalism and argued for a socialist development template.
When the Jamaican government, led by Prime Minister Hugh Shearer, banned him, in October 1968, from ever returning to the country, because of his advocacy for the working poor in that country, riots broke out, eventually claiming the lives of several people and causing millions of dollars in damage.
These riots, which started on October 16, 1968, are now known as the ‘Rodney Riots’, and they triggered an increase in political awareness across the Caribbean.
When Rodney returned to Guyana, he was supposed to take a position as a professor at UG but the then government prevented his appointment.
He became increasingly active in politics, forming the WPA against the PNC government.
In 1979 he was arrested and charged with arson after two government offices were burned.
Rodney was survived by his wife, Patricia, and three children.
In 2004, Rodney’s widow and children donated his papers to the Robert L. Woodruff Library of the Atlanta University Centre.
Since 2004, an annual ‘Walter Rodney Symposium’ has been held each March 23 (Rodney’s birthday) at the center under the sponsorship of the Library and the Political Science Department of Clark Atlanta University, and under the patronage of the Rodney family.
(Additional information taken from Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia)