DR. Walter Rodney was a shining star in the firmament of the black collective of the Guyanese nationhood. He was the pride of the African Diaspora, and even African nationals could have claimed him for their own; because, without sacrificing his Caribbean/West Indian persona and his Guyanese identity, he related to the African motherland in his writings and his application to existentiality.But one inexpressibly evil man truncated the earthly existence of this glory of Africa, and shattered the hope of the oppressed Guyanese nation one fateful day thirty-four years ago.

The deafening blast of a bomb disguised as a walkie-talkie, provided to Walter by Sergeant Gregory Smith of the Guyana Defence Force on 13th June 1980, killed Walter Rodney and his freedom movement simultaneously; because, as has been proven unequivocally through the defection of his former comrades right into the embrace of his murderers, Walter Rodney was the WPA. Without him that party was obliterated – shattered, as it were, by the very bomb blast that killed Walter.

The Lord Jesus Christ was betrayed by Judas Iscariot in the Garden of Gethsemane, and was thrice denied by Peter; but even until today, Walter Rodney is being betrayed time and again, surprisingly by his former comrades-in-arms, who have joined with the political party they once accused of murdering their leader and other comrades-in-arms, and of various acts of terror, oppression and suppression against themselves and other freedom fighters in the land, who were relentlessly persecuted and even murdered by the dictator of Guyana.

But it was the members of Dr. Cheddi Jagan’s People’s Progressive Party and Walter Rodney’s Working People’s Alliance who were his primary targets.

However, this editorial relates to Walter Rodney and the simultaneous demise of both himself and his freedom movement.

On 18 November 1979, WPA activist Ohene Koama was shot dead by the police in South Georgetown. The WPA said he was unarmed, and they accused the police of murder. Three months later, on 25 February 1980, Edward Dublin, another unarmed WPA member, was shot to death by the police in Linden.

The endemic fear in the nation — engendered by relentless persecution over most often trivial issues, for instance criticism of the regime and/or Forbes Burnham — compounded by massive unemployment through destruction of the agricultural, productive and manufacturing sectors, resulted in waves of retrenchment; ‘redeployment’, where public servants were sent to work in fields, clean drains and dig ditches; enforced purchase of ‘defence bonds’ to boost the bankrupted economy; as well as the unrelenting hardship of dysfunctional systems nationwide and lack and/or scarcity of the most basic items, including essential foodstuff, drove mass migration, as reported by the Catholic Standard of 16th May, 1982.

But not everyone had the wherewithal and the opportunity to run away from Guyana; so Rodney’s freedom movement, which he was on the verge of joining to the decades-long struggle of Dr. Jagan’s People’s Progressive Party, was a formidable threat to the dictator, who recognized that he was finished unless this young and vibrant voice preaching anarchy was silenced.

It had been Dr. Cheddi Jagan’s primary goal and passionate dream throughout his life to nurture the people of Guyana into a united Guyanese nation living in peaceful prosperity in a country that provides equitable opportunities for progress and lifestyle enhancement for all the people in the land. And it was a goal he was close to achieving during the 1940s and 50s; but it was a dream that was shattered by an evil man’s egomaniac duplicity and by external forces driving their own agendas. This combination created such mayhem in the nation through the X-13 plan and a consequential division between the two main races in the country that wounds were inflicted which, until today, cannot be healed because the protagonists are still there formulating Machiavellian plots of destabilization and destruction. Their plots include even wanton murder of innocents, all for agendas to promote self-aggrandizement and self-enrichment.

But the young Walter Rodney was a delight to the veteran freedom fighter Dr. Cheddi Jagan, who saw in the idealistic and courageous Walter a vehicle to drive his dreams of national unity and cohesion of national-building endeavours through a revived spirit of the pre-Burnham years.

The injustice done to the Rodney family, the Guyanese nation, and the Pan-African movement has never culminated in any closure for those grieving the loss of Walter Rodney, until the Rodney Commission of Inquiry provided that platform for investigation into one of the most dastardly, cowardly, and evil acts to have ever been perpetrated on the soul of humanity – the wanton and iniquitous slaughter of the budding hope of Guyana by one of the most malevolent creatures to have ever walked the earth on two legs.

But the hope of justice is gradually being dimmed, because the evil still pervades through the acolytes of the dictator, as one could gauge from the writings of Adam Harris in his column in the Kaieteur News of Sunday, 1st June, where he is calling on former confederates who enjoyed the good life under Burnham to testify to a different ethos and truth than that being revealed at the RCoI.

Would Walter Rodney and those who loved him finally get justice? Not if the acolytes of Burnham have their way.