By Chaitram Aklu
(Continuation and conclusion of the June 21 article on the above subject)
ON returning to Tanzania confirmed the direction in which Nyrere and The Tanganyika African National Union (TANU) were heading. Dr Rodney and CLR James the Trinidadian-born historian, Marxist and leading figure in the Pan-African movement withdrew from the 6th PAN-AFRICAN CONGRESS of June 1974 when it was revealed that Nyrere was inviting anti-democratic leaders from Africa and the Caribbean to attend and speak. They feared that would have turned the Congress into a political spectacle. Zeilig writes, “Guyanese President Forbes Burnham had already extracted a promise from Nyrere that he would not allow the Congress to become a platform for anti-Burnham protests.” Robert Hill, Congress collaborator is quoted by Zeilig: “Tanzania and TANU wanted to turn the 6th PAN-AFRICAN CONGRESS into a state-led jamboree of post-independence leaders, bullies, and murderers.” Tanzania’s Peoples President and Ujamaa as the means of transforming the economy were being questioned.

In Chapter Six, Zeilig examines Dr Rodney’s 1975 book: How Europe Underdeveloped Africa (HEUA) in which Rodney skillfully accounted for how Africa became underdeveloped, poor and dependent.

Zeilig referenced HEUA: The gradual incorporation (underdevelopment) of Africa and African labour was exploited “as a source for the accumulation of capital.” And “The African contribution to European capitalist growth extended over such vital sectors as shipping, insurance, the formation of companies, capitalist agriculture, technology and the manufacture of machinery.” Further “Algeria in the earlier 19th century displayed far fewer deficiencies – than by the end of the century – stripped of its millions of hectares of forest, robbed of its mines, of its liberty, of its institutions and thus the essential prop and motor of any collective progress.”

The book also notes: “Schooling, which had been widespread when the French arrived in 1830, was almost completely wiped out. By 1950 UNESCO reported 90 per cent illiteracy among the Algerian population.”

JOB RESCINDED
In September 1974, Dr Rodney returned to his native Guyana, only to find on landing that the job he had accepted at the University of Guyana was rescinded on the direct instruction of Forbes Burnham. Dr Rodney immediately declared that he had returned home to stay. He was offered employment in other countries. Instead, he organised the Working Peoples Alliance (WPA), bringing together pressure groups from the two ethnic groups. The goal was not necessarily to contest elections. However, his wife, a nurse was given a job in the City’s health service.

Dr Rodney would not be intimidated. He took jobs in and out of Guyana, applied for grants to continue his work, including short stints in the US. When Burnham failed to exile Dr Rodney permanently, his wife was also denied the right to work in 1979. He secured a research grant from a Canadian organisation which allowed him to travel and do research. From this grant, he produced his last major work: A History of the Guyanese Working People (1977) in which he presented an historical account of the emergence of working class unity between Afro- and Indo- Guyanese.

At the same time, Dr Rodney became the leader and organiser for the Guyanese people of all races and especially the youths. Zeilig writes about Dr Rodney’s Hamburg lectures from the manuscripts which show, “The lectures give a powerful impression of an activist and thinker in astonishing form. Rodney engages with challenging and wide-ranging issues, including the continent’s past, slavery, independence, and projects of radical socialist development.” He would rebuke the Third World pseudo socialists such as Forbes Burnham and Julius Nyrere whose Ujamaa had failed to transform Tanzania and raise the standard of living of the working people. At one of his meetings in Georgetown, Dr Rodney told a gathering of what seemed like thousands that the electoral road to change in Guyana was blocked but that his Working Peoples Alliance was promising a new government by Christmas.

Dr Rodney was officially invited to join in the independence celebrations of Zimbabwe but because he was banned from leaving Guyana, after he was charged with arson (he was later cleared) in July 1979. He managed to skip out of the country unnoticed and arrived in Zimbabwe via what came to be known as the ‘Rodney Airport’. Burnham was also present at the celebrations.

BODY SEIZED
Dr Rodney was assassinated on the night of June 13, 1980. His body was seized by the government for nearly a week. At a memorial on June 21, at the Brickdam Cathedral, Dr Rodney’s friend and associate George Lamming, who delivered the eulogy, began by telling the audience: “We are gathered here in a dangerous land at a dangerous time.”

CLR James, who had cautioned Dr Rodney’s associates to “take care of Rodney and keep him safe” when Dr Rodney returned home in 1974, chastised Dr Rodney for “taking too many risks”. I agree with James. Dr Rodney in fact did take too many risks. I disagree with those who say that there were divisions in the military, and that would help in the removal of Burnham’s authoritarian regime.  Labour leaders were bought out or intimidated by the regime. No revolutionary leader, including Fidel Castro gave support to any opposition forces in the country. In fact, Castro strengthened relations with the Guyanese leader. And as Zeilig informs us, two leading members of Dr Rodney’s WPA who joined the short-lived 2016 -2020 Coalition Government, of which the largest party was the Peoples National Congress, refused to testify at the Rodney Commission of Inquiry (CoI). Not even mentioned by the CoI were the two senior government ministers who supervised the removal of Dr Rodney’s body to a private mortuary.

The CoI (2016) concluded “that Rodney was the victim of a State-organised assassination on June 13, 1980 and this could only have been possible with the knowledge of then PNC Prime Minister Forbes Burnham,” and that “Gregory Smith was not acting alone but had the active and full support, participation and encouragement of the Guyana Police Force, the Guyana Defence Force, agencies of the State and the political directorate in the killing of Dr. Rodney”.

Finally, Zeilig writes: “What we see in the Archive — and what I have tried to capture in this book – is Rodney’s exhaustive historical work and scholarship.” He has been very successful in doing just that. This book, even with the abundance of footnotes makes a very interesting and informative read.