TODAY marks the 44th death anniversary of Walter Rodney. Since today is Rodney’s death anniversary, the question should be asked – how would Rodney have reacted to the five months of election rigging in 2020.
What follows here is another iconoclastic look at Rodney’s politics. I think a few line faults in Rodney’s activism have been tightly locked up and when we open the box, we may not like what we see. So how would Rodney have approached the five-month fiasco? Would Rodney have condemned it?
One faces a tantalising answer when one examines how the very close comrades of Rodney have evolved after the 2020 election. When this research is done, it leaves you to wonder if Guyana and the world really knew Rodney, and that, in fact, his close comrades knew that essentially, he was Afro-centred and was first and foremost an Africanist who would have taken an Afro-centric position on the election and this explained why they have taken that very attitude.
Not many, but all of the enduring close comrades of Rodney after March 2020 and subsequently have taken up political positions that have been overwhelming shaped by ethnic thinking. Let’s do the research.
1-Since his death in 1980, the Rodney family has not issued any statement on anything about Guyana. The family has stayed completely away from politics.
Strangely, from 1980 to 2022, the Rodney family has been absolutely silent about anything at all to do with Guyana. Then in 2022, the family asked the Guyana Government not to proceed with the visit of then, president of Brazil, Mr. Bolsonaro because Brazil discriminates against Afro-Brazilians. 42 years of silence was broken only to speak about persons of African descent.
2- Bonita Bone was very close to Rodney in the WPA hierarchy. Ms. Bone became the partner of Ronald Waddell. I think all of Guyana knew about Mr. Waddel’s extreme, ethnic ideology.
3 – WPA stalwart, Desmond Trotman, who is a GECOM Commissioner, in describing his behaviour in the five-month election conspiracy, wrote a long letter in the newspapers informing us that Rodney would have supported his position. It appears Trotman knew the real Rodney.
4- Up to his day, Eusi Kwayana maintains that he was not in Guyana in 2020 and cannot comment on accusations of rigging.
5- Moses Bhagwan and Kwayana, two of Rodney’s close comrades, have refused to denounce election rigging and wrote that the election crisis presents an opportunity for power-sharing with the PNC.
6- The closest comrade of Rodney was Rupert Roopnaraine. Roopnaraine gave an interview to the West Indian (newspaper) in which he said that David Granger has always been his friend. Roopnaraine in an interview with Neil Marks intoned that the 2020 election declaration should be made early despite thousands of irregularities. Please note; only the PNC made claims of irregularities.
7 – Nigel Westmaas, Rodney’s protégé told this columnist in April 2020, he cannot comment on the election being rigged.
8- After Roopnaraine and Kwayana, the most enduring camaraderie Rodney had in the WPA was with Clive Thomas. To date, Thomas has not denounced the attempt to dismantle the 2020 election results.
9 – Tacuma Ogunseye, another person that Rodney trusted implicitly has emerged in Guyana as an extremist in racially driven politics.
10- David Hinds was another WPA youth that Rodney nurtured. Together with Ogunseye, they are regarded in Guyana as ethnic preachers.
11 – Kidackie Amsterdam and Deon Abrams, two Buxton youths that grew up in the WPA, embrace the ethnic agenda.
12 – Alissa Trotz, strongly influenced by Rodney as a young girl, is into middle class politics of the Mulatto/Creole class.
13 – Karen de Souza, who was very close to Rodney, shares the identical agenda of Trotz.
14 – At the day of appreciation on Andaiye’s death at the Arthur Chung Convention Centre organised by Roopnaraine’s common-law wife, Joycelyn Dow and Trotz, none of the ten featured speakers were Indian. I counted six Indian persons, including myself at the event attended by hundreds.
15 – Keith Scott, Walter Rodney’s brother in law who Walter trusted implicitly, is openly pro-PNC.
16- Keith Branch, then secretary to Bishop George of the Anglican Church was a crucial hand of support to the WPA in the 1970s. He now heads the group named, Overseas Friends of the WPA. Mr. Branch’s politics like all the names cited above, openly embrace an ethnic agenda.
I have offered 16 names of persons who were either intimate comrades of Rodney or were nurtured by Rodney and today, none of them, I repeat, not one of them write or speak with even fleetingly about multi-racial politics. Did they know who Rodney really was and the world didn’t?