A SPECIAL event takes place this evening at the Cipriani College of Labour and Cooperative Studies in Trinidad and Tobago to commemorate the memory of the internationally famous Guyanese historian, Dr Walter Rodney, who was  assassinated 32 years ago today. The two-fold event, which coincides with the 70th birth anniversary of Rodney (March 23 1942) will include a launch of the new edition of Rodney’s famous book “How Europe Under-developed Africa”, with a panel discussion chaired by Professor Norman Girvan.
Panellists will be the noted Caribbean novelist and social commentator George Lamming; Dr Patricia Rodney, widow of the slain  historian; Dr Jerome Teelucksingh, Dr Firoze Manji, and David Abdulah, General Secretary of the Oilfields Workers Trade Union (OWTU)
Rodney was killed at the height of the 1979-80 political struggles in Guyana on the night of June 13, 1980, by a bomb constructed by a soldier of the Guyana Defence Force (Sgt Gregory Smith) who was later exposed as a collaborator with the now late President Burnham’s governing People’s National Congress (PNC).
In his eulogy at Rodney’s funeral at the Roman Catholic Cathedral in Central Georgetown, Lamming, a close friend, had intoned:  “Today we meet in a dangerous land, and at the most dangerous of times. The danger may be that supreme authority, the supervising conscience of the nation, has ceased to be answerable  to any moral law; has ceased to recognise  or respect any minimum requirement of ordinary human decency….”
What was delivered to Rodney’s brother as a walkie-talkie by the reputed electronics expert turned out to be a bomb secreted in the faked device and timed to explode when switched on. The PNC leader and President had openly warned his opponents that “our steel is sharper”.
Rodney was just 38 years old when he was killed. The ex-GDF officer, Smith, who was flown out of Georgetown  on the night of Rodney’s death, and subsequently traced to the French island of Cayenne, was to admit some years before his death that the tragedy was “an accident” but declined to provide details
A definitive scholarly assessment of the slain Guyanese historian has been provided by Professor Rupert Lewis of Jamaica in his book “Walter Rodney’s Intellectual and Political Thought”.
A most significant political development in this year of celebration of
Rodney’s  70th birth anniversary is that the party of which he was a founding-leader, Working People’s Alliance (WPA) is now a coalition member of the parliamentary opposition, A Partnership for National Unity (APNU), of which the PNC is the dominant party.
Ironically, Burnham had labeled the WPA as the “Worse Possible Alternative for Guyana. This anniversary of his assassination is the first since the WPA teamed up with the PNC to form APNU in time to contest last November’s general election that resulted in a joint parliamentary opposition with a majority of one in the 65-member National Assembly;