Dear Editor,
On June 13, the progressive and democratic forces in Guyana, the Caribbean and the wider world commemorated the 40th anniversary of the assassination of Walter Rodney.
He was just thirty-eight years old when he died. Indeed, he has been dead longer than the period he lived. However, the impact he had made during his lifetime still reverberates to this day.
At the time of his passing, Guyana was going through multiple crises: economic, social, physiological and political; and the PNC dictatorship was becoming more oppressive and brutal.
It had already ‘graduated’ to using murder as a political tool. Apart from shooting two youths on the Corentyne who were demanding to have the votes of the 1973 elections counted at the place of poll, others were also shot down in that period. Ohene Koama had been killed by the Police in cold blood not long before Rodney met his death.
Rodney therefore knew that the possibility of him being assassinated was great. He had two options: leave, or face the danger posed by the PNC regime. He chose to stay and try to play a part in the fight for democracy. I believe he felt it was a responsibility as a conscious African-Guyanese leader.
Rodney’s killing was also a racist act. One of the reasons for his killing was that he was a black man opposing a regime that falsely gave the impression it was representing African-Guyanese interests. Like now, that racist propaganda was resorted to for several purposes. On one hand, it allowed persons in the small cabal that led the PNC to enrich themselves through massive corruption and hope to keep the militant Afro-working class quiet, since the cabal appealed to racial solidarity and the artificial fear of “coolie domination”.
By creating the false impression that it was an African-Guyanese party, the PNC obstructed the Afro-working class and farmers from gravitating to progressive ideas; ideas of patriotism, of need for working class unity and solidary. Those ideas were propagated by the People’s Progressive Party.
Whenever the working people became agitated because of the deteriorating economic situation, the regime responded by generating fear of the PPP as a “coolie party”. For example, this was seen when, in 1971, the workers of Linden rose up to defend their Pension Fund, and invited Dr Cheddi Jagan to speak with them; this was after Burnham had refused their invitation. The PNC responded by frightening the workers with the racial line of “coolie domination”.
Rodney understood this completely. He saw that the working people of our country were being oppressed by a small cabal whose main interest was to enrich itself at the expense of the people. He must have realised that the way forward was to break the fear factor that the PNC had used so effectively. He helped to shift the debate to issues and principles.
The views that Rodney expressed during his efforts to bring about change were not really new. Those views were being pushed by the People’s Progressive Party in the society. Cheddi Jagan was championing similar ideas all his political life.
However, Rodney did not join the PPP when he returned to Guyana in 1974. He knew that, had he done so, the PNC cabal would have labelled him a ‘coolie stooge’. He saw that happening all the time. As a historian he would have seen that African-Guyanese PPP members and supporters were viciously attacked and labelled “stooges”.
His first public meeting in Guyana was in Campbellville. He spoke on the platform of Comrade Brindley Benn’s People’s Vanguard Party. It was a meeting in solidarity with the African Liberation Movement.
While Rodney was speaking, a known old PNC heckler and disruptor of PPP meetings started to heckle by shouting: “Jagan, you lie!” That evoked a big laugh from the crowd.
However, the heckler — who at that time had never heard of Walter Rodney; never heard nor seen him before — was recognising the message that he was delivering; it was familiar to him, thus the heckle.
The PNC cabal recognised the danger that those messages from an African-Guyanese were now espousing: The African-Guyanese masses would become more receptive to similar views that the PPP popularised. Moreover, many progressive and democratically- minded African-Guyanese, who had witnessed the vicious attacks that African-Guyanese PPP members and supporters had had to endure, and who previously were reluctant to come out in support of the PPP, now had another place to go.
Many young Indian-Guyanese also gravitated to Rodney. They were people who were influenced by the PPP, and had seen an opportunity of openly opposing the PNC without being branded as racists. This was seen in many of the activities of the WPA.
At the height of what the WPA called “The Rebellion”, young Indian boys were often in the forefront, confronting the PNC. I saw that happening when a WPA meeting was broken up at John Forde Car Park, and when the PNC immediately thereafter held a meeting at the same spot. The PNC could not start its meeting for quite some while, and was forced to retreat to another spot in the area.
The race card that the PNC played every time it found itself in problems was becoming ineffective, because Rodney was an African- Guyanese whose message was for unity of the people. His understanding of the racial issues was deep. He did not have a “one size fits all” solution to every racial issue.
In the book “Walter Rodney Speaks”, he said he tried to make it clear that the way in which one was using the word “black” in a West Indian context must, of necessity, embrace the majority of African and Indian populations. “And the reason I did that was because I knew that the word ‘black’ could well be interpreted in a narrow sense to mean African, and hence anti-Indian”, he explained.
The PNC regime found his ideas too close to those of the PPP, and too dangerous for them. They resorted to beating up people attending Rodney’s meetings to dissuade them from attending. They threatened people, dismissed some and jailed some; but that did not deter Rodney. To silence him, they once more took the path of political murder. On June 13, 1980, they accomplished the job by killing him.
However, what he accomplished in his short lifetime has become much more obvious today. One main contribution that he made was to help raise the consciousness of our people, to make them realise that we could not exist in the same old way; change was necessary. He helped many Guyanese, Afro-Guyanese in particular, to break the mental chains that the PNC used to imprison their minds. He reinforced the argument that democracy was indispensable to the resolution of the nation’s problems – economic, social and political. It is only through having a democratic system that all other questions would be resolved, questions of race and ethnicity. At the heart of democracy are free and fair elections; this is inescapable.
While we observe this date, it is important to point out that we must not take democracy for granted. We must always guard freedom as the apple of our eye. No matter what political party one may support, we would be making a big mistake to think that an undemocratic regime can bring sustained all-round progress.
The lack of democracy leads to dictatorship, and inevitably to social and economic decline and political oppression.
Few would accept that what occurred in the March 2020 Elections, in which the PNC were caught red-handed trying to steal votes, was the first time this had happened. It is clear to most that what was attempted in 2020 had succeeded in 2015. That explains why the regime was so reckless in dealing with the state’s assets and property, behaving as if it was their own. There was this mad rush to get rich quickly; they were neither accountable nor transparent.
They felt they would always get away with rigging. However, times have changed, Walter Rodney made a significant contribution to put us back on the democratic path in 1992. He lost his life fighting for democracy and integrity in public life. We owe it to him to ensure that we don’t go back to that period of paramountcy.
In the memory of all those who fought gallantly for this country’s freedom, one of whom was Walter Rodney, let us not allow undemocratic government ever to succeed.
Sincerely,
Donald Ramotar
Former President
