Rodney a fighter for unity, justice and dignity (Pt 1)

Dear Editor,
June 13, 2018, is exactly 38 years since Walter Rodney was assassinated by the People’s National Congress (PNC) regime. It is a very significant anniversary, since Rodney would have been dead as long as he lived, thirty-eight years.
Yet, this young man’s life is still remembered by ordinary people years after he died. He is being remembered because of the life that he lived, the contribution he made to the cause of the oppressed in Guyana, the Caribbean, Africa and the world.
Walter Rodney was not just a substantial intellectual. He was recognised as a very powerful historian and his work on Africa’s history have become classics. The difference with Rodney and most of the other intellectuals was that he was an activist. Theory and practice went hand in hand. He was not an armchair general.
He was an advocate of black power and was deeply concerned and moved by the plight of working people in Africa and the Diaspora.
However, he was not a racist. In his application of black power to the Caribbean he was completely inclusive, it was for him all the oppressed peoples. He was one who advocated and worked for unity of working people. This was seen in his approach to the Guyanese situation in particular and to the Caribbean more generally.
I have had the privilege to have heard many of the speeches he made when he returned to Guyana in 1974. I must of herd most of those delivered in Georgetown.
To me, he was probably the only African Guyanese leader, outside of the People’s Progressive Party/Civic (PPP/C), to have consistently carried a line for unity of all working people.  He never sought to use his obvious standing in society to put one race against the other. His intellectual integrity and honesty always came through in his every presentation
This is where he stood head and shoulder above his colleagues.
Indeed, I have noted elsewhere he stood alongside Cheddi Jagan in the politics, in both content and form that he advocated. Honesty and sincerity are the hallmarks of this politics.
That is why he took a strong position against the PNC regime. He stood for justice. He did not just blindly idolise black people. He also made a distinction between oppressors and oppressed in that group as well.
His disdain for the PNC dictatorship was marked. He was truly saddened and moved by the way the PNC used race to mislead African Guyanese and to make the black working people develop hostility to the Indian working people. This was most manifested in his active support for Arnold Rampersaud, a PPP activist, who was framed with a murder, charged and the PNC worked hard to hang.
It also came through clearly in his solidarity with the sugar workers strike in 1977.
Today, we are observing his life’s work at a time when the gains we have made is being once again lost as the PNC-led A Partnership for National Unity regime has taken up where the PNC left.

Sincerely,
Donald Ramotar
Former President