Today is the 41st anniversary of the assassination of Dr Walter Rodney by GDF Sgt. Gregory Smith, who was simply the agent of Forbes Burnham and his Government, which had declared Rodney an enemy of the state. They had actually charged him with torching Congress Place, which was then located in Georgetown, but were unsuccessful in their prosecution, if not their persecution. At his December 1979 Congress, six months before the assassination, Burnham had advised Rodney and cohorts to “make their will”, since his “steel was sharper”. The assassination plans had to have been already afoot.
What was Rodney’s legacy, especially in the fractured polity that has remained as divided as he found it when he returned to Guyana permanently in 1974? First and foremost was his stance on the responsibility of Caribbean intellectuals – to be distinguished from academics who only concern themselves with examining people as objects; to ground themselves with the labouring people who still form the bedrock of our societies. Unlike what the British colonials had imparted, as described in the words of George Lamming, who was Rodney’s friend and fellow intellectual in this spirit, the intellectual must work to free “Caribbean society (which) has been crippled by this artificial status which separates the educated from the uneducated. In every location where he studied and worked – Jamaica, Tanzania and Guyana – Rodney identified with, and worked for, the masses. Today, sadly, this tradition appears to have disappeared.
Another, and probably the most lasting legacy of Rodney, was his recognition of the salience of race in the sociology and politics of Guyana – even in the face of some Marxists who dismissed the notion as “false consciousness”. In this, he followed the advice of another grounded Caribbean intellectual, CLR James, who as a matter of fact mentored him and a group of students in London when he was at the SOAS. To wit that in politics, “to neglect the racial factor as merely incidental is an error only less grave than to make it fundamental.” More than any other politician before or since, Rodney attempted to deal with the question of race, even as he accepted that the question of class was never absent.
Rodney demonstrated that while each Guyanese must be proud of their ethnic heritage and background, their political praxis must not be for any one race to dominate others, but to ensure that all Guyanese are treated equally, especially in relation to sharing the national patrimony.
This perspective is even more critical at this juncture, since the PNC, after being dragged kicking and screaming from office after they lost the elections, have once again resorted to playing the race card – even to the extent of not joining the PPP Government in exhorting their constituents to be vaccinated against the COVID-19 killer virus.
Another legacy of Rodney was to be realistic about the nature of the PNC in efforts to build “national unity” and to recognise that “it takes two to tango” in politics. If there is not the necessary commonality in world views in accepting the legitimacy of others to share the political space, then all efforts at developing Guyana would founder. He noted that the PNC’s Machiavellian world view is dominated by the drive to PNC paramountcy über alles. In 1979, he disagreed with the PPP’s insistence that the PNC should be included in a Government of national unity. The PNC, he said, as the problem, could not be part of the solution.
Finally, the last legacy was sadly passed on through his assassination, which demonstrates that the PNC would go to any length to remain in power. The Rodney COI that was initiated by President Ramotar in 2014 proved that Burnham was behind the deadly deed. We should therefore not have been surprised at the violence following the 1997 elections under Hoyte, segueing under Corbin, and erupting in West Berbice under Granger.
The PNC’s 2019 attempted elections rigging was almost benign in comparison. But still in character.
