Dear Editor,
WE grew up in colonial times believing that truth and fact were one and the same. Then later we were told to believe that they were different; that fact was actually proven and established truth. Today we are told to accept truth without proof, or to believe the many unverifiable, unproven and unprovable truths which are as numerous as the countless stars above or the myriad mindless minds below.
I am talking about the various truths surrounding the life and works of Walter Rodney who was assassinated this month, 46 years ago. Since his assassination, many truths have been peddled, some diluted, some white-washed, some completely turned over, mostly by Rodney’s former associates who behave as if they have a monopoly on the truth surrounding Rodney’s life and death; ironically however, most of them have made a complete 180-degree turn from the teachings and ideals of Rodney, while some, disgustingly, are openly in bed with his assassins.
To understand who they are, I would like to present my “truth”, and if you can verify it, you can use it as a measuring rod to examine who are really following his teaching, his convictions, his ideals, and who were sitting at his supper, but ended up betraying him.
Walter, the son of a staunch member of the Marxist-oriented PPP, was born in 1942. From a young age, he was exposed to and actively became immersed into working class politics. He attended Queens College, and, having graduated first in his class, won a scholarship to the University of the West Indies where in three years, he graduated with a First-Class Honors BA in History.
It was a time when the Cold War was at its height, reaching its peak in October 1962 during the Cuban Missile Crisis, and the pro-Marxist, Castro-friendly PPP government of British Guiana of which Walter Rodney’s father was a staunch supporter, was receiving its fiercest opposition from the imperialist Kennedy-Macmillan/Churchill coalition. It was a time when Marxism was the fashionable ideology of the emerging third world intellectual. It was a time when African Nationalism, Pan Africanism, Black Power and the Organization of African Unity (OAU) were surging with popularity among Black intellectuals. This was when Walter Rodney emerged on the scene.
Rodney, having earned a first-class degree in History at Mona, went on to the prestigious London University, School of Oriental and African Studies where, at 24, he earned his PhD with honors in African History. After serving a teaching stint at the University of Dar es Salaam in Tanzania, he returned to his Mona alma mater in 1968 as a Lecturer in African History.
While in Tanzania, Rodney had totally immersed himself in all political, social and economic issues relating to the development of Africa, and he believed and strongly advocated that the whole of Africa should pursue a pro-Marxist approach to national development.
In Africa, Rodney publicly advocated for the violent overthrow of African governments run by “petty bourgeois.” Eventually, his friend Julius Nyerere, President of Tanzania began to strongly disagree with him, and published a fierce counter argument that anyone preaching violence would face his wrath. Nyerere later went on to ban the University Students African Revolutionary Front (USARF) – a radical Marxist group Rodney helped to establish.
Rodney’s “radicalism” made many African leaders uncomfortable, and as they began to increasingly institute directives to counter his activities, he returned to his alma mater as a Lecturer, in 1968, bringing to Jamaica with him, his fierce revolutionary fervor.
It must be noted that the young, brilliant and charismatic Walter Rodney attracted young students in Jamaica by the thousands just like he had done in Africa. Eventually, he incurred the wrath of the Hugh Shearer’s government which declared him persona non grata and barred him from entering the island on returning from Canada where he had gone to address a Black African Writers’ conference.
The Jamaican government accused him of inciting a Castro-type revolution and advocating violence in the country, resurrecting a 1962 spite against him for being in possession of “subversive literature” – Che Guevara’s famous text, Guerrilla Warfare, which the Jamaican Authorities seized from him when he was a student at UWI and returning to Jamaica after a Cuban visit.
The 1968 expulsion of Rodney from Jamaica triggered off the “Rodney Riots”, a major wave of protests and civil unrest predominantly by university students and the masses of poor people in Jamaica.
Rodney alternatively returned to his position in Tanzania for roughly five years during which time he became a Professor, produced his magnum opus, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa, published in 1972, and contributed heavily to the intellectual debates surrounding Tanzanian socialism and the whole of the African Liberation struggles more than any known African ever at the time.
He believed that praxis must stand together, if not above pure theory and he therefore incorporated and integrated Che Guevarra’s guerrilla tactics into his Pan African activism. In his lectures and books like The Groundings with my Brothers, Rodney often cited Guevara’s ethos.
He championed Che’s belief that a true revolutionary intellectual must pair theory with immediate, decisive action against imperialism. In brief, Walter was Che. Since he was 18, he was fascinated with Cuba, Castro and Che Guevarra, visiting the island twice after the Cuban revolution, in 1960 and 1962. In Cuba, he bought and studied Che’s book on Guerilla Warfare which, on returning to Jamaica, was confiscated by Authorities.
Feeling a sense of accomplishment in Africa, he returned to his native country, Guyana in 1974, having been promised by the University of Guyana a professorship and the Chair of the History Department. However, upon his arrival in the country, the then Prime Minister, Forbes Burnham rescinded the job offer.
Rodney spent the next five years doing what a sincere politician loves most – “grounding with my brothers” at the grass-root level with all races of Guyanese people in the ghettos, villages and even the riverain and forested areas.
He organised and co-founded the Working People’s Alliance (WPA), a political party, which soon became a powerful force that rivalled both major ethnic parties, the People’s Progressive Party (PPP) and the People’s National Congress (PNC). But the many African leaders or Hugh Shearer of Jamaica, only wanted him out of their countries; Guyana Prime Minister, Forbes Burnham wanted him dead.
Burnham took two years to prepare and train an army sergeant named Gregory Smith to make a bomb in a walkie-talkie set, join the WPA and to cultivate the friendship and earn the trust of Rodney. Burnham succeeded.
Professor Walter Rodney died cruelly and violently at the age of 38, in June 1979, behind the wall of a prison, just like his erstwhile idol, killed at thirty-nine in October 1967 in the obscure Bolivian jungle.
But like all war wagers fail to realise, you may kill an opponent, hound and scatter their disciples all over the world, but you do not kill an idea; because that person becomes a martyr; that idea becomes an ideal, and his few disciples multiply into a multitude.
Sadly, however, at least six of his close disciples in Jamaica were killed, and hundreds were hounded and forced to emigrate. In Guyana, the casualties were even worse. Today, there is probably no one who can claim he is truly “grounded” with Rodney, and that is why, while the man’s ideals would never die, the WPA is in comatose.