Dr. Walter Rodney: A light that shone so brightly--Dr. David Hinds

Dr.David Hinds, Guyana Chronicle

JUNE 13, 2015 marked the 35th anniversary of the assassination of Dr. Walter Rodney, the renowned Guyanese scholar-activist. Much attention was not paid to marking this occasion as this year’s anniversary came in the midst of the excitement generated by the change of Government after more than two decades. But Walter Rodney is too important a phenomenon to be forever lost in the shuffle of things. This column is targeted especially to those of the younger generations who are most likely unaware of Rodney’s significance to Guyana and the wider world.

When Walter Rodney was born, the Anglophone Caribbean had just experienced a decade of protests which highlighted the miserable conditions under which the majority of people lived. These protests forced the British Government to send a commission to investigate the causes and to make recommendations for a solution. The commission’s report led to the granting of limited self-government to the Region, which speeded up the decolonisation process. Rodney, therefore, grew up with the decolonisation movement. His father was an active member of the colony’s nationalist party, the People’s Progressive Party (PPP), which brought Rodney into contact with radical politics while he was still in primary school.

Rodney won a scholarship to attend the elite Queens College (QC), an opportunity made possible because of changes made to the education system by the PPP Government, which won the country’s first election held under adult suffrage. While at QC, Rodney excelled in academics and athletics but he maintained a keen interest in politics. His years at QC coincided with the split of the PPP into two ethnic factions in 1955. However, he traced his interest and receptiveness to Marxism back to this period. He explained that the PPP’s openness on the issue was an advantage which he and other Guyanese noticed when they arrived at the University of the West Indies.

Rodney entered the UWI in Jamaica in 1960 to study history at a time of growing Caribbean nationalist sentiments. The Region was in the middle of the Federation experiment and the imminence of independence excited Rodney’s generation. He had left a Guyana which had begun to show signs of ethnic confrontation and would not return permanently for fourteen years. It was during his undergraduate years in Jamaica that he became interested in African history. He recounted how when given an assignment on the relevance of Africa and Europe to the Caribbean, he could articulate the relevance of Europe but could not do the same for Africa.

It was at that point that he decided to study Africa. As he puts it “I couldn’t articulate why Africa was relevant. So eventually it was necessary to move in that direction.” (Rodney 1990:14). It was also while at the UWI that he became closely acquainted with the work of CLR James, particularly through his book, The Black Jacobins. James’ use of Marxist methodology to explain the Haitian revolution had a big impact on the young Rodney and helped to crystallize his attraction to Marxism. He also credited his travels to the USSR and particularly Cuba with helping in some small way to propel him in the direction of Marxism.

So, as he left to pursue graduate studies at the School of Oriental and African Studies in England in 1963 he was already armed with an interest in African history and Marxism – one the subject the other the methodology — which would form the basis of his intellectual work. He quickly completed his PhD within three years; his dissertation was on the slave trade on the upper Guinea Coast in West Africa. While in England he sharpened his political consciousness and moved closer to an embrace of Marxism. He attended a study group conducted by CLR James and his wife Selma, who had returned to England following CLR’s falling out with Trinidad’s Prime Minister, Eric Williams.

His first teaching assignment was at the University of Dar Es Salam in Tanzania. Although his preference was West Africa, given his academic specialisation, he felt the unstable politics of Nigeria and Ghana at that juncture would not have facilitated his quest to effectively learn the African society and its politics. He also ruled out Guinea because of the language difference. After spending two years in Tanzania he returned to the University of the West Indies. But after just one term he was banned from Jamaica. The Government considered him a security risk on account of public lectures he had been giving off campus to many Rastafarians and the urban youth. There were huge demonstrations following his expulsion that came to be known as the “Rodney Riots.”

After a short visit to Cuba, he returned to Tanzania in 1969 where he taught for the next five years. In 1974 he left for Guyana expecting to get a job he had applied for at the University of Guyana. But the Government overruled the decision of the Academic Board and denied him the job. Contrary to the Government’s expectations, Rodney decided to stay in Guyana. He joined the newly formed Working People’s Alliance (WPA) and became immersed in the struggle against the authoritarian regime. Within six years he had inspired a broad based mass movement that put the Government on the defensive. On June 13, 1980 he was assassinated in Georgetown, bringing the physical end to a life that shone so brightly while it lasted.

(Dr. David Hinds, a political activist and commentator, is an Associate Professor of Political Science and Caribbean and African Diaspora Studies at Arizona State University. More of his writings and commentaries can be found on his YouTube Channel Hinds’ Sight: Dr. David Hinds’ Guyana-Caribbean Politics and on his website www.guyanacaribbeanpolitics.com. Send comments to dhinds6106@aol.com)