Acknowledgement page of Rodney’s book: An immense tragedy

Jul 09, 2022 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

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Kaieteur News – With the death of Caribbean giant, George Lamming, We have been reminded that Lamming’s foreword for the Walter Rodney book – “A History of the Guyanese Working People, 1881-1905” contained an appreciation of the role of East Indian indentured labour.

That reminder by Lamming has galvanised me to write on one of the saddest juxtaposition in Guyanese politics. The very page before Lamming’s foreword is the acknowledgement page of Rodney in which he enumerates the names of WPA personalities that helped him to make his book a reality.

Of the names listed there, two are dead – Brian Rodway and Andaiye. As you stare at the page, there is both sadness and anger. How could those persons so close to Rodney change into what they have become since we entered the 21^st century?  How could people so close to Rodney have strayed so far from the multi-racial politics of Rodney?

Or does the fault lie in Rodney himself and we cannot see his formidable shortcomings because (1) – We hate what Burnham was (I know I do). 2- Burnham was responsible for his assassination as the Commission of Inquiry concluded. There are too many African Guyanese colleagues of Rodney that either became racist after 2000 or were closet racist all the time but we couldn’t see it because we were mentally preoccupied with Burnham’s removal.

This is no coincidence that all of Rodney’s Afro-Guyanese comrades today are into one of the following areas of activism – (1) pro-African politics; (2) ethnic perspectives that derecognises the predominantly Indian party’s right to contest electorally for state power; (3) straight-forward anti-Indian politics, pro-PNC, Creole embrace.

You cannot find a single line from any of the surviving comrades of Rodney that speaks to the value of multi-racial politics in Guyana. What is the analysis? I believe the time is long overdue for an iconoclastic review of who Walter Rodney really was. Was he essentially a Black nationalist that had a Black nationalist agenda had he toppled Burnham?

Four things stand out about Rodney from the time he came back in 1974. He was ensconced in a middle class party whose Indian leadership was less than two percent. Secondly, his activities were concentrated mostly among African Guyanese.

Thirdly, he developed not even a superficial much less an involved relation with any Indian organisation of which the PPP would have been a leviathan. Fourthly, his personal socialisation were with African Guyanese with Rupert Roopnaraine being the exception but all Guyanese sociologists would admit Roopnaraine was a Creole Indian who too did not personally and politically involve himself with Indian organisations.

There is a nagging question that juts out conspicuously in your mind as you look at the continuing movement towards Afro-centric politics of the Black (remember Bob Marley’s song a line of which that goes like this: “We’re the survivors, yes the Black survivors) survivors of Rodney.

Did they know something about Rodney’s inner feelings about Black nationalism that non-WPA people and the entire non-African races of Guyanese people in and out of Guyana did not know about? And these survivors feel their gravitation to Afro-centric politics was logical for them because that was how Walter thought about politics after Burnham was removed.

One should point to four events, one in 2010, another in 2011, one in 2020 and another in 2022. The first involved Keith Scott, Walter’s brother-in-law. He was the first in the WPA’s leadership to leave the WPA and join the PNC in 2010. In 2011, the survivors of Rodney agreed to merge the WPA with the PNC renamed APNU.

In 2020 during the election, WPA’s office manager Desmond Trotman wrote a long letter in the newspaper in which he noted that all his actions as a GECOM commissioner would have been accepted by the people in the WPA including Rodney. He actually named Rodney. Finally, from June 1980, the Rodney family has completely eschewed any comment on anything in Guyana.

Their main concern was a commission on Rodney’s death. The family broke their 41-year-old silence when in 2022, they denounced Guyana’s invitation to the President of Brazil because of his discrimination against Black people of Brazil. Is there a pattern here that explains ethnic transformation in the WPA?

When we analyse this transformation from 2022, it is not just random and immature. From the 2002 Mash jailbreak, WPA personnel took a line that was in sympathy with the anti-Indian rampage in Buxton with one leading WPA leader personally involved. Then there was the embrace of Ronald Waddell. Look at the embrace of Afro-centric politics in the WPA today. Would Rodney have gone in that direction? Maybe more research is needed.

(The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of this newspaper.)

 

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