Guyana Still To Come To Grips With Walter Rodney's Ideas

[Ɔkyeame Kwame]

GUYANA STILL TO COME TO GRIPS WITH RODNEY’S IDEAS
by: dhinds

Twenty-two years after Walter Rodney's assassination, Guyana still struggles to come to grips with some of the fundamental issues that occupied his energies and eventually led to his demise. Yet, there can be no doubt that Dr. Rodney's contribution to the country's struggle to overcome its harsh legacy of racial polarization and political and economic underdevelopment is second to none. If any individual could be credited with rallying the country at that crucial juncture in the 1970s to escape its racial and class prisons and confront the dictatorial imposition of the time, that individual is Walter Rodney.

He is therefore an important part of our historical struggle for a dignified nationhood. His assassination, therefore, is part of Guyana’s and the Caribbean’s sorry history of counter-revolution, whereby we murder the best in and of us to preserve the worst in and of us. I say “we” deliberately, for while those who occupied the seat of power hatched the plan, all Guyanese, either through our racial stubbornness, partisan jealousy, or class complicity with the status quo, facilitated the execution of the crime. And we have continued to assassinate Walter Rodney these last 22 years. The collective pain we feel today as the worst in us senselessly drown our destiny in daily doses of blood while our leaders engage in their customary political sparring match can be traced right back to that Friday June 13 some 22 years ago. On that night the dictatorship surrendered to the worst in us and in the process opened floodgates that even our current pretense at democratization cannot stop.

Some invoke Rodney’s name but bury his ideas while others laud his academic brilliance as an abstraction rather than the active tool of empowerment and liberation that it was and is. Were Walter to return to our midst he would hardly recognize himself or his legacy. He would see his murderers walking free without any concerted effort to bring them to book. He would see a chair in his name at the University of Guyana, but no course or set of courses dedicated to systematically study his ideas. He would learn that he was awarded Guyana’s highest national award, but he would be told that he is irrelevant because 98% of the people voted against his idea of a shared management of our collective affairs.

He would read in the national newspapers that he was not a black man. He would see a people he once inspired to join hands and hearts being locked in their fiercest battle yet to racially monopolize the seat of power. He would see the working class, the salt of the earth, abandoning its class duty at the altar of racial- tribal solidarity.

Walter Rodney would be disappointed in Guyana, but he would immediately get to work to turn back the situation. Just as he removed the nationalist mask that concealed Burnhanism, he would set about removing the democratic mask that today conceals official corruption, opportunistic politics, and political witch-hunting. He would confront the runaway crime in the society by speaking to its root causes. He would go to the Buxtons and Albions and ground with the brothers and sisters to understand and motivate them to confront their problems with people’s soul power. He would confront the hypocrisy emanating from both Freedom House and Congress Place.

Walter Rodney would come face to face with assassination again, but he would not flinch. That was his ultimate asset--never buckle in the face of political bullying. Unlike others, Walter Rodney will never be the "Father of the Nation," but his ideas are still the most potent blueprint for genuine nationhood. Sadly, even those who love him do not study his ideas and promote them.

But despite consistent efforts to put a wedge between him and the carriers of his torch, his example still keeps some of us going, The plot is simple: discredit them and we wont have to deal with his ideas. But try as they may, its only a matter of time before those ideas take flesh. As Rodney himself said “This act in itself will not delay their day of judgment.” Walter Rodney lives!

June 13th, 2002

Guyana OnLine