tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16711557.post115621689740432981..comments2024-03-24T20:40:46.666-04:00Comments on Pan-African News Wire: Walter Rodney Tribute to George Jackson: Black RevolutionaryPan-African News Wirehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10958190577776906688noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16711557.post-1156217818437009942006-08-21T23:36:00.000-04:002006-08-21T23:36:00.000-04:00Walter Rodney's Guyana Years His 1974 return and i...Walter Rodney's Guyana Years <BR/>His 1974 return and immediate impact<BR/><BR/>By David Hinds<BR/>Originally Published on Sunday, May 29th 2005 <BR/> <BR/>Walter Rodney's impact on Guyana's politics and society can be divided into three broad periods: 1974-78 when he worked tirelessly to mobilize, educate and inspire the Guyanese people towards a new political culture; 1979-80, the last year of his life, when he led a mass rebellion that transformed the political landscape and almost toppled the government; and 1980-92; when the movement that he inspired continued to utilize his ideas to bring about the demise of the authoritarian regime. <BR/><BR/>When Rodney returned to Guyana in 1974 he had already developed a reputation as a radical scholar-revolutionary. After being banned from Jamaica in 1968 for his "radical activities," he left for Tanzania where he continued to be critical of neo-colonialism in the Third World. He had decided to return to Guyana partly because he wanted to practically contribute to the struggle of the oppressed, to give life to what he had been preaching in a space in which he could not be deemed an outsider. So he himself may have been surprised when in 1974, the University of Guyana's academic board decision to appoint him as head of the History department was overturned by the PNC-controlled University Council. Writing on Rodney in the Catholic Standard in 1988, Eusi Kwayana says that Hamilton Greene, a top government functionary, actually moved the motion to rescind the appointment on the grounds that Rodney was a security risk. <BR/><BR/>The African Society for Cultural Relations with Independent Africa (ASCRIA), an Africanist organization headed by Eusi Kwayana, one of the leaders of the independence movement, responded by organizing a protest which took the form of mass rallies held mainly in Georgetown and on the East Coast Demerara in October-November 1974. Rupert Roopnaraine in an interview on CaribNation TV in November 1998, correctly asserts that Walter Rodney "before he set his foot in Guyana was a force for unity." <BR/><BR/>ASCRIA invited most of the opposition parties and pressure groups along with noted individuals to participate in the protest. Kwayana (1988) confirms that although all groups were welcome, particular efforts were made to enlist the participation of the Indian dominated People's Progressive Party (PPP) to give the protest a multiracial character. The first rally, held in Georgetown on October 5, drew a crowd estimated at 3,000 while the others ranged from 500 to 2,000 participants. Kwayana quotes others as saying: "It was like 1953 both in size and multiracial composition," a reference to the multiracial PPP that captured the imagination of the multiracial masses and swept the polls of that year. <BR/><BR/>Obviously surprised by the large crowds and the multiracial nature of the rallies, the PNC responded by attempting to physically prevent them from taking place. Its activists heckled the speakers and engaged in confrontations with sections of the audiences. Particular attention was paid to the fact that Cheddi Jagan, the PPP leader, and Kwayana were appearing on the same platform for the first time in two decades. Kwayana confirms that the PNC was taken by surprise. <BR/><BR/>"Its thugs were unprepared for this public response and had to confine themselves to heckling with racist jibes at the fact that Cheddi Jagan and I had appeared on the same platform after about 21 years - with the exception of a single meeting in 1968 protesting the banning of C Y Thomas from Jamaica. <BR/><BR/>Rodney, from 1974 until his untimely assassination in 1980, became a pivotal force in the country's politics. When he returned to Guyana in 1974 the country was at a critical juncture. First, the ruling Peoples National Congress (PNC) had just instituted its 'Declaration of Sophia,' which declared the PNC party paramount to the state. This declaration marked the culmination of a decade of transition from a liberal authoritarian political order left by the British to a more dictatorial authoritarianism achieved largely through rigged elections and the undermining of civil liberties. The USA's Cold War policy of keeping communist parties such as the opposition Peoples' Progressive Party (PPP) out of power was also a major contributor to the PNC's ability to consolidate power. <BR/><BR/>Second, while there was opposition to the PNC, it was fragmented along racial and ideological lines. The PPP, a communist party with an Indian base, opposed the PNC from the left but could not find common ground with either the other African left-wing groups largely for racial reasons, or the conservative groups for ideological reasons. Since the government did not face a united opposition movement, it was able to consolidate its hold on power with relative ease. <BR/><BR/>Third, the country's racial polarization meant that the PNC was generally able to hold on to the support and loyalty of its African-Guyanese base, despite the government's anti-people policies. This African Guyanese support was crucial in affording the PNC government some degree of legitimacy. <BR/><BR/>It was in this atmosphere that Rodney decided to stay in Guyana despite the denial of employment. While the protest organized by ASCRIA did not force the government to overturn its decision, it marked the birth of a significant period in Guyana's politics. First, it provided the opportunity for those dissatisfied with the government's growing authoritarianism to openly demonstrate their disapproval. Significantly it was the first time that African Guyanese in the capital city, Georgetown, had taken part in any large-scale protest against the PNC. <BR/><BR/>Second, it took to a higher level the Indian-African solidarity that was first demonstrated during the Land for the Landless campaign organized in 1973 by ASCRIA and supported by the Indian Revolutionary People's Associates (IPRA), led by Moses Bhagwan. <BR/><BR/>Third, the protest was the prelude to the announcement in November 1974 of the formation of the Working People's Alliance which served as Rodney's organizational base and a potent medium for the transformation of the country's politics. <BR/><BR/>Finally, it encouraged Rodney to remain in Guyana. According to him in an interview with Colin Prescod published in Race and Class, 1976, "Partly I wish to remain as a matter of personal preference, to be here with my family and friends, and partly because my situation is not unique. It is part of a very widespread economic victimization, which has developed in Guyana." <BR/><BR/>His presence was to have a tremendous influence on the resistance to authoritarian rule in particular and the country's politics in general over the next six years. He became, as Kwayana observes, the one "chosen by the people, in spite of himself and his philosophy, to lead the struggle against the dictatorship." <BR/><BR/>Elaborating on his personal role in a 1980 interview with Margaret Arkinhurst, Rodney observed: "In my own career I have had tremendous good fortune to be exposed to people's struggles in the rest of the Caribbean, particularly in Jamaica, to see Black people struggle in Britain against racism, to participate by proxy and sometimes coming in occasionally with the struggles of Black people in the US in having a very meaningful experience in knowing what it is like to combat imperialism and racism in Southern Africa starting from the Tanzanian base, which, for many years, has been the headquarters of the struggle in Southern Africa. <BR/><BR/>I think I have benefited enormously from those experiences, and in some way or other, I have to try to regenerate that experience with what is happening in Guyana. It doesn't do the Guyanese people any good if that's simply locked away as an element of my own personal development, and I might begin to question myself and doubt my own conclusions and my credibility if, in a situation which requires a certain type of action, it is dictated logically by a mode of analysis and I shirk from that action." <BR/><BR/>Why did Rodney instantly connect with the people? <BR/><BR/>The answer lies partly in the fact that he had already in his short life acquired international fame as a first-rate scholar. His book How Europe Underdeveloped Africa had revolutionized the study of African history and society. <BR/><BR/>Second, at a time when the peoples of the formerly colonized world, especially in Africa and the Caribbean, were coming to the realization that political independence had not fulfilled the promise of liberation, Rodney's stand on their side, his belief that another world was possible and his commitment to fight for it differentiated him from most of the educated class. <BR/><BR/>Third, Rodney was returning to a Guyana that, despite the deep racial cleavages, was beginning to grapple with the question of its racial division. Eusi Kwayana's break with the PNC in 1971 had brought to the fore the class contradictions within the African Guyanese community and opened the door for solidarity across racial lines. When he and ASCRIA sought common ground with Moses Bhagwan's IPRA in the form of the Land for the Landless campaign in 1973, it became clear that racial unity was possible. The early foundation of Rodney's platform was thus created before he returned. <BR/><BR/>Kwayana perhaps best sums up the reason for Rodney's almost instant impact in Guyana; he locates it in what he calls "the consciousness of the working people and marginally to that of other social groups which play and have always played a key role in the forward movement in our countries." He elaborates on this theme: <BR/><BR/>"There has always been something in the Guyanese understanding of life that responds to outstanding scholars. <BR/><BR/>This is true of most formative economies. There is particularly an even stronger something that responds to the victim of oppression. When outstanding scholarship and victim are both combined in the same person, the size and weight of the response rise accordingly. This was the case with Walter Rodney."Pan-African News Wirehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10958190577776906688noreply@blogger.com