Rodney’s widow wants Jamaica to reverse ban, CARICOM to speak in one voice on assassination
Published:Sunday | July 11, 2021 | 12:11 AM
Dr Patricia (Pat) Rodney – widow of assassinated Guyanese professor Dr Walter Rodney – did not bare her breast in love and grief and marched in Georgetown like Pauline Opango Lumumba did on Valentine’s Day in 1961, a month after her husband Patrice was assassinated.
Lumumba, the then charismatic pan-Africanist prime minister of the independent Congo, like Walter Rodney, was attempting to change the face, fortunes and legacy of European enslavement of Africans – from Africa to the Caribbean – through political activism and education. Lumumba was murdered and to date the family has not received his body for burial. The “Hero without a grave” is how Lumumba is referenced, and Rodney, “brave to the grave”.
Congo’s brutal colonisers, Belgium, have always been blamed for Lumumba’s death, while the Guyanese government was fingered for Rodney’s demise.
Instead, what Dr Patricia Rodney has been doing is fighting institutions and systems to have history rewrite the false narrative about her husband.
She has lived to see that day coming to pass. On the 41st anniversary of Rodney’s murder, Guyana announced that it would take steps to clear his name and legacy, including changing the cause of his death from ‘misadventure’ to assassination.
Last week, Dr Pat told The Sunday Gleaner that she was glad that elements of the truth have been corrected in her, and her children’s, lifetime. Jamaica, she believes, should also do the right thing.
“I think the party that forms the government in Jamaica now is the same one that declared him persona non grata. I think that government has a responsibility to do what’s just and right. He is not alive, but still, he was declared persona non grata under false premises. I think any decent government would want to correct history,” she shared in a telephone interview.
In 1968, Prime Minister Hugh Shearer banned Walter Rodney from returning to his teaching job at The University of the West Indies (UWI), Mona, which led to what is referenced as the Rodney riots in October that year.
Rodney was feared, not because he was a criminal or was unemployed, as Guyana labelled him, but because he was a threat to the political status quo of Guyana and the region, and was rewriting the colonisers’ narrative of Caribbean and African history. He was a Black Power proponent; a leading voice of pan-Africanism, and his magnetic mobilisation prowess made him a threat to the vestiges of colonial social, economic and political dominance in the region.
Rodney was not only banned from Jamaica, but from several countries which cited his visit to Cuba and then USSR as supporting details.
Distinguished internationally for his seminal work ‘How Europe Underdeveloped Africa’, Rodney is also known for his work in ‘A History of the Guyanese Working People’ and ‘Guyanese Sugar Plantations in the late Nineteenth Century’. But it was in ‘The Groundings With My Brothers’, published 1969, that Rodney detailed the reason for the Jamaican ban.
“The Government of Jamaica, which is Garvey’s homeland, has seen it fit to ban me, a Guyanese, a black man, and an African. But this is not very surprising because though the composition of that Government – of its prime minister, the head of state and several leading personalities – though that composition happens to be predominantly black, as the brothers at home say, they are all white-hearted,” he wrote.
HISTORY IS ABOUT TELLING THE TRUTH
Declaring that “history is about telling the truth”, Dr Pat believes the region should speak with one voice to correct history.
“One of the things that has been lacking is a regional voice at the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) level. There have been very few voices over the 41 years that we have been fighting to clear his name. There have been support from some individuals, but the Caribbean has never taken a stance on it,” she explained.
In expressing disappointment with CARICOM, she said despite their claim to be democratic states, they have not spoken in one voice about the violations of her late husband’s human rights.
“They should speak, whether the individuals are personal friends or otherwise. It’s about governing and leadership,” she stated.
Dr Pat said the Commission of Inquiry Report into Rodney’s death implicated the Forbes Burnham government at the time, the army and the police force. She, like several others, also believes that ‘outside’ forces were also involved.
“There was no mention of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in the Commission of Inquiry. That was not clear in the document we saw, but that is something that we know happened throughout the Caribbean, to get rid of all the progressive thinkers,” she stated.
A BIG RELIEF
Dr Pat said the fight has been a family affair.
“Clearing Walter’s name is a big relief for my family because my children grew up with it hanging over them. It couldn’t be avoided. My youngest was nine at the time, so that would have been their life. Their involvements in guiding and helping me have been tremendous. My youngest daughter, Ash, is a lawyer and she made sure the legal issues are covered. I don’t think I could have done this without my children. They have been a tremendous source of my fight, and their fight to clear their father’s name. Even my grandchildren, too, of their granddad,” she stated.
“It was important for me that this chapter is resolved, because 41 years is a long time and I am not getting any younger. This was something that was bothering me and I needed to get this resolved, sooner rather than later.”
On June 13, 1980, 38-year-old Dr Walter Rodney was in the front passenger seat of a motor car in Georgetown, Guyana, with his brother, Donald Rodney. An explosion occurred, killing Walter and wounding Donald, who was tried, convicted and sentenced to 18 months in prison. Forty years later his conviction was set aside by the Court of Appeal and his conviction will be expunged.
By labelling Rodney’s death misadventure, it prevented the family from gaining the proceeds of his life insurance policy.
Now that the record has been set straight, Rodney’s gravesite and memorial will be declared national monuments in Guyana, plus there will be other initiatives to honour his legacy. His death certificate, which described him as ‘unemployed’, will be corrected to read ‘Professor’, and his work will be incorporated into the national school syllabus and distributed to primary and secondary school learners.
Walter Rodney studied at UWI in 1960, graduating with first-class honours in 1963. He completed his PhD in record time and his dissertation on the slave trade on the Upper Guinea Coast – which included Senegal, Gambia, Guinea-Bissau, Guinea, Sierra Leone, parts of Mauritania to the north, and Liberia to the south – was published by Oxford University Press in 1970, and acclaimed for originality.
There was no response to WhatsApp and telephone messages sent Thursday night and Friday morning to Oliver Watt, the corporate relations director at the Ministry of Culture, Gender, Entertainment and Sport, on Dr Pat’s request for Jamaica to also set the record straight regarding her husband.