Dear Editor,
Monday, June 13th, 2022, Guyanese as well as the diaspora commemorate the 42nd Anniversary of the assassination of Walter Rodney. Most people who knew Walter knew him for his street activism, very few knew him as a family man and of the love his family bestowed upon him.
I met Walter Rodney in February 1979, when he and two other field activists were doing some groundwork in East Ruimveldt. I had returned to Guyana three months earlier after spending seven years in Latin America. When Walter came to my home I was carving a map of Africa. We spent some time talking, I related my experiences in Latin America which was a world of revolution and he in turn spoke of the class nature of Guyanese society and the dynamics of the Guyanese struggle.
The next time Walter visited my home he came alone and I took him around to meet with my neighbours in California, at that time East Ruimveldt was considered the heartland of the People’s National Congress (PNC). Walter knocked at every door, at first people expressed some apprehension but Walter’s simple manner in which he spoke instantly persuaded people that he was on the side of the downtrodden. Sometime after we ventured into Warlock and deep into the PNC heartland. Walter Rodney brought out of East Ruimveldt some committed youngsters who became the ‘Brigade’, the distribution unit of the Working People’s Alliance (WPA).
Walter would invite me to his home where I met his wife Patricia and kids. I mentioned this because very little has been said of Rodney’s family, the hurt and pain they suffered. I was moved to tears when I visited Patricia on the night of June 13th. I met Fr. Malcolm Rodrigues there, myself and other members of the `Bri-gade’ from East Ruimveldt, at the home which was raided by the political police under the National Security Act.
It rained heavily that night, and in the morning we saw a heap of yellow paper that said Walter Rodney had been blown up beyond recognition in an attempt to blow up the Georgetown prison. Linden Forbes Burnham, the Maximum Leader of the PNC was desperate and since before the assassination of Fr. Bernard Darke on July 14th, 1979, had warned the WPA to make their wills and of his sharper steel.
Walter spoke of Burnham’s intention to impose on Guyanese a new constitution that would invest him with all the power of an old-time King during a meeting at Bourda. On August 22nd he said that Burnham wanted so much to become King but the only King he could become was “King Kong”. The crowd burst into laughter and the chant that followed was “Who must go?”, “King Kong must go!” Burnham cracked up and let loose his dogs of war. Seventy-five days after Walter’s assassination, Burnham passed his draconian “New People’s Constitution” over the bodies of many…followed by an unprecedented wave of migration.
Dr. Cheddi Jagan and the PPP had faded into the background and again regained their lost ground. Walter Rodney was deemed an adventurer and in Indian communities, people were reminded of what the PNC would do to their families. The bogey of the 60s was resuscitated but the great betrayal of the Guyanese nation was to follow when the PPP gained power, the promise made to the Guyanese nation to rewrite the Guyana Constitution. Which the PPP deemed “the concoction of a mad dictator” and had even boycotted the parliamentary session for on October 6th, 1980.
Thirty years later, Guyanese continue to be misruled with the return of the PPP to office and despite all the mealy-mouthed talk of `One Guyana’, we see the oil/gas wealth being given away to the PPP and their cronies.
I have written once again to remind President Ali that he came to government on the basis of fairness and not selectivity. The commemoration of Walter Rodney’s 42nd anniversary comes at a time in which the masses of Guyanese are grounded in poverty and the undermining of our democracy by way of the continued rule of our country for 42 years by a constitution that was imposed on Guyanese and for which Walter Rodney lost his life.
Yours faithfully,
Desmond Alli
(General Secretary of the GUA)
