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| WALTER RODNEY 25th ANNIVERSARY COMMEMORATION COMMITTEE |
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Widow hopes celebration of Rodney's life brings
healing Patricia Rodney, wife of assassinated WPA leader, Dr Walter Rodney hopes the celebration of her husband's life "would bring some semblance of healing for the Guyanese people as they struggle to overcome adversity and rebuild the country that he truly loved." Addressing a large gathering at the Queen's College auditorium on Friday at the formal opening of a series of commemoration activities to mark the 25th anniversary of the assassination, Rodney, who received a standing ovation as she stood to make her presentation, said she constantly hoped the contributions he made towards the liberation of all working people were not in vain. That he would not ask anyone to do anything he was not prepared to do himself, she said, was what made him unique. As such, "we need to keep his name alive through our everyday actions and not become armchair revolutionaries or pseudo-intellectuals." Rodney, who left Guyana before her husband was buried and returned on Wednesday for the first time in 25 years, said it was important that young people in particular saw him as an ordinary man who did extraordinary things. "… a man who was committed to social justice, equity and human rights. We would be doing him a disservice if we made him into this super-human being, someone who no one can emulate. He did not want to be a martyr and we must not turn him into a saint." She said people often asked her what Walter would think or would have done if he were alive and her usual response was she did not know since his work was dynamic and he would have responded to the conditions faced today. "I know that at 63 years his work would have matured and become more profound. Sometimes, I found it difficult to recognise the person many people knew as Wally or Baba Shaka when I read reports that often appear to make him very sterile and do not reflect the vibrancy of this man," she said. There were two things he hated, she said, one was titles; and he would not have liked the word "Rodneyite" which is constantly used. She described the last 25 years as a long and painful journey at times, where she tried to accept the reality of his death and being thrown into the role of single parent. "On June 13 1980 at 8.38 am, I lost my best friend, my husband and our children lost a father. He was in no way perfect but he was the best of Caribbean men." She recalled leaving Guyana at age 38, "leaving behind Walter's body." Personally, she said, "I have grown because I had the privilege of knowing him. Describing him also as a reliable and trusted friend who was over-generous with his time and hers, she said, "I would be lying if I said that our six years in Guyana were some of our best years. I arrived with the children in July 1974 to a very unwelcoming environment. Despite this I was able with support from family and friends to achieve a semblance of stability for the children. By the time Walter arrived in Guyana the children were at school. I had a job and we had bought a home. I went off to study in 1979, to finish off my degree in Mona Jamaica. When I returned from studying I was told that I was overqualified for the job I had. So that at one time, both of us were unemployed for several months." She recalled that her husband loved to use his hands and build things. "He made all our bookcases and a beautiful dollhouse for our girls. He was an extremely humble and unassuming man. Once I remember a certain trade unionist came to visit my father. Walter was in the yard either building something or cleaning up. This gentleman who got out of his chauffeured driven car passed Walter without acknowledging him presumably because he thought he was only a day-labourer, a gardener or a handyman. While talking to my father he reminded him that he had never introduced him to his famous son-in-law, Dr Walter Rodney. My father responded 'you just passed him in the yard.'" She said he embodied two personas, the very public, most talked and written about man, and the very private man that she knew. "Walter could not have become the man he was, were it not for his nurturing parents, Edward and Pauline Rodney," who schooled him to be sensitive, caring and cognizant of his origins. She recalled meeting him for the first time in the early 50s at an Old Year's Night party in Brickdam and again on New Year's Day at a mutual friend's christening after which he returned to Jamaica and she left for London. She said they corresponded for three years and she saw him once during that period. He moved to London in 1963 and they were married on January 2, 1965. "Mention is often made that he achieved his PhD at the young age of 24 years. However, he was a father first and a PhD, second. Shaka [the eldest child] was born at noon and Walter got his degree at 3 pm on July 5, 1966. His famous telegram to Uncle Henry said, 'Son. Shaka. PhD received on the same day. Pat and the baby are well.' Dr Rodney left almost immediately for Tanzania and we did our first stint for one year prior to him relocating to Jamaica in 1968 for what turned out to be a very short stay." Walter, she said reunited with the family in Tanzania in June 1969 when Kanini, the second child, was three months old. One of her names, a Yoruba name, given by Dr Adeola James, means born while the father is away. As a fun person, she said that he loved music and being a disc jockey at parties. Some of his favourite artistes were Bill Withers, Curtis Mayfield, Bob Dylan, Mighty Chalkdust, Al Green and Jimmy Cliff. "Walter loved life and living and his tastes were very simple and
ordinary. He loved family, which included a large extended family... He
loved playing dominoes, bridge, chess, monopoly, scrabble and animal kingdom
with equal enthusiasm. Walter loved spending time with the children and
would participate in any game they chose. Daddy was often the fun person
while Mom was the disciplinarian," she said. (Miranda La Rose) St Vincent to offer Walter Rodney Scholarship The country's Prime Minister Dr Ralph Gonsalves made the announcement during the keynote address at the launching of a series of commemoration activities to mark the 25th anniversary of the assassination of Dr Walter Rodney at the Queen's College auditorium on Friday evening. Gonsalves, who was tutored by Rodney at the University of the West Indies, Mona campus, Jamaica in the late 1960s, was one of several local and international figures from the political and academic community at the groundings. Others included President Bharrat Jagdeo and Prime Minister Sam Hinds, Chair of the International Commemoration Committee, Jamaican Horace Campbell, Kenyan Professor Ali Mazrui, businessman Vic Insanally, activist Andaiye and flautist Keith Waithe. Gonsalves said Rodney was born in a period, which fashioned the 38 years he lived. He was born in 1942 in the midst of the war arising from imperialist rivalry and in a colonial country. When he was 11 years entering secondary school the Guyana constitution was suspended and according to Guyana's poet laureate Martin Carter, it was a carnival of misery and a festival of guns. Shortly after, the unity of the working people was ripped asunder through the machinations of American imperialism, British colonialism and the connivance of an opportunistic section of the political class in Guyana. Internationally, he lived through that period witnessing the constitutional decolonisation process in the Caribbean, Africa and Asia and the war in Vietnam - which taught among other things that if money were everything the Americans would not have lost the war, the Cuban revolution, the struggles for Black people, human rights called civil rights in the USA and organised attempts in countries, including the developing world for working people to resist oppression. Stressing that Rodney did not just die, Gonsalves said, "he was cut down in the prime of his life by assassins... while the alleged assassins may be dead those who set the context for the assassination are still around in the region." Gonsalves met Rodney in January 1968, as a second-year student reading for a Bachelor's Degree in Economics at UWI, Mona, Jamaica. Rodney, four years his senior, was his tutor from January to July in 1968 but they held a lot of discussions outside the classroom. He recalled Rodney that said even though he was a descendant of indentured servants from Madeira he was a Black man, "because the Blackest man in the hemisphere is Fidel Castro." Dominoes, he said, featured in the connection between them and it was the only subject about which Rodney was immodest. Gonsalves became President of the students' union in August 1968. In October 1968 Rodney was banned from re-entering Jamaica after attending a Black writers' conference in Toronto. On learning the news, Gonsalves immediately organised a protest march and marched the next day after 7 am into Kingston. Along the way they met the Jamaican police and army. "We were beaten and tear-gassed. Pat Rodney was pregnant with her first daughter... The response of the Jamaican state transformed me overnight from a petty bourgeois radical to someone who was determined that so long as I have the breath in my body, never to allow that kind of barbarism to continue without I being involved in the Caribbean to put a stop to it." Gonsalves said that when Rodney returned to live in Guyana from 1974 to 1980, he had "to scrounge to feed his family. There are a lot of people who are around whose mouths were muzzled by the foods they ate to live... and who collaborated in the denial of this gifted son of our Caribbean civilization, a right to his livelihood and today hypocritically wish to proclaim his name in defence of..." Describing Rodney's literary works as among the best in the region, he recommended the reading of How Europe Underdeveloped Africa, published in 1973 along with selected writings of Fidel Castro, Eric William, CLR James, Michael Manley and Franz Fanon. He noted that many persons were amazed that a man of 29 years could write so profoundly about Africa. As regards current problems and issues such as modern globalisation, trade liberalization, the end of the Cold war, Venezuela, the US position in relation to Cuba, Haiti and terrorism, he felt that Rodney would have looked at every question concretely, through the prism of the methodology and in terms of their application. He felt that he would have supported to deepening of regionalism and the Caribbean Single Market and Economy; have called for a practical joining of a Pan Africanism movement with the African Union and Caricom; and would have continued being anti-imperialist. Kenyan professor, Mazrui who debated Rodney at Makerere University in Uganda, said they became friends not in East Africa where they were debating adversaries but in the USA. He recalled being regarded the "hottest and most gifted debater on campus until Walter (then residing in Tanzania) came. Then I was disgraced in front of thousands as the debate was televised live." He lost the debate, which was still a topic of conversation in East Africa among people who knew them both. Giving his interpretation of Rodney's legacy, Mazrui said he combined radical socialism with active Pan Africanism. Outside Guyana, Rodney lived out Pan Africanism but preached socialism. His life's choice was Pan Africanism and this was reflected in the names of his children, his choice of school in London, his PhD thesis on the Upper Guinea Coast; his most illustrious book was How Europe Underdeveloped Africa, his most illustrious position as an academic activist was at the University of Dar Es Salaam, his audiences on issues were substantially of African ancestry. Andaiye, a political activist of the WPA in Rodney's time, noted that from the time the Groundings were organised Rodney has often been described as the academic, the intellectual and scholar, sometimes the scholar/activist which makes her uncomfortable as it diminished his stature as "Rodney the revolutionary" which seemed to open the way to a criticism of him and which was false. The major fault of which Rodney was accused, she said was impatience but it was not the worst possible fault compared to cowardice, retreat, inaction, and giving up, none of which he was capable of. One of two characteristics of his, which she recalled was his concreteness in relation to something particular. This included his definition of the working people, in which they were not only waged workers. Housewives of the working class would have also been part of the working people. "He saw beyond the fixed boundaries," she said. While he was working on the History of the Guyanese, Andaiye who also
edited some of his works recalled Rodney considering the ideas of others
in spite of his initial beliefs. She said he had wanted to call the 1905
riot, a rebellion but changed his idea after one of his teachers, Elsa
Gouveia said the characteristics of a rebellion were not there. |
Patricia
Rodney, the widow of Dr Walter Rodney (second from right) and their children
(from left) Shaka, Kanini and Asha at the Queen's College Auditorium on
Friday evening. (Photo by Jules Gibson)Patricia Rodney, the widow of Dr
Walter Rodney (second fro 
The head
table at the launch of a series of commemoration activities to mark the
25th anniversary of the assassination of the WPA leader, Dr Walter Rodney
at Queen's College Friday evening. From left are Chair of the International
Commemoration Committee, Horace Cambell, Ali Mazrui, Pat Rodney, Ralph
Gonzalves, Andaiye.