Celebrating Walter Rodney and His Vision of Emanci

[Oshun_Auset]

Celebrating Walter Rodney and His Vision of Emancipation  


It's hard to believe that it's been 25 years since the great Walter Rodney was brutally murdered.



http://rodney25.org/

A Grounding in Guyana: Celebrating Walter Rodney and His Vision of Emancipation 25 Years After His Assassination. June 10-13 2005.

This Invitation goes out to all those who have in any way been touched by the work, life and example of Walter Rodney. And there are many of us. As a teacher, freedom fighter, political leader - in the "dungles" of Kingston, Jamaica, among freedom fighters in Africa, from the lecterns or classrooms of the great Universities of the world, on a street corner in Guyana, in a myriad settings in the United States, Canada, Europe, the Caribbean or Africa, wherever people gathered around the common cause of human liberation and dignity - Walter moved many with his unflinching commitment to the struggles of his people for their full liberation. And it was always their struggle and their liberation that were important. His passionate engagement with the struggles of the oppressed was matched by his equally passionate rejection of all vestiges of "leaderism." This was what underscored and validated his notion of "self-emancipation." and that became institutionalized in the political formation he helped to bring into being in Guyana, the Working People's Alliance.

In the 25 years since Walter Rodney's assassination much has changed in the world. The face of the oppression that has deepened the misery of peoples of Latin America and the Caribbean, Asia, Africa and among working peoples in the US, Canada and Europe has changed from its dictatorial manifestation into its "democratic" form. Poverty and misery are now products of a democracy that has been reduced to electoral competition among a self-regarding elite who thrive by exploiting every division among the working poor, be it racial, religious, tribal, ethnic or other cultural difference, in order to hold them in subjugation, the better to be exploited by the new global masters.

But the resistance grows and examples abound. From the inspiring courage of the Cuban revolution, to the irrepressible self-emancipating activities of the Haitian people in the face of overwhelming hostility on this the centenary of Haitian independence, the struggle to maintain and expand people's power in Venezuela, the courage and vision of women seeking constitutional recognition for caring work, the ongoing experiments in libertarian democracy in Chiapas, and the liberation movements in Colombia, Peru, Argentina, Paraguay, all these stand as evidence that the quest for fullest human liberation in our region and beyond is energized and on the move.

JOIN US in this "grounding," as we, women, youth, farmers, artists, workers, students, teachers, in the spirit of Rodney, come together to share our ideas and vision for the resolution of the deep problems affecting the lives of our peoples in all parts of the world.

We are calling on sisters and brothers around the world to participate in this grounding with us. You can do this in a number of ways:

(1) Turn up in Guyana to share your ideas and wisdom and to demonstrate your support. We are structuring this grounding to be as inclusive and as participatory as possible, and to make everyone's presence count!

(2) Maintain contact through the website.

(3) Pass on the website link and the information to friends, relatives, colleagues.

(4) Print out the conference information, make copies and distribute in your community, at your workplace, in your place of worship.

For activists/working people/scholars/students who want to participate in workshops listed in the program, you are invited to submit a title, abstract (200 words) and brief bio to the committee at wr25cc@rodney25.org. by February 28th 2005.

The Works of Walter Rodney

http://rodney25.org/biblioWRworks.htm

"The Rise of the Mulatto Trader on the Upper Guinea Coast, 1600- 1800," University of London, School of Oriental and African Studies/Institute of Commonwealth Studies (SOAS/ICS) seminar paper AH/63/16 (March 1964), 7 pp.

"Aspects of the Inter-Relationship between the Atlantic Slave Trade and 'Domestic Slavery' on the Upper Guinea Coast," SOAS/ ICS seminarpaperAH/65/5 (October 1965), 7pp.

"Portuguese Attempts at Monopoly on the Upper Guine4 Coast, 1580-1650," foumal of African History 6, no. 3 (1965): 307- 322. Reprinted as a Bobbs-Merrill Reprint (New York, 197 1).
"The Era of the Mane Invasions: 1545-1606," SOAS/ICS seminar paper AH / 65 / 14 (February 1966), 21 pp.

"African Slavery and Other Forms of Social Oppression on the Upper Guinea Coast in the Context of the Atlantic Slave Trade," Journal of African History 7, no. 3 (1966): 431-443. Reprinted as a Bobbs-Merrill Reprint (New York, 1971); also in S. M. Scheiner and T. Edelstein feds.), Black Americans: Inter- pretive Readings (New York: Dryden Editions, 1971); also in Martin A. Klein and G. Wesley Johnson (eds.), Perspectives on the African Past (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1972), pp. 152-166. Excerpted in Evelyn Jones Rich and Immanuel Wallerstein, Africa: Tradition and Change (New York: Random House School Division, 1972), pp. 185-187.


''A Reconsideration of the Mane Invasions of Sierra Leone," Journal of African History 8, no. 2 (1967): 219-246. Reprinted as a Bobbs-Merrill Reprint (New York, 1972).


"The Impact of the Atlantic Slave Trade on West Africa," in Roland Oliver (ed.), The Middle Age of African History (London: Oxford University Press, 1967), pp. 34-40.
West Africa and the Atlantic Slave Trade, Historical Association of Tanzania Paper no. 2 (Nairobi: East African Publishing House, 1967), multiple reprintings. Reprinted by Africa Research Group (Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1972). Translated into Swahili (Nairobi: Foundation Publishers, 1974).

"European Activities and African Reaction in Angola," in T. 0. Ranger (ed.), Aspects of Central African History (London: Heinemann Educational Books, 1968), pp. 49-70.

"Introduction" and "Glossary" to Richard jobson (fl. 1620-1623), The Golden Trade; or, A Discovery of the River Gambra, and the Golden Trade of the Aethiopians (London: Dawsons of Pall Mall, 1968), pp. v-xi, xiii-xv.


''jihad and Social Revolution in Futa Djalon in the Eighteenth Century," Journal of the Historical Society of Nigeria 4, no. 2 (1968): 269-284.

"Gold and Slaves on the Gold Coast," Transactions of the Histori- cal Society of Ghana 10 f 1969): 13-28.
A History of the Upper Guinea Coast, 1540-1800 (Oxford: Claren- don Press, 1970). Reprinted as a paperback by Monthly Review Press (New York, 1980).

"The Imperialist Partition of Africa," Monthly Review 21, no. 11 (April 1970): 103-114.

"The Year 1895 in Southern Mozambique-. African Reaction to the Imposition of European Colonial Rule," Journal of the Histori- cal Society of Nigeria 5, no. 4 (1971): 509-535.


"The Historical Roots of African Underdevelopment," Universities of East Africa Social Science Conference, 27-31 December 1970, University of Dar es Salaam, Proceedings, 1, 36 pp.

"African Trade through Bourgeois Eyes," review of Richard Gray and David Birmingham (eds.), Pie-Colonial African Trade (Lon- don: Oxford University Press, 1970), in Transafrican Journal of History (Nairobi) 2, no. 1 (1972): 123-126.

How Europe Underdeveloped Africa (London: Bogle-L'Ouverture Publications, and Dar es Salaam: Tanzania Publishing House, 1972; Washington, D.C.: Howard University Press, 1974), several reprintings. Translated into German by Gisela Walther as Afrika: die geschich te einer Un teren twicklung (Berlin: Klaus Wagenbach, 1975; reprinted 1980); translated into Portuguese by Edgar Valles as Como a Europa subdesenvolveu a Africa (Lisbon: Seara Nova, 1975). There is also a Japanese translation.

"A Note on Mau Mau in Tanganyika Territory," paper presented at the Annual Conference of the Historical Association of Kenya, 24-26 August 1973, Highridge Teachers' College, 7 pp.

"Recruitment of Askari in Colonial Tanganyika, 1920-1961," cyclostyled paper, no date, Dar es Salaam (probably a History Department seminar paper, University of Dar es Salaam, 1973), 12 pp.

"Policing the Countryside in Colonial Tanganyika," Proceedings of the Annual Social Science Conference of the East African Uni- versities, 1973, Paper no. 51, University of Dar es Salaam, 18-20 December 1973, 18 pp.

"The Political Economy of Colonial Tanganyika 1890-1939, " paper presented to the Annual History Teachers' Conference, Moro- goro, Tanzania, 15-21 June 1974. Published in M. H. Y. Kaniki (ed.), Tanzania under Colonial Rule (London: Longmans, 1980), pp.128-163.

"The Guinea Coast," in Richard Gray fed.), The Cambridge History of Africa, vol. 4, c. 1600-c. 1790 (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni- versity Press, 1975), pp. 223-324.

"The Colonial Economy," forthcoming in Africa under Foreign Domination, 1880-1935, UNESCO History of Africa, vol. 7.
World War 11 and the Tanzanian Economy, Cornell University Africana Studies and Research Center, Monograph Series no. 3 (Ithaca, New York, 1976).


"Migrant Labour Reserves in the Tanganyikan Colonial Economy," paper for discussion at a meeting of African Urban Culture members, 28 June 197?, SOAS, Centre for African Studies, 17 pp. plus references.

"Gewalt und Widerstand in der Geschichte Afrikas," Freibeuter 5 (Berlin: Freibeuter Verlag/Verlag Klaus Wagenbach, 1980), pp. 47-53, trans. Guyana-Komitee Hamburg. Ausziige aus der Vorlesung Walter Rodneys "African Development 1878-1978,
vom Sommersemester 1978 an der UniversitAt Hamburg. Hundert lahre Afrika: Entwicklung und Klassendynamik eines Kontinents, Herausgegeben, ilbersetzt und eingeleitet von Harald Sellin. (Berlin: Verlag Klaus Wagenbach, 198 1). Lectures in Sommersemester 1978, Universitiit Hamburg.
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- His untimely car bomb assasination at a time when Marxist / Socialist ideals were a bloody warning that another Cuba was not going to be tolerated. Maurice Bishop in Grenada sought close ties with Cuba and consequently was executed after a coup d 'etat three years later, after Rodney's death. Coincidence? Not when it comes to Imperialism.

http://www.guyanacaribbeanpolitics.com/wpa/rodney_bio.html

- How Europe Underdeveloped Africa, by Walter Rodney is a must read for a thorough understanding of the raping of Africa at different economic and human levels.

[Bantu_Kelani]

Thanks for this post. I just finished reading "How Europe Underdeveloped Africa" by Walter Rodney for the 2nd time. This book indoctrinates a lot me about the dynamics of capitalism/imperialism in African societies. Brother Walter Rodney was a true revolutionary Blackman and his book is very good education! Blessings sista.

B.K

[gman]

http://www.jouvay.com/guyana/
Guyana flood info

[Oshun_Auset]

Revolutionary historian and activist

Published Feb 17, 2005 9:58 PM

"We must understand that we are still locked in struggle. And we are reaffirming our commitment to struggle, and we are saying we are ready to proceed. We are moving forward, we are not intimidated, we recognize the pressures, but we are far from bending under those pressures." -- Walter Rodney, June 6, 1980, Georgetown, Guyana



Walter Rodney speaking in Guyana.  

This June will mark the 25th anniversary of the assassination of Walter Rodney--an African-Caribbean Marxist revolutionary activist, theoretician and internationalist.

Born in multiracial Georgetown, British Guiana (now Guyana) to working-class parents in 1942, Rodney was involved early on in political activity as a result of his father's participation in the anti-colonial movement with the People's Pro gressive Party (PPP), led by the Indo-Guyanese leader Cheddi Jagan. Rodney's mother was a domestic worker and a seamstress. His grandparents were farmers.

As a result of this upbringing Rodney was introduced to class relations in Guyana and to an intimate understanding of Britain's (and later the United States') artificially created divisions between different nationalities, including South Asians, Africans, Portuguese, Indigenous people and Chinese.

Under the British colonial system, working-class and peasant students had to win scholarships to attend school beyond a few initial grades, if they attended school at all.

Rodney attended the University of the West Indies at Mona, Jamaica, majoring in history. He received his undergraduate degree in 1963. He then received a scholarship to study African history at the University of London. He earned his Ph.D. in 1966 at age 24.

To research his dissertation, "A History of the Upper Guinea Coast, 1545 to 1800," Rodney learned to read Spanish, Portu guese and some Italian to decipher the slav ery records of these former colonial powers.

Globalizing the struggle

During his short life, Walter Rodney lived and worked on four continents and in several areas of the Caribbean.

He became a Marxist in London, learning the science of dialectical and historical materialism in study groups with leading West Indian Marxists, often led by C.L.R. James.

The London group's work was grounded in works by Amilcar Cabral, Aime Cesaire, Frantz Fanon, Marcus Garvey, V.I. Lenin, Marx and Engels, George Padmore and W.E.B. DuBois. Rodney also traveled to the USSR and China.

Rodney first taught history at the University of Dar-es-Salaam, Tanzania, from 1966-1967. He returned to Tanzania in 1969 after a year in Mona, Jamaica, teaching courses in African history.

He applied his Marxist teachings and activities on- and off-campus in Jamaica. He worked with Rastafarians and the super-exploited in the shantytowns and elsewhere. This resulted in the government banning him from the country upon his attempted return from a Congress of Black Writers in Montreal, Canada, in Oct ober 1968, which sparked massive demonstrations and a parliamentary crisis for the ruling Jamaica Labor Party.

Living in Tanzania from 1969-1974, Rodney taught courses on the African Dias pora and was a key figure in the social ist movement in Tanzania, where he collaborated with President Julius Nyerere.

In 1972 Rodney's best-known book, "How Europe Underdeveloped Africa," was published. This work was an earth-shaking analysis of the economic and social underdevelopment of Africa by European powers, mainly through the slave trade.

Rodney's work refuted the racist bourgeois argument that slavery existed on a large scale in Africa before the Europeans invaded. This fallacy was an attempt to deflect responsibility for the development of the African slave trade from the Europeans to Africans.

Expounding on Eric William's "Capital ism and Slavery", Rodney introduced a Marxist analysis "and the concept of the penetration of Africa by, and its subordination to, the world capitalist system of production," wrote Edward A. Alpers in "Weapon of History in African Liberation."

Rodney left Tanzania in 1974 to assume the chair of the History Department at the University of Georgetown, Guyana. He formed the Working People's Alliance with the goal of developing a new independent revolutionary party to help build a true Guyanese socialist republic.

Throughout the 1970s Rodney traveled periodically to the U.S., lecturing at many colleges and universities.

He connected the Black liberation movement and other oppressed people's struggles to the struggle against imperialism. He also worked closely with progressive and revolutionary leaders in the Caribbean, such as the assassinated president of Grenada, Maurice Bishop.

And in his homeland, Guyana, Rodney always worked shoulder-to-shoulder with the working class, be it in the sugar cane fields or bauxite mines or other work and cultural spaces.

Rodney was assassinated on June 13, 1980, in Georgetown by a bomb explosion. Some say the political forces involved in the bombing were linked to the CIA. There was never an inquest into Rodney's death and to this day no one has been held accountable.

Rodney's funeral cortège was attended by thousands of mourners from inside Guyana and internationally who felt the deep loss of one of the most potent Marxist revolutionaries to have lived.

Marxism--a weapon for the oppressed

Rodney was an internationalist. He understood working-class and oppressed people's need for their own party for self-emancipation, one that has flexibility in tactics and strategy and that is attempting to build socialism.

And as his "Marxism and Liberation" talk at Queens College in 1975 attests, Rod ney rejected racist and bourgeois assertions that Marxism couldn't be applied outside of a European context, which was one of his greatest contributions.

"They seem not to take into account that already that methodology and that ideology have been utilized, internalized, and domesticated in large parts of the world that are not European.

"That it is already the ideology of 800 million Chinese people; that it is already the ideology which guided the Vietnamese people to successful struggle and to the defeat of imperialism. That it is already the ideology which allows North Korea to transform itself from a backward, quasi-feudal, quasi-colonial terrain into an independent industrial power. That it is already the ideology which has been adopted on the Latin American continent and that serves as the basis for development in the Republic of Cuba.

"That it is already the ideology which was used by Cabral, which was used by Samora Machel, which is in use on the African continent itself to underline and underscore struggle and the construction of a new society.

"It cannot therefore be termed a European phenomenon; and the onus will certainly be on those who argue that this phenomenon, which was already universalized itself, is somehow not applicable to some Black people..." ("Yes to Marxism" pamphlet, February 1986, People's Progressive Party of Guyana)

As Alpers wrote, "...What stands out is that to the very end of his life Walter Rodney recognized and used history as a weapon in the revolutionary struggle for liberation."

Sources for this article include: Rupert Charles Lewis, "Walter Rodney's Intellectual and Political Thought"; Walter Rodney, "Groundings with my Brothers; History of the Guyanese Working People, 1881-1905," "History of the Upper Guinea Coast, 1545-1800," "How Europe Underdeveloped Africa," and "Walter Rodney Speaks: The Making of an African Intellectual"; Edward A. Alper and Pierre-Michel Fontaine, "Walter Rodney, Revolutionary and Scholar: A Tribute" (includes appendix of Rodney's writings and lectures); Kwayana Eusi, "Walter Rodney."
http://www.workers.org/world/2005/walter_rodney_0224/

[Oshun_Auset]

More on Walter Rodney

http://www.stabroeknews.com/index.pl/article_general_news?id=21784364

Widow hopes celebration of Rodney's life brings healing

Sunday, June 12th 2005



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. "â€| 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

By Miranda La Rose
Sunday, June 12th 2005

The Government of St Vincent and the Grenadines will from the 2005/2006 academic year, award to a deserving student a national scholarship in the area of the social sciences and the humanities to be called the 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.

[Tyehimba]

GROUNDINGS": WALTER RODNEY, THE ACTIVIST; SCHOLAR AND REVOLUTIONARY IN JAMAICA AND GUYANA