Coming across the recent letters from Audreyanna Thomas, James Mc Allistair (someone I have a great deal of respect for) and Aubrey Norton, I admit a great degree of disappointment that many in the PNC, their supporters, have not understood or learnt from the life and death of Dr. Walter Rodney. It is as if his death meant nothing to us. Indeed, Dr. Rodney should be a great cause for sorrow among African Guyanese, that he was robbed of his life on June 13, 1980 by the Peoples National Congress fighting against their entrenched dictatorship under Burnham. I am also sorry for the suffering and pain left by the PNC on his family, his young wife Patricia Rodney and their three little children, that they had to live without a husband, a father. Does this not mean anything to us? Dr. Rodney’s death at the hands of the PNC exposes the brutish, cruel, criminal nature of the PNC, that they could punish a man and his family because he stepped into politics and started educating Guyanese about the evils of the PNC’s dictatorship, the importance of offering Guyana a political alternative. Dr. Rodney was an African Guyanese. He was an ordinary man, the descendant of slaves like other African Guyanese. But he demonstrated what African Guyanese, all Guyanese can do, become, by becoming a world renown historian in his time who took Europe to task for its role in under-developing Africa. Dr. Walter Rodney along with the world’s most successful people today teach us that there is literally nothing we cannot accomplish if we are determined and committed enough.
I encourage those who can, learn and teach the message and life of Dr. Rodney to Guyanese, to supporters of the PNC. The PNC’s 2015-2020 term in office under the guise of the PNCR in the APNU demonstrated that the PNC remained incompetent at managing Guyana’s economy and worse, was ready to return Guyana to dictatorship with the promise of repeating the economic debauchery of Guyana during its earlier reign until 1992. Its politics of marginalization of Indian Guyanese in particular, remains one of the philosophical foundations of its existence, an ideology destined to ensure that Guyana is destroyed as a country, disemboweled as a people fighting to overcome the ethnic divisions perpetuated by the PNC. Dr. Rodney himself said, “The Black intellectual, the Black academic, must attach himself to the activity of the Black masses.” My challenge to the African Guyanese intellectual, the African Guyanese academic, is to analyze our politics and consider a common proposal that our solution is promoting unity, better relations with Indian Guyanese, others of different ethnic groups. Then actively work to create that solution.
A country divided will fall. Defeat a country from outside and it will rise again. Cause its people to fight among themselves, and it is doomed. The PPP is made strong when the threat of the PNC getting into office becomes real. African Guyanese should not be vexed that Indians support the PPP. Indians have demonstrated they would like to see the back of the PPP by voting for the coalition in 2015. But they will never tolerate another PNC government.
After the abuses of slavery do African Guyanese still think it is right engage in the abuse of other ethnic groups? The lesson from slavery is that discrimination on any basis, whether race, religion or otherwise is unjust, cruel and detrimental to social stability. Finally, the lesson for African Guyanese from Dr. Rodney’s death, the punishment of his family by taking him away from them, is that the PNC has no interest in their welfare, and will continue to use them to acquire power, to get a well-paying job in parliament. I ask African Guyanese to put themselves in Dr. Rodney’s shoes, to consider his fate theirs. Because that is the reality of the PNC. They have nothing to offer Guyanese, not even renegotiating the 2016 Production Sharing Agreement which they signed to give the oil companies billions United States dollars of our oil wealth. To fail to learn from history is to have history repeat itself, not a good thing for Guyana. I submit that we consider Dr. Rodney, justify his death this year, this election 2025.