Dear Editor:
I commend Dr. David Hinds for his excellent writing about The Walter Rodney Legacy. Dr. Hinds resurfaces memories, history, and salience of a great Guyanese hero whose life was snuffed away while still in his prime.
It is apropos to remind all of us – the old but especially the young – as Hinds points out, of this valiant fighter for bread and justice and democracy. This name of Walter Rodney must never be blotted out or erased, as is being attempted in some quarters. I make the bold presumption that a generation of young Guyanese do not know of Walter Rodney because there was/is a deliberate or benign obscurantism to cover up or blur, and revise a part of Guyana’s history.
David Hinds was there and so was I; and my memories are still vivid.
The WPA of which David Hinds appears to be the most prominent and prolific spokesperson has been dealt a deathblow after Rodney was killed ingloriously by “sharper steel”. WPA personage of stature – Rupert Roopnarine, Joshua Ramsammy (deceased), Eusi Kwayana, Moses Bhagwan, Clive Thomas, Andaiye (deceased), Joycelyn Dow, Tacuma Ogunseye, Kenneth Persaud (deceased), Rohit Kanhai, Wazir Mohamed, Omawale, and others in the periphery, and thousands of the grassroots, (and Moses Nagamootoo who shared many podiums with Rodney) – must be recognized for their fearless role in the struggle for freedom and justice.
A pervading fear subsequently gripped the land – fear for the physical safety of self and family – that commanded silence and/or behavioral complicity; that infected the mindset of most or all of those in the hierarchy of the WPA. I myself experienced this visceral distress, and this became the push factor for me to leave my homeland.
David Hinds is an honorable man. He is never afraid of repartees. He claims to be a “Rodneyite” and I believe him; but this is where I respectfully depart. What I find troubling is the obvious duplicitous stance that he and other WPA public figures have taken in recent years.
Recently, Tacuma Ogunseye and Eusi Kwayana have written defensively in response to Gail Teixeira’s critical analysis of Hinds’ article. Others have since written about Walter Rodney. I particularly like Peeping Tom’s contribution. However, Ogunseye and Kwayana did not address the “betrayal”; they rambled about other disparate tangential matters, thus clouding and sidestepping the pertinent question of betrayal.
But the truth is an imperative, and must be addressed. As I said, I was there, and now I am upset and angry because of current attempts to confabulate the issue as others have done before. Have these WPA figures undergone intellectual diapause or cerebral menopause? No, it is all well measured!
The professed leaders of the WPA (except perhaps Wazir Mohamed, Moses Bhagwan and Rohit Kanhai) have disgraced the stature of Walter Rodney. They went to bed with the PNC during the formation of APNU with poorly disguised rationale. The marriage was not truly consummated. They “aided and abetted” the abortion of the Cheltenham Commission of Inquiry, consciously acceding to moral impotence. Many have found solace in the bosom of official positions for rewarding comforts. The big question is – Why? Why the dishonorable somersault and metamorphosis? Why negate history? Why the disavowal of your comrade? Martin Carter is so fitting: “The mouth is muzzled by the food it eats to live.” But it is more than that. Is it also an atavistic regression of the “mattey” praxis? Is it also for security within the new ACDA? Note that David Hinds coincidentally espoused Pan-Africanism.
To me those (including Eusi whom I have great respect for despite difference in ideological stance) who are now reacting to the public condemnation of their paralytic dithering are trying to justify, trying to save face, or trying to be relevant. Faustian bargaining to me. Hypocrisy to say the least. Betrayal in my opinion.
Those of us who pontificate and think of ourselves as pillars of virtue and morality have an ethical duty to be responsible, and to demonstrate in deed and action what we profess. “It isn’t what we say or think that defines us, but what we do.” Thus, we should endeavor to do what is right, not what is easy, convenient and expedient, nor being disloyal and traitorous.
I end with Walter’s prescient words: “For a small nation, Guyana has produced a discouragingly large number of lackeys and stooges who hide in the shadow….”
Dr. Gary Girdhari, New York City |
Dear Editor:
The Walter Rodney COI report cannot truly be made “public” if it is unavailable in the library, university, the press, and bookstore. Parliament is no longer a place for protected speech. More than a summary of a plot to kill an esteemed citizen, this report is a symbol of free speech and ought to be an election issue.
For all intents and purposes, the report has been suppressed in parliament, because the PNCR and especially its leader, Mr. David Granger, still object in principle and practice to the renowned historian. Mr. Granger, who has proactively resisted legitimate criticism against the PNCR, sees grave danger in the report.
The report threatens to puncture the halo Mr. Granger has woven for Forbes Burnham. It will destroy the façade of the PNCR as a law-abiding, democratic party (e.g., see “Declaration of Vreed-en-Hoop,” 2012), that Mr. Granger painstakingly nurtured during years of pseudo-political writings, while attacking the PPP.
In his version of the GDF’s history from 1966 to 1976 (see The New Road, 1976), he enjoyed describing the PPP and its supporters in derogatory terms such as “gangsters.”
Here is an extract about the rigged 1973 elections, which the “gangsters” lost: “Realizing that their hold on the electorate was slipping further and in an abortive attempt to forestall an obvious and overwhelming PNC victory, a campaign of violence and resistance was planned by the PPP. The GDF was called in to aid the Civil power and prevent a breakdown of law and order that was planned by the gangsters.”
Mr. Granger never sought to revise his overt prejudicial views, because misrepresentation under the guise of army literature has its PNC virtues. The public experienced this on June 13, 1980; again between 2002 and 2006, and of course, since Sept of this year in defiance of the CCJ.
In 2003, Mr Granger presented a 28-page paper titled, “Civil Violence, Domestic Terrorism and Internal Security in Guyana, 1953-2003,” at a foreign conference. He willfully omitted the violence that occurred from May 23 to May 27, 1964 at Wismar-Christianburg. Like the COI report, Wismar disappeared. The Demerara River straddled by a steamer filled with thousands who fled the area on May 26, 1964, disappeared.
Regarding violence in the eighties, Mr. Granger never mentioned “kick-down-the-door” banditry. Guns, bullets, rapes, murders, whole corpses vanished as crime statistics plummeted with Mr. Granger. He told the foreign audience that there were a few “occasional outbreaks of criminal violence, especially against isolated households in rural areas.”
Far from being an authority on crime in Guyana, Mr. Granger still became president in great fanfare and without enquiry of his distortions. But such perversion of history comes with its problems. Dr. Patricia Rodney, the widow of Dr. Rodney said it better recently; “It is sad that on the continent [Africa] every person has read How Europe Underdeveloped Africa but it is not available in Guyana.”
And the PNCR, unable to win elections, intends to keep it this way. They prefer a falsified, version of history. This call for the Rodney COI report is therefore an attempt to unravel all of this.
Rakesh Rampertab via email
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