Coil: Rodney in the Golden Jubilee year

by Vidyaratha Kissoon

It was 1979 or 1980 – or maybe before. I would have been about 8 or 9 years old. My parents decided to go to one of the WPA meetings. Walter Rodney was supposed to be speaking at Kitty Market Square. The car was parked in Barr Street. Some people, men and women, came and started rocking the car .They opened the car doors and said ‘yall get out of hey’ and other things, one woman was kicking.  My father managed to start the car and drove away.

June 1980. I am 9 years old. The car this time is parked on the Kitty Public Road. We are watching the funeral procession for Walter Rodney. A lot of people walking. I remember a white lady, Janet Jagan kind of marching. I am not sure how far she marched with the procession.

In adulthood, I learn that Rodney was more than just a man who annoyed Burnham. In 1968, the Jamaican Government banned him and there were riots in Kingston. It was also becoming clearer that Rodney was remembered more outside of Guyana than in Guyana.

In 2011, a young man who was victimised by the Jagdeo Presidency asks me if I had ever read People’s Power, No Dictator.  He shows me a print copy he made.  In 2011, people tell me to be careful when a picture of my parent’s house appears on a PPP blog. There were other blogs claiming that I was  endangering the lives of children.

Friday 13 June, 2014 and a couple of people try to do a Groundings by Stabroek Market. Most people only know about Rodney from what they are hearing on the TV about the Commission of Inquiry, or they don’t really know “is who”.

February 2016. A woman walking on Avenue of the Republic near one of the cleaned drains that is not clean and is smelling said “I like meh country, but Georgetown stink bad oh geez”.  Loving de country with all its stench. The report of the Commission of Inquiry into Walter Rodney’s murder comes to an end. President Granger has said the report is flawed. Sections of the media have extracted parts of the leaked report.

The Justice for Walter Rodney Committee, and the PPP have asked that the report be made public. People my age , depending on their political affiliations seem to have the following views :-

1. Nah, we aint hear nutting
2. Is Who is Rodney and what is the big deal?
3. Is Burnham kill Rodney.
4. Rodney was going to overthrow Burnham and the bomb go off and kill he, is good fuh he.

And many of the d) people  (and probably some of the c) people ) think that the Commission is WASTE OF TAXPAYERS’ MONEY and that the Commissioners were robbing Guyanese and so on.

The cost has been 500 million Guyana dollars, more than the budget for the Golden Jubilee celebrations.  The Rodney COI seems to be one of the things which WASTE TAXPAYERS’ MONEY  which President Granger has inherited from President Ramotar. Like the Marriott.

The Government seems to have brought the WASTE  to an end by halting the Commission of Inquiry as many  Guyanese say they did not get Value for Money. The Government  however seems to have no problems with Marriott – it has not been closed down and it seems Guyanese are getting value for money there.

The first time I heard about a Commission of Inquiry was in 2003 when the Disciplined Services Commission of Inquiry was formed. President Granger was a member of that Commission. I remember ‘testifying’ before the Commission and marvelling at some of the questions by one of the PPP commissioners. I remember one of his colleagues apologising for him after the testimony.  The COI seemed a strange kind of mechanism to deal with Justice.

There was not much talk of costs then, probably because most of the Commissioners were local. The Commission of Inquiry into the events in Linden in July and August 2012 cost a lot of money.
Two of the Commissioners in the Rodney COI have QC (Queens Counsel) after their names, another has SC. (The Republican version from Trinidad and Guyana). A lawyer had told me that Queens Counsel / Senior Counsel are very expensive.  I was not following the Rodney COI too much. As far as I am concerned, Burnham killed Rodney. I channelled Burnham in the week of the stalled report  in asking for local mints from different vendors. All of them looked at me as if something was wrong with me. One handed me the Trinidadian mint and said yes, dis is local.

This week, I realised that the Chair of the Rodney COI,  Richard Cheltenham QC is a recipient of  the Knight of St Andrew from the Queen of Barbados. The imagination of all the Knights and so, who defend the Empire. There is no evidence though, that it is expected that Sir is to be used when referring to counsel.

Sir Cheltenham’s clients apart from the Government of Guyana,  includes the former Ukranian Prime Minister Pavlo  Lazarenko.  Pavlo Lazarenko , among other things was described in the 2004 Transparency International Global Corruption Report as a corrupt leader with an estimate of US114 to US200 million embezzled.. There was a case of $100 million in a bank in Antigua & Barbuda which was going to be confiscated.

Sir Cheltenham QC is also defending Guyanese who are accused of trafficking cocaine in Barbados.
It is probably irrelevant to wonder how Walter Rodney would have imagined his file sitting close to those of people accused of embezzling public funds and smuggling cocaine.

In June 2015, the WPA had a public symposium around Rodney’s death anniversary. The symposium seemed to be structured in  a way as though they wanted to move on from Walter Rodney and not talk about how he died.  The WPA has not said much about the report of the COI at the time of writing.

The Walter Rodney Youth Movement has promoted the Youth For Local Government team to contest Georgetown Municipality Elections. They have not said anything at the time of writing about the Commission of Inquiry or the report. They are probably going to move beyond the negativity around the COI report and see that Rodney’s principles live on in the way they organise for governance of Georgetown.

The Walter Rodney Memorial on Hadfield Street between John Street and Austin Place is an interesting structure. There are signs with the titles of the published works and his academic history. There is a rock enclosed by a metal gate. It is not clear what the rock is about, and it might one of those complex artistic meaning things. It looks as though something is missing from the concrete scroll.

In 2011,  Kaieteur News reported on an event at the Memorial site. The reported said that “According to , [Dr Rupert] Roopnaraine , on numerous occasions discussions were held with the Ministry of Education to have Rodney’s works in the school’s curriculum but to date nothing has been done.”
Now that Dr Roopnarine is the Minister of Education, some of the Jubilee money would probably be spent on getting copies of Rodney’s works into the school curriculum.

The Memorial is close to the primary school which Walter Rodney attended. The Memorial is close to the spot where Rodney died.

The fiasco around the Commission of Inquiry has focussed on how Rodney died and who killed him.

The way Rodney died is related to the way he lived. Rodney spoke at  Merriman’s Mall . There is a beautification project at the Mall, with a part for a play ground. Maybe there could be a place there, a Walter Rodney podium,  to remind citizens that Rodney was working to overcome the divisiveness that has characterised the Commission of Inquiry into his death. Even as President Granger rejects the findings of the COI, he might want to contribute to the movement to ensure that Guyanese understand the importance of Rodney’s work.