Dear Editor,
Having myself been a part of history making events, I am well placed to state categorically that the adage, chanted by Bob Marley, that “half the story has never been told” is 100% correct. Nowhere is this more evident than the rehashing and reshaping, over and over again, of the fallacious charge that Forbes Burnham, visionary leader, revolutionary nationalist and first executive President of Guyana ordered or sanctioned the murder of renowned historian and political activist, Dr Walter Rodney.
Those people who were close to Burnham know only too well that that was not how it went down. There are persons in the PNCR and the WPA who know the truth – some have gone to their grave with it but many are still living. There are those who compromised themselves in both parties. There are people who were extremely close to Dr Rodney that compromised his security. That is their story to tell.
From day one, the Commission of Inquiry (CoI) into Dr Walter Rodney’s demise was a farce. The intention of those who convened the commission, as well as those who constituted it was not about getting to the truth of this matter. It was about many other things, including the continued demonization of Forbes Burnham; the embarrassment and discrediting of the PNCR prior to the May 15th general elections; the attempt to fracture the unity that had been achieved amongst APNU members, namely the PNCR and the WPA; and the sowing of doubt in the minds of the Guyanese people that APNU could form a legitimate government.
As a result, many of those who knew what really went down refused to participate in what we knew to be a charade. I do not have to read the CoI’s final report, which has not yet been made available to the public, to know that it is discredited. Since the beginning of 2014 we have been bombarded with reports from the hearings which cost Guyanese taxpayers $400 million, and very early on it was crystal clear that this was a commission with a firm agenda: to convict Forbes Burnham for the murder of Dr Walter Rodney and to discredit the opposition prior to the 2015 general elections. I have never heard such a litany of untruths and half-truths as that which passed as evidence before this commission. It was farcical and its findings could never be counted as reliable.
A long list of people appeared before the commission, each of them offering mere opinions and hearsay, because they had nothing more to offer, while important witnesses, such as Assistant Commissioner of Police under Burnham, Cecil ‘Skip’ Roberts, who now resides in the US and travelled to Guyana to give evidence, was accommodated at a hotel in Georgetown for 10 days, all expenses paid by the commission, but was not called upon to give evidence. At the time of the events supposedly being examined by the CoI, Mr Roberts was the chief investigator into the circumstances surrounding Dr Walter Rodney’s death ‒ so surely an important witness. If we do not go on record as questioning this CoI and its findings, then their report will go unchallenged and be legitimized as fact.
I was a member of the Central Executive of the Young Socialist Movement (YSM), which was the youth arm of the PNC under Burnham. At that time, Robert Corbin had just replaced veteran PNC activist Jeffrey Thomas as Chairman of the YSM.
Leaks from the commission’s report have claimed that the YSM sanctioned and engaged in violent activity against the WPA and other PNC opponents. To set the record straight, as a member of the Central Executive at the time of Rodney’s demise, I can say that neither Robert Corbin, myself nor any executive member of the YSM sanctioned or encouraged any such activity. The YSM had thousands of members and perhaps there were individual members who acted in their individual capacity and might have engaged in such behaviour, but it was certainly not sanctioned by the Central Executive of the YSM.
The political atmosphere within Guyana in the late 1970s and early 1980s was extremely tense. Forbes Burnham was leading the nation on a revolutionary, non-capitalist and anti-imperialist path. He was determined that Guyana should free itself from the yoke of neo-colonialism and become self-reliant. He was among the leading and most vocal members of the Non-Aligned Movement, and had close ties with liberation movements in the Caribbean, Africa and worldwide including the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO), the African National Congress (ANC) and the South West African Peoples Organization (SWAPO). It was the freedom fighter, Forbes Burnham, who allowed the Cuban planes, en route to Angola carrying Cuban troops to fight alongside the African Liberation forces, to refuel in Guyana. He deployed Guyanese civil servants to Zambia to assist that nation during its post-independence struggle. He assisted liberation movements in South Africa financially. Like all those who take a stand against Empire, Burnham’s government was targeted for destabilization by US imperialism and their factotums in Guyana and in the region.
It is not possible to fully understand the events that led up to Dr Walter Rodney’s death if the context is removed. Walter Rodney who was then, and remains an esteemed intellectual warrior, decided to oppose Burnham at a time when the CIA was waging a very real and threatening campaign to destabilize Burnham’s government and roll back the revolution. It is imperative for us to note that the half of the story that has been left out over the years, as people from both sides rehash and reshape these events, is the role played by the US Central Intelligence Agency, in the historic events that we continue to ponder in 2016.
To fully understand what was, in my opinion the erroneous attempt by the WPA, under Dr Walter Rodney’s leadership, to attempt to destabilize and overthrow the revolutionary and anti-imperialist regime of Forbes Burnham, the question that should be asked is this: At the time, who would have benefited most from disunity and warfare between two anti-imperialist formations in Guyana, namely the PNC and the WPA? Who would have tried to ratchet up the disunity rather than facilitating unity? Of course, the answer is the imperialists. Back then, as now, the CIA knew how to recruit people from all sides. Some of those who were recruited were recruited knowingly, while others were not even aware that they were working directly with, or in tandem with the CIA. A number of senior figures in the political and security apparatus of both the PNC and the WPA were, without doubt, utilized by hostile external forces.
There are a few well established facts that have emerged over the years, facts that can no longer be denied. Among them are (1) Gregory Smith was not a PNC agent, but rather had close and what seem to be genuine ties to the Rodney brothers; (2) the WPA was amassing weapons in an attempt to overthrow Forbes Burnham’s government, which was also facing a very real threat of destabilization and overthrow from the CIA. There are people right here in Guyana who stored those weapons in their homes. Of course, they will never come forward, because such activity is, under any circumstances, treated as treason; (3) The agencies of the US were actively involved in a plot to destabilize Burnham’s regime and definitely had a hand in what happened. After all, it was a wonderful opportunity for them, discredit Burnham both at home and internationally and get rid of Dr Walter Rodney all in one operation. I daresay that if the internet had been in existence back then, Wikileaks would have produced irrefutable evidence to support this claim. Deceased member of the WPA, Brian Rodway, told me that he and some other WPA members had no doubt that the device that killed Rodney was made in the USA and certainly was not the handiwork of Gregory Smith.
We also know that there is no record or evidence to show, beyond any reasonable doubt, that Forbes Burnham ordered the assassination of Walter Rodney or colluded with others to assassinate him. We are left with a spurious claims by unreliable sources. What I can say to be true is that in 1980 the PNC was a formidable force and we did not see the WPA as a serious threat. The perception that the WPA was a serious threat to the PNC existed in the heads of various WPA activists, but was never the reality on the ground. This was borne out by the WPA’s swift demise following Dr Walter Rodney’s death and their lack of any real mass support on the ground in Guyana. Any support they did enjoy came from a small segment of the middle class and remains so to this day. Forbes Burnham however is still loved by the masses in Guyana.
In 1980, the year Dr Walter Rodney was killed, Burnham was mostly pre-occupied with the larger threat of US destabilization of Guyana. A seasoned and astute leader, Burnham knew that the homegrown opposition was being fuelled by the imperialists. He knew that the WPA, whose leadership comprised mainly middle-class academics, would be an easy target for CIA operatives. Being nothing short of a brilliant strategist, he would have certainly known that given the circumstances he found himself in, and the threats he faced from external forces, the very worst thing he could have done, akin to shooting himself in the foot, would have been to order the assassination of a world renowned academic such as Dr Walter Rodney. It is clear that this would have been political suicide.
As a political analyst, having studied Amilcar Cabral, Frantz Fanon, and CLR James, Burnham understood the middle-class character and contradictions of the WPA, and what he described as their hollow, revolutionary rhetoric, borne out of their immersion in theoretical analysis and the culture of critique without any revolutionary praxis. This led him to call the WPA the “Worst Possible Alternative” and their leaders “Champagne Socialists”. Many writers, including myself have pointed to the fact that the Black middle class, with few exceptions, has consistently been a major obstacle to the progress of African people in the Caribbean. They were the class that joined with the imperialists when it came time to destroy Marcus Garvey. They were the same ones who sat on the sidelines and criticized Burnham’s every attempt, under enormous pressure, to house, feed and clothe the masses of impoverished people of this nation -– African, Indian and Amerindian. They were the very ones who fell prey to the ‘divide and ruin’ psych-ops of the enemy. When mayhem was finally unleashed, and the people poured onto the streets following Dr Walter Rodney’s death, the WPA simply did not then know what to do and the entire exercise fizzled out into the nightmare that it has now become.
Had the WPA worked with Burnham’s PNC to build Burnham’s vision of a truly independent and self-reliant Guyana, and thwarted the imperialist plot to roll back this Guyanese revolution, then our history would have been a triumphant one rather than a tragic one, and we surely would have had something to celebrate this year as opposed to the illusion of 50 years of independence that is being celebrated.
Finally, something which has always baffled me and continues to do so, is this: why a self-proclaimed anti-imperialist, anti-capitalist, revolutionary organization like the WPA could not find common ground with the anti-imperialist, anti-capitalist and revolutionary PNC under Burnham but years later, found themselves in bed with the PNCR once it abandoned its revolutionary, anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist programme? Perhaps the answer to this question will shed more light than anything else on the events that led up to the death of Walter Rodney.
Yours faithfully,
Gerald A Perreira
Chair
Organization for the Victory of the People (OVP)
