On the day of my 13th birthday I was crying and could not stop. Rumours about the blast had flown through the night, and across the bush telegraph, so within hours of the weekend, Guyanese and the world knew.
We could not celebrate anything that terrible Saturday and Sunday, yet it would be a birthday like no other. So, now, I can recall only the tears, the trauma and the despair that descended upon us. The faces of my parents and other whispering adults were long and worried, even before the official confirmation through the State media, that Dr Walter Rodney had been killed by a bomb on the night of Black Friday, June 13, 1980.
As a young pupil of St Rose’s High, during that tumultuous time, I would join the children from all the classes of my school, and hundreds of other protesting students and teachers, including from St Stanislaus College, Queen’s College and Bishops’ High in picket lines, filing along the pavement from our Church Street base to the Education Ministry in nearby Brickdam.
Demonstrations increased over a new Widows and Orphans tax, and flared with the assassination of Dr Rodney and the imminent transfer of our beloved Principal Sister Hazel Campayne to North Ruimveldt Multilateral High School, under a controversial rotational policy by the Teaching Service Commission (TSC) that singled out education professionals considered troublesome and anti-Government.
With spies everywhere, the ruling regime moved to swiftly crack down on dissent. The Principal, a former Bishops’ High School alumnus who hailed from Port Mourant, became an obvious target like the heads of other top schools, since she was seen as being an independent thinker, a democracy activist, and a suspected sympathiser of the Working People’s Alliance (WPA).
A courageous critic of the newly introduced Mass Games, the synchronized socialist-realist spectacular imported from the police-state of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) by the Government, Sister openly opposed the disruption of the curriculum and her precious charges’ lives, even as she continued to teach us how to look critically at current affairs.
Sister Hazel would attend and speak at the massive funeral of Dr Rodney, marching through the streets with an estimated 30 000 Guyanese from all backgrounds, who defied the risk of being identified and marked for punishment and dismissal.
We stood with our other brave teachers on Merriman Mall outside the school’s 1925-wooden building that stated in bold blackletters “Est. 1847,” when a group of Ursuline nuns had founded the institution originally for girls. In 1976, the Government nationalised education, taking control of the educational institutions belonging to the Catholic Church, and all other religious and private schools in the country.
A big banner hung outside from the arched front windows of the three-story institution, with the words from a popular hymn, we sang in the cavernous auditorium of graded floors and a sprawling stage, “God gives people strength” took on a more profound meaning with the addition in symbolic red, “to resist.”
Painted by our art teacher, Bernadette Indira Persaud, it became a public symbol of endurance, especially when thugs from the House of Israel religious sect were finally dispatched by the authoritarian administration, to deal with the embarrassing display of determined disobedience against the Illustrious Founder Leader. His glass-framed photograph had mysteriously gone through a window, crashing on to the pavement, as the situation deteriorated.
The goons quickly turned up one day, outside the locked and guarded school doors, with an extended pole to try and remove the banner, but they failed, and it billowed on for a while. However, the school and its students were penalised with numerous telephone calls warning that bombs had been planted on the compound, causing constant clearance during classes and final term examinations.
Interdicted from duty, Sister Hazel eventually migrated, like many other victimised professionals to Canada. In 2007, she received a Lifetime Achievement Award as an outstanding national in the diaspora. A founding member of the Canada-Guyana Forum which champions social justice, Dr. Campayne was lauded for being “a tireless advocate of social justice, human rights, peace and democracy in Guyana, the Caribbean, Canada and internationally.”
Dr Campayne’s citation noted, “She has earned the reputation of being a true patriot of Guyana with an indomitable spirit, who made great sacrifices – at the risk of her own personal security – to promote peace, justice and democracy in Guyana.”
She would return as a member of the observer delegation which monitored the historic 1992 elections here, and the 1994 polls in South Africa.
For her role, Mrs Persaud recalls being given notice of transfer to Port Kaituma Secondary School on 25 June 1980, to take effect from 1 July 1980. “I applied to the High Court for a declaration that the transfer was not lawful and turned out for duty at St Roses on 1 Oct 1980. I received a letter of dismissal from the TSC for failing to take up my new post at Port Kaituma. My Court matter was subsequently thrown out by the Judge.” For years, she too was unable to find a job in the school system she had trained for.
Mrs Persaud, would develop into one of Guyana’s finest and most recognizable artists, immortalising on canvas the turmoil of the period, through her political protest series set in the lush Botanic Gardens, where guns and “gaulins” haunt us against the powerful poetry of Martin Carter, “This is the dark time my love.”
Following decades of neglect, the historic St Rose’s High School was torn down in 2018. In January this year, the Attorney General, Anil Nandlall filed a $400 million suit against Courtney Benn Contracting Services Limited (CBCSL) for alleged breach of contract and its failure to complete construction work on the school.
The building was shared with St Agnes Primary School, where we would witness Dr Rodney come by with his white Mazda to collect his children. But on June 13, 1980, he had a 7 p.m. appointment with a man, called Gregory Smith. His wife Dr, Patricia Rodney therefore accompanied their youngest daughter, Asha to the film show at St Agnes, the walls of which were plastered with placards from the schools’ protests. The two older children, Shaka and Kanini, attended a farewell party for a friend of theirs.
However, when Dr Rodney’s brother Donald showed up at their home before the family’s departure; it was decided that he would drop off Dr Rodney.
“Walter told me… You take the car and we’ll meet back home’ after the meeting and me picking up the children from their various activities,” Mrs Rodney later recalled. “So I proceeded; I left and that was the last time I saw him.”
ID still becomes nervous whenever a fire alarm sounds. She remembers being the last one out of the door and too tired to run during yet another bomb scare, but her French teacher waited, guiding her out by the hand.
