Rodney’s Reckoning: Oil, Memory, and the Guyanese Future

Editorial | Guyana Business Journal

June 13, 2025

Rodney’s Reckoning: Oil, Memory, and the Guyanese Future

Forty-five years ago today, on June 13, 1980, Walter Rodney—Guyanese historian, revolutionary thinker, and guerrilla intellectual—was assassinated in Georgetown. His death was not merely a personal tragedy or a political loss; it marked a violent interruption in the national project of liberation. Today, as Guyana barrels toward becoming a petrostate, the life and legacy of Walter Rodney demand not only remembrance, but reckoning.

Rodney was born in Georgetown on March 23, 1942, into a working-class family. One of five sons, his father Edward was a tailor and his mother Pauline, a seamstress. From these modest beginnings emerged a brilliant mind deeply attuned to the lives and labors of the people around him. He earned a scholarship to Queen’s College, the most prestigious secondary school in the country at the time, where he distinguished himself as an outstanding scholar, an accomplished debater, and a gifted athlete.

In 1960, he graduated at the top of his class and won an open scholarship to the University College of the West Indies at Mona, Jamaica. He entered the History Department and earned First Class Honours in 1963. He then secured another scholarship to the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London, where, at the age of 24, he completed a Ph.D. with honours in African History. His scholarly journey was always more than a pursuit of academic prestige—it was a preparation for political struggle.

Rodney understood history not as abstraction but as a living tool for liberation. His writings, including the seminal How Europe Underdeveloped Africa, offered a radical critique of colonial and neocolonial power. His work bridged the university and the streets, the archive and the picket line. In Jamaica, his political activism and solidarity with the poor led to his banning by the government. In Tanzania, he helped build a revolutionary curriculum. And in 1974, when he returned to Guyana to take up an academic post, he found the same anti-intellectual repression waiting for him: though the academic board at the University of Guyana appointed him, the politically-controlled University Council, under orders from Forbes Burnham, blocked the appointment.

Undeterred, Rodney found other ways to teach. He gave lectures at the university at the request of the Workers’ Union. He taught history in bauxite communities like McKenzie, Kwakwani, and Everton. He extended his classroom to the sugar estates at the invitation of Dr. Cheddi Jagan. He held sessions in his own home. He understood that education was central to the revolutionary process—not merely as a transfer of knowledge, but as a means of awakening political consciousness.

His mission was as clear as it was dangerous. He sought to refocus Guyana’s political imagination away from rigid racial binaries and toward an understanding of class struggle as the true driver of inequality. He believed that the dictatorial rule of the PNC could not be overturned through electoral means alone, and that political organizing in such a climate had to be both visible and clandestine. He worked to mobilize the masses not simply to protest, but to challenge the very mythology of Burnham’s rule and to see themselves not as victims but as agents of their own emancipation.

But Rodney was not only a revolutionary. He was also a husband and a father. He married Dr. Patricia Rodney and together they raised three children—Shaka, Kanini, and Asha. He built the bookshelves in their home, fixed bicycles, took the children to school in the mornings, and alternated with Patricia in picking them up. He even insisted, with comically poor success, on combing his daughters’ hair. His life was not divided between struggle and love; it was a seamless fabric of both.

On the morning of June 13, 1980, Rodney followed the routine of a devoted father. He took his children to school and returned home, where he and Patricia discussed a recent invitation for him to take up a position at a university in Zimbabwe. After years of declining such offers, he was finally ready to accept. That evening, before he could take that next step, he was killed—murdered by an explosive device, reportedly connected to the state security apparatus.

What remains?

Today, Guyana stands at another pivotal juncture. We are no longer defined by scarcity but by an abundance that could change everything. And yet the shape of our oil economy—its contracts, its governance, its uneven benefits—has raised profound questions about whether we are truly on a path to liberation, or merely trading one form of dependency for another.

Rodney’s questions echo louder than ever. Who is development for? Who profits, and who is left behind? What does sovereignty mean when multinationals determine the pace and direction of our economy? Can democracy flourish in a climate where dissent is treated as disloyalty and political consolidation masquerades as consensus?

Rodney would warn us against the illusion that material wealth alone will save us. He would remind us that the measure of a nation is not its GDP, but the dignity of its people. He would insist that oil wealth must be used to democratize opportunity, not deepen inequality. He would challenge us to resist fatalism, to organize, and to build institutions accountable to the people.

As Robin D. G. Kelley recently reminded us in The Verso Podcast, “We are all Walter Rodney”—or at least, we can be. If we are willing to do more than mourn. If we are willing to act. If we are willing to think rigorously, speak courageously, and imagine boldly.

This anniversary is not only about memory—it is about obligation. We must remember Rodney not simply as a martyr, but as a model. His life calls us to confront the contradictions of our moment with clarity and conviction. And his legacy reminds us that justice is not inherited—it is built.

We owe him that much.

And we owe it to ourselves.

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The Guyana Business Journal Editorial Board welcomes reflections and submissions at terrence.blackman@guyanabusinessjournal.com.