CODESRIA Bulletin, Nos 2&3, 2021 Page 39

The Prophecy of Self-Emancipation: and the Scholarship and Praxis of Defiance in the African World

alter Rodney joined the working people, at all times and in ancestors just over three all places, to bring about their own Wdecades ago. Yet his Michael O. West liberation—in fine, to fulfill the defiant scholarship—and defiant The Pennsylvania State prophecy of self-emancipation. praxis—remain instructive, with University, USA vital lessons for contemporary Viewed in its totality, Rodney’s toilers and strugglers in the literary output amounts to an African world, meaning the organising manual centred on the In 1986, six years after Rodney’s continent and the diaspora. His prophecy of self-emancipation. assassination, Kwayana published scholarly endeavours, invariably We should take Kwayana at his a biography of his fallen comrade. characterised by defiance, were word, meaning we should grapple As biographies go, Kwayana’s no intellectual abstraction. Rather, seriously with the language he sketch of Rodney’s life, at a they were linked to the pursuit of uses to describe Rodney. It bears breezy fifty-three pages, is rather the liberation of Africans, at home emphasising that Kwayana did not abbreviated. Nor was Kwayana’s and abroad, along with sufferers of call Rodney a ‘theorist’ of self- work brought out by a marquee all racial and ethnic backgrounds. emancipation, terminology that is publisher in Europe or North He was at once an African de rigueur in the secular academy. America. It was published, instead, world revolutionary and a world Rather, he describes Rodney by the Catholic Standard, a weekly revolutionary. as a prophet, using sacerdotal newspaper in Georgetown, Guyana. language, sacred terminology, He died, aged 38, in his native land For these reasons, Kwayana’s religious diction. On Kwayana’s of Guyana in 1980 on Friday, 13 biography remains little known, telling, Rodney was a prophet June. The then president of Guyana, having, alas, found no place of preaching a gospel; he was not a Forbes Burnham, promptly gave honour in the scholarship on preacher pontificating about self- out that Rodney was a victim of Walter Rodney (Lewis 1998). Yet emancipation. There is a difference, misfortune. Rodney, Burnham said, Kwayana’s text brims with first- and a crucial one, between the had had bad luck. Burnham was as hand insights into Rodney’s last, prophet and the preacher. The cynical and calculating as he was and most consequential, political preacher’s task is largely one superstitious and cold-blooded. campaign—the one to rid Guyana of reconciliation—reconciling He failed to add that he had of the Burnham dictatorship congregants to current reality, conveniently arranged Rodney’s (Westmaas 2004). to the powers that be. Soothing, supposed bad luck, by ordering his encouraging, bearing good news— The leading theme in Kwayana’s assassination, presumably to be such is the mission of the preacher. biographical sketch is self- carried out on that day. Rodney’s The prophet, on the contrary, is the emancipation. And Rodney, offence was in opposing Burnham’s bearer of bad news—but with this Kwayana offers, was preeminently strongman rule—in other words, important caveat: the news may be a ‘prophet of self-emancipation’. his dictatorship.1 bad, but it needn’t remain that way. As an intellectual activist, A better world is possible. Eusi Kwayana was prominent Rodney’s chief mission was among those who fought in the ‘preaching the gospel of the class of The prophet’s is a call to repentance, trenches alongside Rodney in the earners’ (Kwayana 1986), a gospel reparation, reconstruction—in struggle against Burnham’s rule. that insists on the capacity of the other words, revolution. Small CODESRIA Bulletin, Nos 2&3, 2021 Page 40 wonder that the powerful generally Canada was offering a rejoinder to Horace Campbell attended the have had such great aversion to it. There was no need for a Black Congress of Black Writers and prophecy and prophets. Preaching Power movement in his country, wrote an assessment of it, which may be reconcilable with power; the ambassador offered, as Black was published in the student prophecy rarely is. The job of Power was already in effect in newspaper at York University in the prophet is a dangerous line Burnham’s Guyana. The Zairian Toronto, where he was then an of work, hazardous to his or her strongman, Mobutu Sese Seko—to undergraduate (Campbell 1968). health. Hence Forbes Burnham’s whom Burnham bears comparison, Unless he is a meticulous archivist, declaration about Walter Rodney from self-fashioning to ideological Campbell likely does not have and bad luck—a fate the powerful appropriation—would later, and a copy of that article. The York seem to have an uncanny ability more infamously, make a similar University library certainly does to confer on those who challenge proclamation. Black Power is not, since it began microfilming their hold on power. sought all over the world, Mobutu the student newspaper only in made his billboards broadcast on 1969, the year after Campbell Burnham could have had the good the occasion of the epic pugilistic wrote his postmortem. But not luck of hosting the event at which contest in Kinshasa in 1974 between to worry. There is an ace in the Rodney made his world debut as a Muhammad Ali and George hole—or, as Kwayana, a biblical prophet of self-emancipation. That Foreman, but it is realised in Zaire scholar of sorts, may have event was the Congress of Black (now the Democratic Republic of phrased it, a ram in thicket. The Writers. The key organisers of the Congo). Characteristically, the rescuers are those outstanding, Congress, most of whom hailed Zairian strongman lied. Mobutu, if unwitting, archivists of the from the but were based like Burnham, was slandering global black liberation struggles in Montreal, Canada, discussed Black Power. But unlike Burnham, and, more generally, antinomian with Burnham holding the Mobutu—who was deeply movements everywhere. These Congress in Guyana. In publicly implicated in the murder of Patrice would be the imperialist and expressing interest in hosting the Lumumba—mercifully refrained capitalist intelligence services, in Congress of Black Writers, he was from appropriating the Marxist this case the special branch of the pretending, as always, taking his moniker. As the first high-profile Royal Canadian Mounted Police, interlocutors for the proverbial victim of neocolonialism in popularly known as the Mounties. ride. Ever the dissimulator, and postcolonial Africa, the martyred never wanting to appear to be out Lumumba necessarily became part Naturally, the Mounties took a of ideological fashion, Burnham of the iconography of the Congress keen interest in the Congress of was not really serious. The of Black Writers, alongside other Black Writers. Their eyes and Congress, planned amid the global male icons, most notably Frantz ears, including some black ones, ascendancy of Black Power, was a Fanon, Malcolm X and Kwame were present at the Congress. The quintessential Black Power event. Nkrumah. Mounties were also avid collectors Burnham, however, opposed Black of material generated by and about Power, even as he feigned interest Walter Rodney was invited to the the Congress, including Campbell’s in it, just as he would later and with Congress by its lead organiser, postmortem in that student equal mendacity affect conversion Rosie Douglas, who later became newspaper. Of the Congress, the to socialism and Marxism- prime minister of Dominica. young Campbell wrote: ‘No one Leninism. In fact, the only ‘ism’ He was in his element at the who went will really be the same the Guyanese strongman ever Congress, arguably the single- again.’ (Campbell 1968). From supported was Burnhamism— most consequential Black Power all indications, Horace Campbell personal rule. Accordingly, gathering ever. It was there that was among the transformed. So, the Congress of Black Writers Rodney, then all of twenty-six too, was Walter Rodney, who— convened not in Georgetown, but years old, a freshly minted PhD despite all that Horace Campbell in Montreal, in 1968—a year of from SOAS and a little-known would later write about him rebellion and revolutionary fervour lecturer in African History at the (Campbell 1987)—did not figure all over the world (Austin 2018). Jamaica campus of the University in Campbell’s postmortem of the of the West Indies, strode onto the Congress of Black Writers. Rodney Even as the Congress was in stage of history. did figure in the calculations of the session, Burnham’s ambassador to neocolonial authorities in Jamaica, CODESRIA Bulletin, Nos 2&3, 2021 Page 41 who banned him from returning Another fortunate outcome of 1981). Predictably, Rodney taught to the island after his attendance Rodney’s expulsion from Jamaica and practised the essence of his at the Congress of Black Writers, was his best-known book, How prophetic message. Rodney’s the case for doing so having been Europe Underdeveloped Africa, students, Kwayana, said: ‘Left his provided by the local intelligence which, like his overall message courses interested in discovering apparatus inherited from the British of self-emancipation, remains the story of the oppressed classes colonialists (West 2006). relevant today (Rodney 1972). … and learning of their efforts and This book certainly would not, limited successes in the destiny Prophecy is a function of sociology, could not, have been written the of self-emancipation, for which, not biology—which is to say, way it was, if it could have been Rodney taught, there was no prophets are made, not born. As written at all, without his presence substitute (Kwayana 1968). If the a prophet of self-emancipation, on the African continent and more struggles of African peoples in the Rodney first displayed his calling particularly at the University modern world—a world they were in Jamaica. There, his chief of Dar es Salaam in . so instrumental in making—proves interlocutors were Rastafarians (Harisch 2020). Certain deans of anything, it is just that: There is no and radical intellectuals, many African Studies had given a cool substitute for self-emancipation. of whom were also Rastas, albeit reception to Rodney’s first book, This is the prophetic message, the mainly of the autodidactic sort. A History of the Upper Guinea revolutionary doctrine, of Walter Notably, too, Rodney’s Jamaican Coast, his revised doctoral thesis Rodney for toilers and strugglers interlocutors were largely male, (Rodney 1970). Their response in the twenty-first century. as seen in the title of his collection was far chillier to How Europe of Jamaica-based, Black Power- Underdeveloped Africa, which Note aligned speeches and essays, The they practically put on intellectual 1. Report of the Commission of Groundings with my Brothers ice, generally refusing to review in (Rodney 1969). Inquiry Appointed to Enquire their journals. They peremptorily and Report on the Circumstances Rodney’s expulsion from Jamaica, dismissed it as a work of polemic Surrounding the Death of the Late which in turn led to a social and unworthy of serious scholarly Dr. Walter Rodney on Thirteenth political explosion on the island, attention (Johnson 2021). It was Day of June, One Thousand raised his stock up and down not the first, or last, time that a Nine Hundred and Eighty at the radical Caribbean (Meeks defiant text on Africa was declared Georgetown [Guyana], 8 February 2016. Available online at https:// 1996; Quinn 2014). The Trinidad by deans and dons to be polemical, radar.auctr.edu/islandora/object/ Revolution of 1970, that epochal tendentious, undeserving of their Caribbean event in the era of Black erudite attention—as if erudition coi%3Arodney_report. Power, may well have happened was theirs to grant or withhold at Bibliography without Rodney’s expulsion from will. Inherent in the prophecy of Jamaica. But it likely would not self-emancipation is the imperative Austin, D., ed., 2018, Moving Against have happened the way it actually to break the stranglehold of the the System: The 1968 Congress of did without the regional after- intellectual gatekeepers and to pry Black Writers and the Making of effects of Rodney’s expulsion loose the tyrannical grip of those Global Consciousness, London, from Jamaica. For those involved who uphold academic orthodoxy. UK: Pluto Press. in it, the organising manuals of That is the purpose of defiant Campbell, H., 1968, Personal the Trinidad Revolution were scholarship on global Africa, as Impressions, Seer, 1 November. manifold. Notably, however, practised by Rodney. Campbell, H., 1987, Rasta and Resistance: From Marcus Garvey they included Groundings with Defiance rang out, too, in Rodney’s my Brothers, which was read to Walter Rodney, Trenton, NJ: last outstanding work of scholarship, Africa World Press. alongside textbooks on guerrilla A History of the Guyanese Harisch, I. R., 2020, Facets of Walter warfare by such figures as Ernest Working People, an essential ‘Che’ Guevara, Mao Zedong and Rodney’s Intellectual Activism handmaiden to his political project During his Dar es Salaam Years, (Ryan and upon returning to Guyana after Stewart 1995). 1966–1974, Stichproben: Vienna his Tanzanian sojourn (Rodney Journal of African Studies, Vol. 20, No. 38, pp. 101–129. CODESRIA Bulletin, Nos 2&3, 2021 Page 42

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Walter Rodney (1942–1980) https://www.nofi.media/2018/02/dr-walter-rodney/1316