South Africa / Guyana:

Decision to confer Oliver Tambo Award to Forbes Burnham sparks controversy

Tula Dlamini

23/04/2013

Opinión

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As Director-General in The Presidency, Dr Cassius Lubisi, in his capacity as the Chancellor of the National Orders, unveiled the nominees for the National Orders for this year in Pretoria, controversy brewed on the criteria used to award the highest award that a country, through its President, bestows on its citizens and eminent foreign nationals.

Alarm bells first rang after the Caribbean press reported that late former executive President of Guyana, Linden Forbes Burnham would be one of the recipients to be conferred posthumously with the prestigious Oliver Tambo Award. According to the report “Roxane Van West Charles, his daughter will be traveling to Johannesburg to accept the award. She will be accompanied by her sister Dr Francesca Onu and her husband, Dr Richard Van West Charles”.

“The decision spells dissension from the generation of scholars and political activists who blame Burnham for the murder of Dr. Walter Rodney,” notes Prof. Horace Campbell, author and Pan Africanism professor at Syracuse University.

“The decision deepens the questions about the present leadership of the ANC,” Prof. Campbell said.

But who was Walter Rodney and what did he stand for? It is perhaps enough to say Rodney was a young academic and political activist who galvanized African and India workers in Guyana and the entire Caribbean region in the most moving way over a short period of a few years. When the Government of Guyana, through its representative on the Board of Governors, revoked the appointment of Dr. Rodney to a teaching position at the University of Guyana, leading periodicals and organizations in the Caribbean and other parts of the world expressed their abhorrence at the revocation. Renowned thinker, Prof. Ali Mazurui, who was a self-confessed ideological adversary of Dr. Rodney during his stint at the University of Dar-es-Salaam in East Africa in the 1970s, wrote to the Guyanese government concerning the decision and expressed what he termed “bewilderment and concern,” given “Dr. Rodney’s intellectual gifts as a scholar”.

Literary works authored by Dr. Walter Rodney include: How Europe Underdeveloped Africa; North Atlantic Slave Trade; and the Groundings With My Brothers.

Upon his assassination, Rodney was accorded the largest funeral ever seen in the history of Guyana. The international community condemned his murder. Countries such as Grenada and Cuba declared days of national mourning for a man who never held political power in his country.

Walter Rodney was only thirty-eight years when he was murdered on 13 June, 1980. Forbes Burnham was the Executive President of Guyana at the time. In a speech at the Square of the Revolution, following a Congress of his party, Burnham announced that his party’s steel was sharper. He urged the leaders of the Working Peoples Alliance (WPA) to which Rodney belonged to “make their wills”.

Thus, when Walter Rodney died, allegedly at the hands of an operative of the local military, many concluded this was not an isolated killing. According to Prof. Campbell, Walter Rodney was with his brother Donald Rodney who survived. “Donald told the world that the bomb that assassinated Walter Rodney was placed by Gregory Smith…an agent from the Guyanese Defense force.”

Prof. Campbell is not the only one who questions why then President Burnham failed to constitute an inquiry into the assassination, in spite of repeated calls to do so; and the fact that he allowed the alleged assassin to leave Guyana to the colonial territory of Cayenne where he died after more than twenty years.

“Since the assassination of Rodney, the Burnham forces in the Caribbean have been working very hard to discredit the ideas and the lessons of the life of Walter Rodney,” laments Prof. Campbell.

The South African government says the late Burnham deserves the Gold Oliver Tambo Award for his dedication to the liberation of his country, Guyana, as well as the African continent. The official statement adds that Burnham established diplomatic relations with many African countries and expressed solidarity with the liberation movement and freedom fighters in South Africa…an act of solidarity with the leaders of the ANC that strengthened relations between Guyana and South Africa.

Prof. Campbell disagrees with this notion of “late President Burnham the liberator”, citing the fact that “at the time of the global opposition to apartheid, most leaders, even Mobutu Sese Seko of then-Zaire mouthed anti-colonial statements while supporting French and US colonialism. Burnham was the same. While he was publicly praising anti-colonialism in Africa, he was collaborating with French colonialism in the Caribbean. The closeness of relationship was such that the Burnham government could find refuge for the killer of Walter Rodney in a French colonial territory of Cayenne”.

Regardless of the merits or de-merits of the fore-going positions, it is within reason to support those who are calling for a serious debate on these issues. For example, the SA government must explain what rationale is there for the honour to be given to Burnham when it has never been given to Julius Nyerere? These are the questions that Prof. Campbell and many in the Pan Africanist fold are asking.

Tula Dlamini is a senior researcher with SABC News Research.

Source: SABC News

https://www.alainet.org/es/node/75603