Statement by Walter Rodney's Family on the Oliver Tambo Award

STATEMENT BY THE RODNEY FAMILY WITH RESPECT TO THE OLIVER TAMBO AWARD

On 21 April 2013, the Rodney Family wrote to President Jacob Zuma, President of the

Republic of South Africa, requesting that the South African Government withdraw or

rescind The Order of the Companions of O.R. Tambo (Oliver Tambo Award) to Linden

Forbes Burnham, a late President of Guyana.

Anger over South Africa award to Burnham

by Rickey Singh, The Jamaica Observer

THE recent decision by the South Africa Government to confer on Guyana's late President Forbes Burnham its highest national honour designated for outstanding foreign citizens- — the Oliver Tambo Award (gold) — has drawn strong criticisms from two well-known Jamaican scholars and Pan-Africanists — Dr Rupert Lewis and Dr Horace Campbell.

Both have expressed shock and sadness in wondering aloud whether President Jacob Zuma's Administration had in effect posthumously rewarded the former Guyana head of state for the June 13, 1980 assassination of Walter Rodney, the internationally famous Guyanese historian and Pan-Africanist crusader for freedom and justice.

Is the ANC rewarding Forbes Burnham for the assassination of Walter Rodney?

by Horace Campbell, 21 April 2013

Walter Rodney was assassinated on June 13, 1980.

At the time of his assassination, Forbes Burnham was the President. Since the assassination, there have been numerous calls for an investigation into the circumstances of the killing. The brother of Walter Rodney, Donald Rodney, survived and told the world that the bomb that assassinated Walter Rodney was placed by Gregory Smith. Smith was an operative from the Guyanese Defense force and he was spirited out of the country to the colonial territory of Cayenne. He died there after more than twenty years. There has never been an inquiry into the assassination.

Brecht Forum TV: Remembering Walter Rodney 40 Years After "How Europe Underdeveloped Africa"

Rodney and the concept of labour

by George Lamming, The Stabroek News

Pambazuka Press has recently published a new edition of Walter Rodney’s seminal book, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa. To commemorate the reissue, 40 years after its initial publication, and the 32nd anniversary of Walter Rodney’s assassination, a panel discussion was held at the Cipriani Labour College, Trinidad and Tobago, on June 13, 2012. This week we carry the text of Barbadian novelist George Lamming’s address.

Walter Rodney, The Dar es Salaam School and the Current Situation

by Dani Wadada Nabudere, 2006

Walter Rodney made a significant contribution to the African academy, the Pan-African revolution, and human emancipation. This was fully demonstrated in his activist commitment to the cause of the liberation of the people of Africa and those of African descent in the Diaspora and it is this achievement that has brought us here together to commemorate the 25th anniversary of his cowardly assassination in 1980. It is also this commitment that gives us an opportunity to revisit these important historical events on our continent, the African Diaspora and the world at large.

Aspects of the International Class Struggle in Africa, the Caribbean and the Americas|

by Walter Rodney, 1974 (Via Marxists.Org)

Political conferences of the oppressed invariably attract a variety of responses - varying from cynical conviction that they are an utter waste of time to naïve optimism that they will change the face of the world. In actuality, popular struggle continues from day to day at many different and more profound levels; and its intensity at any given time primarily determines the relevance and utility of the conference as a technique of co-ordination. The Sixth Pan-African Congress scheduled for Dar es Salaam in June, 1974 consciously aims at being heir to a tradition of conferences which grew out of the response of Africans to their oppression in the first half of this century. Therefore, its rationale must be sought though a careful determination of the co-ordinates of the contemporary endeavours of the African people everywhere.

How Europe Underdeveloped Africa

by Walter Rodney, 1973

Preface

Chapter One. Some Questions on Development

1.1 What is Development
1.2 What is Underdevelopment?