Encountering Walter Rodney on Campus
In August 1980, I was admitted into the School of Basic Studies (SBS) at Ahmadu Bello University (ABU), Zaria. From the main gate to the Senate Building, SBS administrative offices, student hostels, cafeterias, faculty buildings, and even tree trunks, I saw posters of a man named Walter Rodney. The poster featured his picture, his name, his birth and death dates, and a bold quotation: "This Act In Itself Will Not Delay Their Day of Judgment." This sparked intense curiosity. Who was this man? What happened to him? Was he killed? What "Act" and "Day of Judgment" were referenced? I had never heard of Rodney before.
The Quest for Answers
After registration, I traveled to Kaduna where my family lived. That Friday night, I couldn't sleep, tormented by questions about Rodney. There was no internet then, and no one to ask. When classes began, I took History. All History and Political Science lecturers referenced Rodney. One Zimbabwean lecturer, whom we called Dzimbo, spoke of Rodney as if his course were solely about him. Dzimbo and others introduced us to Rodney's seminal work, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa (HEUA). They described it as essential reading for understanding African history and underdevelopment. The book argues that Western Europeans, preceded by Arabs, laid the foundation for Africa's underdevelopment through invasion, plundering of resources, and the enslavement and exploitation of African labor to develop Europe, the US, and Canada. This resulted in the disarticulation of African societies, colonialism, unequal trade, and the exclusion of Africans from shaping their own history.
Rodney's Revolutionary Impact
As a Pan-Africanist, Rodney contributed to national liberation struggles in Mozambique, Angola, Zimbabwe, and South Africa while teaching in Tanzania, the headquarters of liberation movements. He did this through history teaching, revolutionary discourse, and political education of Southern African fighters. Dzimbo and other lecturers emphasized that HEUA shattered the imperialist, neo-colonial, and bourgeois history taught in secondary schools and media. They called it a critical, thought-provoking, scientific, and revolutionary narrative. I was mesmerized. I knew history could be critical and radical from earlier readings, but how could history be scientific like biology or physics? Why would a historian without arms or an army be bombed by the US Central Intelligence Agency in alliance with the Guyanese government for writing a book?
Deepening Understanding Through Campus Life
I bought HEUA at the ABU Bookshop and read it with pain and inquisitiveness. At ABU's "Gossip Centre," where students gathered, Rodney was described as an extremely intelligent African-Caribbean historian, unrepentant Pan-Africanist, thoroughbred comrade, and uncompromising radical political activist. In organizations I joined—the Movement for a Progressive Nigeria (MPN) and the Youth Solidarity on Southern Africa (YUSSA)—Rodney was portrayed as a scholar who, like Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Mao, believed that "philosophers have only interpreted the world; the point, however, is to change it." As a Marxist-Leninist, he preached Lenin's dictum: "Without a revolutionary theory, there can be no revolutionary movement" and "In the struggle for power, the proletariat has no other weapon but organization."
Critiquing Rodney's Work
In the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, we were required to review and critique HEUA in our first-year History course. Professor Okello Oculi even made us create an imaginary dialogue between Lord Lugard and Rodney. We felt it unfair to critique a figure like Rodney. However, in an MPN meeting, I learned that to "critique" means to summarize the book, highlight its relevance, identify what must be done to reverse African underdevelopment, and determine which social forces should act. By the time we submitted our essays, many of us had come to know Rodney. We concurred with him on virtually everything, including that "colonialism had only one hand; it was a one-armed bandit." Rodney's position that there were "African accomplices inside the imperialist system" led us to agree that Africa's development requires a radical break with the exploitative imperialist system.
Rodney's Legacy and Death
In 1974, Rodney left Tanzania for Guyana to become a full-time professional revolutionary. He focused on politically educating, uniting, and leading socialist forces under the Working People's Alliance to take state power for socialist transformation. Rodney was murdered on 13 July 1980. He was born on 23 March 1942, living only 38 years. Yet those were years of theoretical, ideological, and political struggle for the liberation of Africans in Africa and the Americas. Continue to rest in power, Brother Walter Rodney.
Ahmed Aminu-Ramatu Yusuf worked as deputy director, Cabinet Affairs Office, The Presidency, and retired as General Manager (Administration), Nigerian Meteorological Agency (NiMet).
