In this groundbreaking piece, Malte Kanefendt and David Weiss uncover previously unknown details surrounding Walter Rodney’s visit to Hamburg in 1978. This blog provides valuable context to Leo Zeilig’s 2019 blog, Walter Rodney’s Journey to Hamburg. The authors explore the German students’ initiative to bring Rodney to Hamburg, his reasons for wanting to visit the city, his lectures, his unexpected return in 1980, and the memorial in his honour following his assassination.
In 1978, Walter Rodney faced an increasingly precarious situation in Guyana – politically as well as personally. In previous years, and especially after Rodney had joined the socialist Working People’s Alliance (WPA) in 1974, he had focused on the political struggle in his home country. With intensified political repression against the party and its key figures, however, including a teaching prohibition imposed on Rodney, the chances to make a living for him and his family had become increasingly challenging. Between 1974 and 1979, Rodney thus travelled to various places across the globe in order to find paid appointments and foster international comradeship. During this period, Rodney also spent three months in Hamburg. In the early summer of 1978, he not only gave seminars and held a lecture at the Institute of Political Science at the University of Hamburg but also built lasting connections with colleagues and students.
This blog post seeks to uncover how Rodney’s stay in Hamburg came to be, how Rodney spent his months in the Northern German city, which scientific and political topics he focused on and the long-lasting impact he had well after his departure. We talked to former students and colleagues in Hamburg, to family and friends of Walter Rodney whose personal narrations and archival sources from the 1970s and 80s are the crucial pieces that helped us to portray a rich, yet underappreciated period in Rodney’s life.[1]
Rodney’s Hamburg lectures – recorded, transcribed and published by his students and friends – represent, as Leo Zeilig mentions, new theoretical and practical insights into the rich political theory of Walter Rodney and his personal development as a central activist-scholar of the 20th century. In Hamburg, Rodney inspired students with his lectures and his recollections of many years of political work as well as academic research. His lectures were well attended. His rhetorical style and the pressing issues he raised, such as the historical roots of racism and the multi-layered forms of colonial violence impressed the students in the lecture hall. Rodney addressed the neo-colonial status quo, the ongoing dependency of the former colonies and introduced students to his theoretical work on the concept of ‘underdevelopment’, the integration of (neo-)colonial economies into the capitalist world market and the multiple anti-colonial struggles of the time.
The way in which Rodney elaborated on their interconnectedness represented a new perspective on colonialism and post-colonial constellations for the academic landscape in Hamburg. Against this background, it is hardly surprising that Rodney was able to leave his mark on the institute and the university long after his stay in Hamburg.
A student-led initiative invites Rodney to Hamburg
Back in the mid-1970s, Harald Sellin, a student at the Institute of Political Science at the University of Hamburg, stumbled upon Walter Rodney’s book How Europe Underdeveloped Africa on a study trip to Sudan. Sellin was deeply impressed, brought the book to Hamburg[2] and introduced it to fellow students during a gathering of the so-called ‘Africa Group’, a student initiative he had co-founded at the institute. The group had created a newspaper archive with a focus on the continent and continuously debated contemporary developments in postcolonial Africa.[3] It was this student group’s idea to invite Walter Rodney to Hamburg. Rainer Tetzlaff, who had come to Hamburg in 1974 as a professor of political science with a special expertise in African politics and history, was sympathetic to the students’ proposal. Encouraged by his student assistant Harald Sellin, Tetzlaff initiated the contact with Rodney.[4]
Why Rodney came to Hamburg
The arrangement at the University of Hamburg also came in handy for Rodney himself. First, Rodney had visited Hamburg before. Fifteen years earlier, in 1963, after having won an essay competition at the University of the West Indies with a text on “Concepts of Democracy”, Rodney was offered the opportunity to travel to Europe via the Hamburg-America shipping line. Together with his school and university friend Albert Parkes, he spent several days in the city.[5] Another visit to Hamburg then followed in 1976. Together with his wife Patricia, he travelled through Germany, this included a stay in Hamburg as well as meetings with academics and friends in East Berlin.[6]
Second, there were crucial financial considerations, especially due to the precarious economic, political and personal situation he and his family faced in Guyana, since Rodney’s appointment as director of the Institute of History at the newly established University of Guyana had been cancelled in 1974. Without any chance for a regular income, it had become necessary for Rodney to leave the country and take up short-term research, lecture and teaching positions at foreign academic institutions. Before he came to Hamburg, he had already taken up appointments at several North American academic institutions. While he had given guest lectures at Harvard, Stanford and Columbia University among others, he had also held a teaching position at the Africana Studies and Research Center in Ithaca and co-organised a six-week Research Symposium at the Institute of the Black World (IBW) in Atlanta.
Third, teaching as a visiting professor in Hamburg in the summer of 1978 was then also a favourable opportunity to find new allies for the internationalist cause of the WPA. And, in addition to these decisive political and financial considerations for Rodney, there must also have been academic reasons that attracted him to spend three months in Hamburg. On the one hand it can be assumed that – against the background of state censorship in Guyana – Rodney was looking forward to the comparatively free academic discourse in Hamburg.[7] On the other hand, Hamburg might have garnered scientific interest in Rodney since he had dealt with the influence of the German East Africa Company (GEAC) on Germany’s colonial expansion in present-day Tanzania before.[8] It is only most likely that Rodney, with all his knowledge about Tanzania and the Maji-Maji rebellion against German colonial exploitation and forced labour, was well aware of Hamburg’s colonial legacy.
Life and Work in Hamburg
After Rodney arrived in Hamburg in April of 1978, he lived with his friend and previous Hamburg travel companion Albert Parkes, who, together with his family, had settled down in the city. Soon, the house of Harald Sellin, which he shared with his friends and fellow activists, would become another hub for Rodney’s social life and work in the city. There, Rodney often joined long evenings filled with parties as well as intense debates about politics. At the Institute of Political Science at the University, Rodney often engaged with the ‘Research Group on Armament and Underdevelopment Studies’, a small collective of peace and conflict researchers at the institute. He was especially interested in their ‘Archive of Military and Armament in the Third World’, where he was able to recruit a wide array of sources on military (and thus repression) capacities in the Global South.
What other specific research and political projects Rodney pursued at the University is difficult to reconstruct, only a handful of documents indicate several areas of activity. In an article for the famous Hamburg-based weekly magazine Der Spiegel, for instance, published on July 16th, 1978 under the headline “Cuba promotes a just cause”. A researcher of the Third World on Castro’s Africa policy” [9], Rodney discussed Cuban activities on the continent and differentiated between the Cuban intervention in Angola and their engagement in the Horn. In Angola, Rodney argued, we see Afro-Cubans, whose ancestors were brought to the Caribbean as slaves, now return to the continent to help liberate Angola from the disciples of the slave traders. He described this as an “ironic historical turn” and deemed it to be “the strongest demonstration of international solidarity.” Considering Cuba’s engagement in the Horn, however, particularly in support of Ethiopian troops in territorial disputes with Somalia, Rodney argued this support to be “neither necessary nor desirable”. The conflict was, Rodney wrote, “a side-product of the illogic of colonial borders”. He questioned, however, the Marxist and revolutionary nature of the Ethiopian regime, who actively repressed, even killed “progressive Ethiopian workers, students, and intellectuals”. Another problem with the Cuban support for the regime, Rodney continued, could become its potential suppression of the Eritrean people, whose struggle for liberation Cuba had previously supported. In this light, Cuba’s active engagement with the Ethiopian rulers could become a challenge for its “credibility” on the continent. “In this context”, Rodney then concluded, “the image of Cuba as a Soviet pawn appears”, only serving Soviet interests on the continent. This, however, only distracted “from the actual decisive difficulties, the liberation of Africa from colonialism, racism, and imperialism”.
Hamburg lectures
Surely, the most important, influential and lasting testament of his stay in Hamburg, are his lectures at the University in the summer term of 1978. During his months in Hamburg, Rodney held at least 6 lectures and, in doing so, pursued a quite ambitious programme. In each lecture, he expanded on one overarching theme, starting with an overview of his “framework of general materialist development”.[10] In his second lecture, Rodney then engaged with what he called classical development theories and modernisation theory and juxtaposed these conventional theories with a critical approach that connects “underdevelopment” and ongoing dependency to their historical roots. In the following lecture, Rodney then recounted the process and driving forces of the colonisation of African societies, in order to – in his next lecture – discuss various theories of African colonial economies, emphasising often underappreciated factors like the commodification of labour, changes in land use and the introduction of colonial trade systems. In the final two recorded and preserved lectures, Rodney then moved on, first, to the decolonisation process throughout the previous decades, presenting his reading of various causes and modes of decolonisation, and, secondly, contemporary and contested “post-colonial development strategies” in Africa. All of these lectures were accompanied by intensive Q&A sessions, during which Rodney addressed the students’ questions, referenced various literature recommendations and also connected the respective topics to a seminar he taught parallel to the lecture.
The fact that the dense and rich lectures are preserved at all – mostly word for word – is, again, due to the students of the Africa Group at the institute. Harald Sellin had recorded Rodney’s classes week after week. In the early 1980s, a whole collective of students then went on to transcribe the lectures and initiated the printing of the collection in the small university-owned publishing house. Rainer Tetzlaff and Peter Lock served as the publishing editors of the collection and contributed a short introduction to the 1984 publication of (probably) around 300 copies of Rodney’s Hamburg lectures.
Rodney’s unexpected return in 1980
Rodney’s life after his stay in Hamburg in 1978 was shaped by growing suppression of political dissent in Guyana under the government of the People’s National Congress (PNC).
In July 1979, for example, Omawale, Rupert Roopnaraine and Walter Rodney, the three most well-known faces of the party, were accused of having played a role in an arson attack on the Ministry of National Development and the PNC Headquarters and were arrested. The nationwide protests and strikes against Burnham’s PNC that followed their arrest went on for three months, signified a rapidly growing resistance to the PNC government and were described as a Civil Rebellion by the WPA. Rodney and his comrades were released on bail.[11] Even if pressure from the Guyanese public and international protests had led to the release of the three-party members after a few days, the threat of persecution and re-imprisonment continuously loomed over Rodney.[12] In this tense situation the WPA was able to smuggle Rodney out of the country in a clandestine operation via Suriname. In the spring of 1980, he then managed to arrange short stays in Zimbabwe and Germany.
Robert Mugabe, Zimbabwe’s then new Prime Minister, turned out to be an avid reader of Rodney’s writings and proposes that Rodney could spend a year in Zimbabwe.After some deliberation with his family, Rodney accepted the offer and, towards the end of May 1980, travelled to Zimbabwe for a few days. Mugabe wanted to commission Rodney to compile a chronicle of Zimbabwe’s history and to set up a historical institute for this purpose.[13] Shortly before the trip, Rodney had changed the route of his flight and added Hamburg as an in-between stop for both the outward and return journey.[14]Because all these plans were made secretly, Rodney surprised his friends in Hamburg. Even though he was in Hamburg for less than a week, his stories and the discussions both in the shared flat and with selected colleagues at the institute made clear once again how urgent and heated the conflict in Guyana must have been. Rodney was even more concerned than previously with the question of the legitimacy of political violence and armed resistance.[15]His final trip to Hamburg, spontaneously and secretly planned as it was, could also indicate that he attempted to figure out additional ways to support the struggle of the WPA in Guyana. On June 3rd, Rodney finally returned to Guyana. On June 13th, any hope of a safe home for Walter and Patricia Rodney and their children Shaka, Kanini and Asha was destroyed forever. At the age of 38, Walter Rodney was assassinated by a PNC appointed agent who handed Rodney an explosive mobile device moments before it exploded in Rodney’s car.[16]
Grieving, remembering and organising in Hamburg
As the news of Rodney’s assassination reached Hamburg, dismay, desperation, and grief were tangible. Only two weeks after his death, on June 29th 1980, Der Spiegel published an article on the developments in Guyana, Rodney’s murder was framed as a symptomatic example for the increasingly repressive political landscape in the country. At the University, Peter Fischer-Appelt, president of the university, penned an obituary in which he honoured Rodney as one of “the most distinguished historians of the Third World”. In Hamburg, Rodney would be remembered as an “outstanding teacher and colleague”, admired amongst students and colleagues alike for his lectures on the “history, political ideas and movements for emancipation in Africa. […] His work will live on”, Fischer-Appelt concluded.
Acting in this spirit, letting Rodney’s work live on, were his former students and colleagues at the Institute of Political Science. In the days following his death, they formed a Solidarity Committee Walter Rodney and held a memorial service on June 30th, 1980, at the University, remembering Rodney, his life and political work. In October of the same year, they organised a large event in honour of Walter Rodney. The event brought together international guests, like Guyanese poet Jan Carew and pan-Africanist Horace Campbell, as well as German academics and former students of Rodney.
These activities were only the beginning of years of remembrance and activism in memory of Rodney. Still in 1980, his students and friends form the Guyana Committee at the University, organised money in support of Rodney’s family but also to further collect and publicise information on the developments in Guyana to the German public. A comprehensive radio broadcast on Rodney’s life and work, leaflets on the situation in Guyana and occasional demonstrations continued this work. Annual highlights were large events around the anniversaries of Rodney’s death, in 1981, for instance, the students were able to welcome Rodney’s widow, Patricia Rodney, and his former WPA comrade, Andaiye, in Hamburg.
In the following years, active students broadened their focus to oppose US imperialism in the whole of the Caribbean. In 1983, they form the Hamburg Grenada Initiative, which conducted multiple research activities on the invasion of Grenada and worked closely with the Guyana Committee. In 1984, both groups formed the Caribbean Information Centre Hamburg (KIZH), and continued their academic and public political work.
During our research process and, first and foremost, through the personal contacts to family, friends and colleagues of Walter Rodney, we began to understand what made Rodney’s stay in Hamburg so meaningful. We learned how pressing the issues were that found their way into the Hamburg lectures – a treasure of academic brilliance yet to be fully rediscovered and appreciated. In addition, we got to experience, over and over again, the admiring way in which those we were able to interview and who had the chance to cross paths with Rodney in Hamburg looked back on the personal relationships and the political debates that were developing during the years of 1978 and 1980. These memories shed light on the unbroken motivation to organise, engage with radical theory and, importantly, publish the Hamburg lectures, years after Rodney’s death.
Featured Photograph: Walter Rodney and his German friend Harald Selling in Hamburg May 1980 (Credit to Monika Rulfs)
David Weiss studied Political Science at the University of Hamburg, as well as Political Theory in Frankfurt and Darmstadt. His main academic interests are democratic and international political theory as well as reactionary thought and its influence on right-wing political parties in Western Europe and the US.
Malte Kanefendt studies Political Science in Berlin with a focus on social movement studies, racial capitalism and resistance projects of decolonization.
[1] We want to give special thanks for their support and patience with all our questions to Patricia and Asha Rodney, Albert Parkes, Monika Rulfs, Peter Lock and Rainer Tetzlaff
[2] How Europe Underdeveloped Africa had already been translated and published in German in 1973 under the (unfortunate) title Afrika – Die Geschichte einer Unterentwicklung (Africa – A History of Underdevelopment) by Wagenbach Verlag in Berlin.
[3] This is how Peter Lock remembers the increasing engagement of the Hamburg students with Rodney’s work in a talk we had in the summer of 2021. Lock has worked as a researcher in peace and conflict studies for several decades. During Rodney’s time at the University of Hamburg, he had worked at the Institute for Peace Research and Security Policy (IFSH) and became one of the closest academic and personal contacts for Rodney in Hamburg.
[4] Rainer Tetzlaff shared this information with us during an interview we had in the summer of 2021.
[5] More detailed information on Rodney’s first trip to Europe are available at the Archives Research Center of the Atlanta University Center which is home of the Walter Rodney Papers. In series B, box 1, folder 19 the circumstances under which Rodney won the prize are mentioned.
[6] Interview with Patricia and Asha Rodney, 2021.
[7] That is at least a reason Rainer Tetzlaff mentioned during our conversation in 2021.
[8] With his contribution „Migrant Labour and the Colonial Economy” to the volume Paper from the Institute for Research on Africa (original title: Arbeiten aus dem Institut für Afrika-Kunde) that was published in 1983, Rodney traces the significance of German colonialism in causing the focus on sisal production in the contemporary Tanzanian economy back to German colonial rule that remained even under British colonial rule after 1920. Rodney shows how, on the one hand, the GEAC coerces African labour to produce export goods (like rubber and ivory) and, on the other, how the German colonial administration focusses on concentrating agricultural estates for the benefit of German settlers who live off a plantation economy.
[9] Original title: “Kuba vertritt eine gerechte Sache”. Ein Wissenschaftler der Dritten Welt über Castros Afrika-Politik“.
[10] This first lecture was, unfortunately, not recorded.
[11] Hinds, David 2008: Walter Rodney and the Political Resistance in Guyana: The 1979-1980 Civil Rebellion: 46-47.
[12] Campbell, Horace 1980: Walter Rodney: A Biography and Bibliography: 134.
[13] Shared by Patricia and Asha Rodney.
[14] Shared by Peter Lock.
[15] Shared by Albert Parkes and Peter Lock.
[16] After a long struggle to dismantle the PNC’s narrative around Rodney’s death and misleading allegations (including in the direction of the WPA), in February 2016 a “Report on the Circumstances Surrounding the Death in an Explosion of the late Dr. Rodney […]” was released. We want to highlight pages 57-58 and 102-103 where most of the myths around Rodney’s death are debunked and the PNC’s involvement becomes clear, see: https://radar.auctr.edu/islandora/object/coi%3Arodney_report [last seen 28 November, 2024].
Most enlightening. Thank you.