Walter Rodney addressing an audience in Guyana, late 1970s

“Respice, adspice, prospice” is a Latin phrase that roughly means “examine the past, examine the present, examine the future. Very few lived more completely under the embrace of this phrase than Walter Rodney. From the moment that Rodney (the 30th anniversary of whose assassination is being observed today) encountered the science of history he utilised it to serve society. In his own analytical approach he would go forth boldly to challenge assumptions that he thought required redefining if not shattering. All societies he touched experienced his restless and relentless search for the laws of social motion in the specific location, together with the method and the organization to engage the motor for change.

The lessons of Rodney’s activism in places like Jamaica and Guyana obviously have to be placed in context. It was a different time and place, but his spirit of resistance and human need to reach out beyond the corridors of academia to the poor and dispossessed (and feared and ostracized groups in Jamaica at times like the Rastafari) was a key legacy of his life and work, and is ever more needed today.

— From an essay by Nigel Westmaas on Walter Rodney’s legacies and “lessons from the past”, published today in Stabroek News.