AFP Features
Ethiopians struggle with Rastafarian tenets at Bob Marley fest
Mon Feb 7,10:40 AM ET
ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia (AFP) - Even as hundreds of thousands of
cheering Ethiopians and visitors came together happily to celebrate
Bob Marley Sunday, an undercurrent of mistrust and uncertainty
swelled through the crowd.
AFP Photo
Many of the late reggae legend's fans pose enormous problems for
Ethiopia's overwhelmingly devout orthodox Christian majority who
regard the teachings and precepts of Rastafarians to be suspect at
best and blasphemous at worst.
Most cannot fathom how or why Rastafarians believe their former
emperor Haile Selassie is god, consider Ethiopia the Biblical
promised land or smoke marijuana, illegal in this country, as a
sacrament.
And beneath a sea of dreadlocked rastas waving portaits of the
emperor and hoisting the red, green and yellow colors of the
Ethiopian flag in Addis Ababa's Meskel Square, those concerns were
evident.
"I don't have much affection for them, but I am not against them,"
said Zenbe Biru, a 22-year-old student at Addis Ababa University. "I
have a problem understanding their philosophy."
Like many other Ethiopians in the estimated crowd of more than
200,000, he said he had been prepared to put aside his misgivings in
order to watch the free outdoor concert, a rare and exciting event
with good music.
"I have my own reservations about the Rastafarians," said 18-year-old
high school pupil Alem Desta. "I hate the way they dress and mostly I
hate what they smoke.
"I have never dreamed of considering them as one of us. They have
their own home, we have our own," he said. "But I like their music."
The Rastafarian movement was born in the slums of Jamaica in the
decades after Ras Tafari Mekonen in 1930 was coronated Emperor Haile
Selassie the First of Ethiopia, then the only African nation not to
have been colonized.
With titles such as "King of Kings," "Conquering Lion of the Tribe of
Judah" and "Elect of God," Haile Selassie became the object of
veneration for Jamaicans tought a mixture of Biblical prophecy and
anti-colonial rhetoric.
And when Haile Selassie visited the island in 1966, not accepting
divinity, but not discouraging it either, the Back to Africa movement
begun in the United States in the 1940s picked up steam in Jamaica.
The emperor offered the Rastafarians land to settle south of Addis
Ababa and since his death in 1975, a succession of post-Haile
Selassie governments in Ethiopia has been trying to deal with their
presence.
Persecuted in the 1970s and '80s by a Marxist dictatorship that had
no use for royalty or god, Ethiopia's Rastafarians are now tolerated
by a government that walks a fine line when it comes to religion.
"The government is not interested in contesting religious claims,"
said Information Minister Simon Bedekat, when asked about complaints
from conservative Christians that the Bob Marley celebrations were
blasphemous.
"This is a secular government that acknowledes the right to believe
in what you believe," he said. "Basically the Rastafarians have the
right to believe in what they believe and the evangelicals also have
that right."
But the use of marijuana, as closely held as belief as any for
Rastafarians, does bother the government, Bedekat said.
"We're worried about it," he said. "We believe that an emerging
society must guard itself from any scourge, be it drugs or other
types of negative influences."
And yet, despite the drugs and dress, the unusual beliefs and other
misgivings about the rastas, a number of Ethiopians were amused and
pleased to see all the attention Haile Selessie is getting 30 years
since his death.
"I am really surprised to see this celebration in a place where I was
condemning Haile Selassie on the orders of (the communist
government)," said pensioner Abebe Gutama, who turned out to watch
the concert.
A septuagenarian former employee in the emperor's palace, Assefa
Tessema, said he was stunned by Haile Selassie's new-found
prominence.
"I was afraid his deeds and activities would remain buried like his
body," he said. "I never expected to hear his name again as glorified
as today in dignity and honor. It's really a miracle."
Perhaps divine after all.
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