Why Rasta?

From an interview with Linton Kwesi Johnson on Rastafari:

«I’m not a Rasta, because I don’t believe that Emperor Haile Selassie is God. I don’t believe in the whole, say, repatriation of black people back to Africa. But I RESPECT Rastafari. Rastafari was an important movement. People see it sometimes as a religion. But Rastafari is rooted in the anti-colonial struggle. It began as an anti-colonial movement that said we are tired of being dominated by white European cultural imperialism and political domination and so on».

In 1670 and as a result of the signing of the Madrid treaty between Spain and GB, Jamaica, the “land of wood and water” (the”Xaymaca” of the aboriginal Indian) becomes part of the British Empire. From this time and until 1780 British slave traders brought over 600 000 slaves from Africa to work on the sugar plantations, which made Jamaica a leading sugar exporter of its time. By the beginning of the 19th century, the United Kingdom’s heavy reliance on slavery resulted in blacks (Africans) outnumbering whites (Europeans) by a ratio of almost 20 to 1, leading to constant opportunities for revolt. Following a series of rebellions, slavery was formally abolished in 1834. From the 1870s starts a strong land migration towards the city of Kingston where the surrounding slums become exclusively black ghettoes (dungles: jungles of dung). The second migratory movement at the end of the century led many to the USA, but in the years of the great Depression this movement found its end.Marcus Mosiah Garvey (1887-1944) was an exponent of Ethiopianism, a movement promoting the return to Africa, especially towards Ethiopia, based on a particular reading of the Bible. Marcus Garvey championed the cry of “Africa for the Africans, at home and abroad” and encouraged his followers in the biblical view that “every nation must come to rest beneath their own vine and fig tree”. He migrates in 1916 to the US but before leaving he difuses a prophetical message in which he announces the coming of the Messiah, a black King from Ethiopia named JAH (from Jeovah). In 1927 he is thrown out of the US and comes back to Jamaica where he continues his prophetical message. Three years later, in nov 1930, Ras Tafari Makonnen is crowned Emperor of Ethiopia and Kings of Kings, Negus Negesti, under the name of Hailiè Selassie. Jamaican Ethiopianism becomes Rastafari. The Rastafari Movement, is not a religion, but rather a cultural value system that accepts Haile Selassie I as God incarnate, whom Rastafaris call Jah.

Shashamane, this small town in Ethiopia has become the symbol for the “return” of the african diaspora to “Mother Africa”. Since the beggining of the 20th century many people and whole families, mainly Rastas coming from Jamaica, arrived in the town.

Interview with Giulia Bonacci, from “Toi qui viens d’Ethiopie” in french.