They came from across the world to Ethiopia in search of their “promised land,” but for many Rastafarians, struggling to win even basic rights, the dream never materialized.
“How did we survive so far? I wonder,” said Reuben Kush, the gray-bearded president of the Ethiopian World Federation, a branch of Rastafarianism.
Kush left his home in Birmingham, England, a decade ago to join a Rastafarian community based in the southern Ethiopian town of Shashamane, 250km south of Addis Ababa.
However, in decades of existence, the settlement’s about 500 members have failed to win legal rights to property, education or work.
Celebrating the 85th anniversary this month of the 1930 crowning of their messiah, Ethiopian emperor Haile Selassie, the dreadlocked group sway in a circle chanting to a drum beat “Emperor Selassie I, Jah Rastafari.”
Rastafarianism — which jettisoned to worldwide notice in the 1960s and 1970s with the music of reggae stars and committed Rastafarians Bob Marley and Jimmy Cliff — first emerged as a spiritual movement in the 1930s among descendants of African slaves in Jamaica, who adopted Haile Selassie as their leader at a time when he stood out as the only independent black monarch in Africa.
They even took their name from his pre-coronation title, “Ras” for “head,” and his birth name “Tafari Makonnen.” The “King of Kings” was deposed then killed by a military junta in 1974.
A supporter of decolonization and cooperation among African states, then largely under European control, Haile Selassie in the 1950s set aside 500 hectares in Shashamane to welcome back descendants of slaves seeking to return “home.”
“Ethiopia is our land, for we blacks in the West,” Kush said.
Rastafarians say it was the “divinity” of the land that drew them to Ethiopia, mentioned in the Bible more than 30 times and believed to be the birthplace of the Queen of Sheba, who visited the wise King Solomon.
In the late 1970s, Mengistu Haile Mariam’s Marxist-Leninist regime confiscated the Shashamane plot, prompting most Rastas to flee its authoritarian rule.
When Mengistu’s rule was toppled in 1991, some returned, but life in the promised land remains a struggle, with exile followed by exclusion.
“The emperor had given us 500 hectares — today we live on six or seven hectares,” Kush said.
“Today, we have no control over our property,” he said.
Though many turned their backs on their country of origin by not renewing their passports, they have not been granted Ethiopian nationality, leaving them effectively stateless.
In tightly controlled Ethiopia, still run by Communist-inspired ex-rebels, land is a sensitive issue with Rastas neither allowed to file building permits or own property.
Nor can they work, pay taxes or send their children to university.
The Rastas’ political wing, the Ethiopian World Federation, started in the 1930s, but is still lobbying for their basic rights.
“We’re here to stay. We haven’t been kicked out of Ethiopia after all these years, that means we are accepted,” Kush said.
However, they remain in legal limbo.
“Our needs are basic human rights needs,” Kush added.
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