SHASHAMANE, Ethiopia — The promised land of the world’s Rastafarians can be found along a narrow highway in Ethiopia’s ancient Rift Valley, a landscape of scattered trees with boles the size of houses and fields of grain that shimmer in the sunlight like a bronze haze.
The setting is beautiful — Edenic even. But as with the original Eden, it isn’t without its pitfalls.
“We’ve been waiting a long, long time to become Ethiopians,” said Desmond Martin, a Jamaican pioneer who settled here more than 30 years ago on land donated by Emperor Haile Selassie. “We love Ethiopia. Ethiopia is our holy land. But we’re still not considered to be from this place.”
Best known for their reggae music, dreadlocked hair, colorful clothes and copious marijuana smoking, the followers of the Rastafarian faith celebrate one of their major holidays Monday, the birthday of Selassie, the former Ethiopian ruler whom Rastas worship as a black messiah.
But in Shashamane, a roadside town in Ethiopia that the Rastafarians consider their Jerusalem, the festivities will likely be bittersweet.
Almost half a century after the first 12 Caribbean settlers migrated here, advancing a Rastafarian dream that the world’s African diaspora must return to the spiritual motherland, few if any Rastas have been granted citizenship.
Worse still, the pilgrims lost more than 95 percent of their imperial land grant during the 1970s, when a socialist Ethiopian regime confiscated all but 30 acres of their holdings. Throw in assorted famines, revolutions, official harassment, deep local skepticism about the divinity of Selassie and persistent suspicion of their religious “herb” smoking, and it is surprising that any still hang on.
Yet about 200 to 300 stubborn Rastafarian families from all over the globe do — an eclectic community that includes nurses from Caribbean states, clothing salesmen from Britain and artists from the United States. A few have gone into business in Shashamane, opening hotels and food shops. Others have set up tiny development organizations whose walled compounds look like those of any other aid group in Africa, except for the occasional blasts of highly danceable music and whiffs of marijuana.
The local townspeople, who like most Ethiopians tend to be culturally conservative, view the religious pilgrims with a mixture of curiosity and condescension.
“They are good people who think that Shashamane is the blessed land of the blacks,” said Taye Kebede, a Sunday school teacher at the town’s Ethiopian Orthodox church. “But we do not like their drug use. They are creating a market for marijuana, and our farmers are growing that instead of potatoes.”
Kebede also felt obliged to dispute the Rastafarians’ perception of Selassie: “We know him better than they do. He was just a king, and toward the end a very autocratic one.”
A movement is born
Born in the slums of Jamaica in the 1920s, Rastafarianism began as a black-consciousness movement that deployed Biblical prophecy against the white racism and colonialism of the times. Its early leaders advocated the return of slave descendants to Africa. When Selassie — then known as Ras Tafari Mekonen — was crowned emperor of never-colonized Ethiopia in 1930, both he and his country became spiritual inspirations to the movement.
Selassie was never comfortable with Rastafarians’ belief in his divinity, historians say. Nonetheless, in the 1950s, he granted the religion’s followers 1,250 acres of land for settlement in Shashamane, a savanna town 150 miles south of the Ethiopian capital of Addis Ababa. Selassie was deposed by a military coup in 1974. The army murdered him the following year, though most Rastafarians believe he is immortal and hence never died.
“Those were the hardest times,” Martin, one of the settlers’ elders, recalled of the leftist junta years. “His majesty’s photos were smashed. We were spat on. I was thrown in jail.”
During the 1980s, the Rastafarian community was singled out for ostracism because of its close association with the emperor, Martin said. It shrank to fewer than 50 members. Some sold their clothes to buy food during the country’s notorious famines, he said.
Today, under a frail democratic government, life is much better.
The influx of Rasta religious seekers is growing slowly. Many are skilled workers who bring jobs and a trickle of puzzled tourists to bustling Shashamane. Thousands of visitors are expected to flock to the town for Selassie’s birthday — a Rastafarian Christmas that features rollicking reggae concerts. Rita Marley, the widow of reggae superstar Bob Marley, has joined local Rastafarian aid organizations in funding a school and clinic.
Still, for many Rastafarian homesteaders, the lack of Ethiopian citizenship and the loss of their lands continue to rankle.
Notorious for its prickly nationalism, the government is promising to study citizenship for Rastafarians who have been in the country for at least four years. The land, however, is long gone — carved up and crammed with the mud huts and tiny gardens of local Ethiopians, whose numbers are evenly divided between Muslims and Orthodox Christians.
Not a paradise
“Some people come here expecting a paradise,” said Earl “Chips” Sobers, 44, a Rastafarian road worker from the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago who migrated to Ethiopia five years ago. “It isn’t. This is lion country. You have to be a lion to live here.”
Sobers stood outside the compound of his Rastafarian denomination, the Twelve Tribes of Israel. Its gates were gaily painted in green, yellow and red — the classic shades of Rastafarianism, which also happen to be the colors of the Ethiopian flag. Local teenagers in tie-dyed shirts and dreadlocks copied from the Rastas ambled past on a road amid the usual African parade of donkey carts and women carrying bundles on their heads.
Sobers called out greetings in what he called “Jamharic” — a patois of Amharic, Ethiopia’s national language, and Jamaican-inflected English. He insisted that all use of marijuana, which Rastafarians inhale to meditate, is kept within the Rastafarians’ compounds and tabernacles. But Ethiopian youths offered joints for sale only a block away.
“We love them because they are so peaceful, but our cultures do not always agree,” said Saeda Hussein, who runs a small food shop patronized by Rastafarians.
Hussein said she did brisk business with tinned food and packaged cookies — many Rastafarians don’t relish Ethiopia’s national food of injera, a sour pancake of slightly fermented flour.
Asked whether she listened to reggae, she wagged a finger, and declared, “No, no, I am a Muslim.”
Then she giggled, and admitted she did. But only on the radio hidden under her wooden counter, and with the volume turned way down low.
SHASHAMANE, Ethiopia — The promised land of the world’s Rastafarians can be found along a narrow highway in Ethiopia’s ancient Rift Valley, a landscape of scattered trees with boles the size of houses and fields of grain that shimmer in the sunlight like a bronze haze.
The setting is beautiful — Edenic even. But as with the original Eden, it isn’t without its pitfalls.
“We’ve been waiting a long, long time to become Ethiopians,” said Desmond Martin, a Jamaican pioneer who settled here more than 30 years ago on land donated by Emperor Haile Selassie. “We love Ethiopia. Ethiopia is our holy land. But we’re still not considered to be from this place.”
Best known for their reggae music, dreadlocked hair, colorful clothes and copious marijuana smoking, the followers of the Rastafarian faith celebrate one of their major holidays Monday, the birthday of Selassie, the former Ethiopian ruler whom Rastas worship as a black messiah.
But in Shashamane, a roadside town in Ethiopia that the Rastafarians consider their Jerusalem, the festivities will likely be bittersweet.
Almost half a century after the first 12 Caribbean settlers migrated here, advancing a Rastafarian dream that the world’s African diaspora must return to the spiritual motherland, few if any Rastas have been granted citizenship.
Worse still, the pilgrims lost more than 95 percent of their imperial land grant during the 1970s, when a socialist Ethiopian regime confiscated all but 30 acres of their holdings. Throw in assorted famines, revolutions, official harassment, deep local skepticism about the divinity of Selassie and persistent suspicion of their religious “herb” smoking, and it is surprising that any still hang on.
Yet about 200 to 300 stubborn Rastafarian families from all over the globe do — an eclectic community that includes nurses from Caribbean states, clothing salesmen from Britain and artists from the United States. A few have gone into business in Shashamane, opening hotels and food shops. Others have set up tiny development organizations whose walled compounds look like those of any other aid group in Africa, except for the occasional blasts of highly danceable music and whiffs of marijuana.
The local townspeople, who like most Ethiopians tend to be culturally conservative, view the religious pilgrims with a mixture of curiosity and condescension.
“They are good people who think that Shashamane is the blessed land of the blacks,” said Taye Kebede, a Sunday school teacher at the town’s Ethiopian Orthodox church. “But we do not like their drug use. They are creating a market for marijuana, and our farmers are growing that instead of potatoes.”
Kebede also felt obliged to dispute the Rastafarians’ perception of Selassie: “We know him better than they do. He was just a king, and toward the end a very autocratic one.”
A movement is born
Born in the slums of Jamaica in the 1920s, Rastafarianism began as a black-consciousness movement that deployed Biblical prophecy against the white racism and colonialism of the times. Its early leaders advocated the return of slave descendants to Africa. When Selassie — then known as Ras Tafari Mekonen — was crowned emperor of never-colonized Ethiopia in 1930, both he and his country became spiritual inspirations to the movement.
Selassie was never comfortable with Rastafarians’ belief in his divinity, historians say. Nonetheless, in the 1950s, he granted the religion’s followers 1,250 acres of land for settlement in Shashamane, a savanna town 150 miles south of the Ethiopian capital of Addis Ababa. Selassie was deposed by a military coup in 1974. The army murdered him the following year, though most Rastafarians believe he is immortal and hence never died.
“Those were the hardest times,” Martin, one of the settlers’ elders, recalled of the leftist junta years. “His majesty’s photos were smashed. We were spat on. I was thrown in jail.”
During the 1980s, the Rastafarian community was singled out for ostracism because of its close association with the emperor, Martin said. It shrank to fewer than 50 members. Some sold their clothes to buy food during the country’s notorious famines, he said.
Today, under a frail democratic government, life is much better.
The influx of Rasta religious seekers is growing slowly. Many are skilled workers who bring jobs and a trickle of puzzled tourists to bustling Shashamane. Thousands of visitors are expected to flock to the town for Selassie’s birthday — a Rastafarian Christmas that features rollicking reggae concerts. Rita Marley, the widow of reggae superstar Bob Marley, has joined local Rastafarian aid organizations in funding a school and clinic.
Still, for many Rastafarian homesteaders, the lack of Ethiopian citizenship and the loss of their lands continue to rankle.
Notorious for its prickly nationalism, the government is promising to study citizenship for Rastafarians who have been in the country for at least four years. The land, however, is long gone — carved up and crammed with the mud huts and tiny gardens of local Ethiopians, whose numbers are evenly divided between Muslims and Orthodox Christians.
Not a paradise
“Some people come here expecting a paradise,” said Earl “Chips” Sobers, 44, a Rastafarian road worker from the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago who migrated to Ethiopia five years ago. “It isn’t. This is lion country. You have to be a lion to live here.”
Sobers stood outside the compound of his Rastafarian denomination, the Twelve Tribes of Israel. Its gates were gaily painted in green, yellow and red — the classic shades of Rastafarianism, which also happen to be the colors of the Ethiopian flag. Local teenagers in tie-dyed shirts and dreadlocks copied from the Rastas ambled past on a road amid the usual African parade of donkey carts and women carrying bundles on their heads.
Sobers called out greetings in what he called “Jamharic” — a patois of Amharic, Ethiopia’s national language, and Jamaican-inflected English. He insisted that all use of marijuana, which Rastafarians inhale to meditate, is kept within the Rastafarians’ compounds and tabernacles. But Ethiopian youths offered joints for sale only a block away.
“We love them because they are so peaceful, but our cultures do not always agree,” said Saeda Hussein, who runs a small food shop patronized by Rastafarians.
Hussein said she did brisk business with tinned food and packaged cookies — many Rastafarians don’t relish Ethiopia’s national food of injera, a sour pancake of slightly fermented flour.
Asked whether she listened to reggae, she wagged a finger, and declared, “No, no, I am a Muslim.”
Then she giggled, and admitted she did. But only on the radio hidden under her wooden counter, and with the volume turned way down low.
(SomaliNet) The Ethiopian [Woyanne] forces raided one of the privately owned hospitals in the Somalia capital Mogadishu on Sunday taking out some suspected patients visitors.
Witnesses told Somalinet that Woyanne forces along with interim government troops encircled the Shifo Hospital in Wardhigley district, south of the capital arresting a number of in patients and others.
“I could see the soldiers storming the hospital and then extracting around ten people including wounded persons and their relatives, I was so scared and hid myself,” said Omar Salad, a local resident man.
One of the government soldiers told the hospital officials that the arrested people were insurgent members.
“They were involved in the attacks launched on the government positions in Bakar market two night ago and after investigation we found out that their wounded men are in this hospital,” said a local security official in condition anonymity.
Meanwhile, a Woyanne military truck has gone under attack this morning around former dairy factory in Mogadishu.
Residents told Somalinet that a roadside bomb destroyed the truck but no one knows the casualty there as the Woyanne soldiers sealed off the area.
Ethiopian Orthodox Church’s Holy Synod in exile congratulates the family, kinijit members and the people of Ethiopia on the release of their elected leaders from jail.
The Holy Synod also renewed its call for the unconditional release of thousands of other political prisoners who are made to languish in jail for exercising their democratic rights.
In November 2006, I wrote an article indicating that true disciples of democracy should be free. Finally, eight months later you are free. Ethiopians and the international community are rejoicing your release. For the moment we don’t need to know the conditions of your release, because the wider world knows that you committed no crime. What is important for now is your safe exit from the dilapidated prison cells of Kaliti.
All of you suffered on our behalf and on behalf of democracy, human rights and rule of law. The mother of all illegal falsifications was made against you. Melese’s kangaroo court has passed consequential verdicts without an iota of proof and justification. A miscarriage of justice has been done on you and your families. It is time to leave all this behind and move forward. Your captors are slow learners of truth who do not know that truth and dawn shine by the hour, by the day and by the year. You are the true disciples of democracy, who should have been free yesterday and not today. The Ethiopian people and the international community owe you millions.
You need some space to regurgitate your memoirs. Celebrate your freedom with your loved ones. After that we will talk business. We have of a lot unfinished business. Ethiopians in Ethiopia and around the world await your sustained leadership and cooperation with enthusiasm.
From Merkato to Adigerat, Gondar to Gimbi, Metekel to Ogden, Dessie to Gambella, Bahir Dar to Yabelo, Emdibir to Dirdewa, Illubabor to Asmara, Arbamich to Assela, Jimma to Nekemit, Asseb to Metema, Addis Ababa to Europe, America, Asia, Oceania and Greenland all are delight. So welcome back.
My Fellow Ethiopians: We’ve just won the Battle but not the Victory.
We Ethiopians are rejoicing, wherever we are—in or outside of Ethiopia, at the release on Friday of the Opposition leaders, journalists, human rights defenders, political activists and others from Kaliti prison.
July 20, 2007, will forever mark a great day, similar to May 15, 2005 that will go down in history books for all freedom loving Ethiopians, but please remember, as we are celebrating a beginning victory, it is only one battle in a war for justice, freedom, peace and liberty.
Until tens of thousands of other Ethiopian political prisoners who continue to languish in the prisons of Afar; Amhara; Benishangul/Gumuz; Dire Dawa; Gambella; Harari; Oromiya; Ogaden ; Southern Nations, Nationalities, and People’s; Addis Ababa; and Tigray are free, we are not free as a people and our victory cannot be claimed.
Until all our Ethiopian institutions, now being used against us instruments of repression, are released from the tight controls of the Woyanne, we can take hope and encouragement from this unexpected achievement, but it is only the beginning.
Until Ethiopians can live, breathe and move freely about within our society—without fear of reprisals for simply thinking for ourselves—we are not free!
So right now, let us pause to thank God, who has shown us clouds of rain in the sky, but we must keep working until He creates pools of water in the parched desert lands of Ethiopia. We must now increase the momentum of our struggle until it gains wings and flies.
Above all, I want everybody to give glory and thanks to God, through whom this has been accomplished. This victory today is about God and if we are patient and trust in Him, he has far more to give. God is not just watching—he is integrally involved in our dawn of freedom and will continue to help us if we are faithful and persevere.
I also want to thank our Opposition Leaders released and for those still stuck in prisons and detention centers throughout the country for being examples of courage for Ethiopia. It is you who have built a foundation for freedom that will fan the flames of fire within our hearts. Many of you are yet unknown by name to many of us, yet you have inspired all of us by your examples.
It is Ethiopian men and women like this of whom the rest of us are so proud. As people of principle, true to themselves and to what is right, they have been targeted as enemies of the ruling government. Their examples create serious problems to the Woyanne, while encouraging and motivating us in the Diaspora to carry on our advocacy work in the United States, Canada, Europe, Africa, the Middle East and Australia. Yet, we remember, the real heroes of the struggle are these people and others standing up for truth, justice, equality, virtue, love and freedom that are living in all the corners of Ethiopia.
We must also give credit to those in the Diaspora who through their persistence from the beginning, have worked so diligently on making those in the international community aware of this crisis, even to the point where western governments have responded with action, like in the United States with HR#2003 and in Europe with other resolutions.
For instance, HR#2003 just passed the markup stage with unanimous backing in the US Congress Sub-Committee on Africa. The committee working on this bill is well aware that continued work is needed if it is to pass the next more difficult steps in the process. Many others in the Diaspora are working and contributing in varied ways and places and because of this concerted effort, our struggle all comes together as a more powerful front.
As we think about all of this, it is amazing what has happened. Due to God’s help and all of your contributions, the sentences went from death to life imprisonment to freedom with conditions to freedom without conditions—giving support to the groundless basis to the case from the beginning. However, it appears that Meles is attempting to block their voice. He stated on Ethiopian television on Friday July 20,2007 that they could not rejoin the Ethiopian Parliament because “they had been gone from political involvement for too long,” incredulously, as if they had spent the last twenty months in prison at their own choice!
Now, all of us, including Meles and our leaders can learn from Nelson Mandela, who after twenty-six years in prison, came out without hatred, hoping to reconcile with those who persecuted him. Both Mandala and the Apartheid leaders had to give up the things that would perpetuate the crisis and further destroy the hope of any reconciliation. Out of that came the South Africa of today, where they were able to avoid a civil war that could have wreaked years of havoc on the country.
Let us, including the any Woyanne, show the world our genuine appreciation of life and of one another as human beings. The leaders of the Coalition for Unity and Democracy Party are the Mandelas of Ethiopia and Meles is the leader of the Apartheid of Ethiopia. If they can act together to reconcile a country in crisis of imploding, we could become a country stronger than it ever was before.
So today, my fellows’ Ethiopian brother, and sisters do not focus on the pain and hatred inflicted on each other. We need unity and National reconciliation more than ever before. Three things are holding freedom from coming to Ethiopia. As I have said it before these three things are: Lack of our UNITY, the GUNS of Meles and the support of Meles by WESTERN COUNTRIES. The guns and the support of Meles from the players like the US, Canada and Europe, will dissolve if we have a truly unified movement based on respect, tolerance and inclusion.
The strategic goal of our Movement for a New Ethiopia is to reclaim Ethiopia from its tyrannical rulers and their associates. This is a movement of Ethiopians or Africans to reclaim the essence of Africa. We are not pursuing State sovereignty here but rather people sovereignty, to set our people free from oppressive rule. We are seeing a new dawn—are we ready for the new day! May God help us!
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The consequence, says the prophet, of a society’s greed, social injustice, and idol worship is a judgment that comes in the form of spiritual degradation, violence, and the breakup of community. The people turn on one another—“and they will fight, one against the other, neighbor against neighbor, city against city, kingdom against kingdom” Isaiah 19:2. The people’s “spirit” will be “emptied out.” Isaiah 19:3 __________________________________________
