Abstract
In the final chapter, I examine Rastafari interactions with the Ethiopian state and its representatives. I contrast the legal and subjective approaches to issues of citizenship and belonging. Through these institutional encounters, I look at how babylon (hell) is reproduced in the zion (heaven) of Ethiopia, for example, in how the land grant is policed by the Ethiopian state. However, I suggest that a cosmopolitan citizenship offers an avenue for Rastafari-grounded imaginative responses to contemporary inequalities to be translated into macro-institutional change. Underlying this discussion is the theme of empowerment through consciousness that traverses the manuscript.
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Notes
- 1.
As it is called in Amharic, presumably derived from an Italian word.
- 2.
See MacLeod (2014) for more details on the bilateral and multilateral discussions. Diplomatic missions were involved in discussions, for example the government of Jamaica with the Ethiopian government, Rastafari appealed to the African Union, the different Rastafari organisations and Mansions such as the Rastafari Centralisation Organisation and the Ethiopian World Federation appealed separately also (2014, 194).
- 3.
Despite the new Oromo political leadership, in 2020 in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic, largely Oromo-led, anti-government protests in Oromiyya Region, sparked by the killing of a popular Oromo singer, descended into looting and rioting. These adversely effected both Rastafari and local Ethiopian families. While Rastafari generally support the return of the Amhara-led monarchical state, they also sympathise with Oromo collectively as sufferahs. Given the decades of Rastafari residence in Shashamane, and the kinship and community ties that have been built between Rastafari and multi-ethnic local Ethiopian residents of the Jamaica Safar and Shashamane more widely over the past decades, these positionalities and reactions are constantly negotiated, publicly and privately. Additionally, with the formation of the new Prosperity Party under Ahmed’s chairmanship in place of the ruling EPRDF, even with steps towards the normalisation of political and diplomatic relations with neighbouring Eritrea (Ylönen 2019), the Tigray Peoples’ Liberation Front has presented a formidable challenge to the present administration. By the beginning of 2021, the widespread violence against ethnic Tigrayans across the country, and in particular violence against women and girls in Tigray region, led to even more persons fleeing from northern Ethiopia into the Sudan. These complex interethnic and intraethnic conflicts, political machinations and manoeuvres underscore the material as well as symbolic dimensions to these conflicts that I have discussed.
- 4.
Acquiring citizenship was not significant for Rastafari to participate in civic life such as in voting. The government and state institutions, including the military, are viewed as part of the babylonian system.
- 5.
This was formerly a High Commission of Jamaica that was opened circa 1969–1970. In 1992 it was downgraded to a Consulate headed by a local Ethiopian male Honorary Consul.
- 6.
This information concurs with Article 6 “Nationality” of the Ethiopian Constitution. The English translation reads: “1. Any person of either sex shall be an Ethiopian national where both or either parent is Ethiopian. 2. Foreign nationals may acquire Ethiopian nationality” (1995, 78). However, number 3 of this Article states that this must be accomplished by adhering to the law which regulates these provisions. MacLeod (2014) states that there is no accompanying law because there have never been significant numbers of applicants for Ethiopian citizenship to warrant passing one.
- 7.
On a micro-level, see Bonacci’s (2015, 312) discussion on the amiable relations between Derg soldiers and repatriates. Rastafari status as foreigners meant that they had no rights or opportunity to advocate for or against the new government. Rastafari were viewed as neutral by the soldiers, despite their belief in His Majesty’s divinity, thereby encouraging good relations in this particular location.
- 8.
“Master plan” is the local term in English for the city plan that designates agricultural, residential and commercial areas of Shashamane.
- 9.
The Ethiopian Embassy in London identifies the following areas for investment in Ethiopia: agriculture, food crops, beverage crops (like coffee), cotton, horticulture, livestock, fishery, agricultural services, manufacturing, mining, tourism and infrastructure.
- 10.
- 11.
There are already 85 ethnic groups recognised by the government.
- 12.
Gibson (1996) also points out that repatriates spoke of development in the 1990s with similar features.
- 13.
Imprisonment is an act of punishment and subordination meant to produce an ideal national Ethiopian subject who does not smoke ganja, the foreign herb, but instead would more likely chew qat, a socially acceptable plant grown locally. “Chewing” is a common practice that is expected of male Ethiopians of any class. Qat or khat (Catha edulis) has a substantially longer history of use in East Africa and neighbouring Yemen than ganja. It is cultivated widely and provides revenue for the Ethiopian state through taxation. Qat exports earned US$138.7 million in 2008/9 (Ethiopia Investment Guide 2010) and Chat (9.3%) of exports in 2017/2018 and almost US$300 million “in recent years,” according to Cochrane and O’Regan (2016, 28).
- 14.
Peteet also astutely notes, these processes while “upsetting established hierarchies of generation, nationality, and class yet [are] reproducing and reaffirming other hierarchies such as gender” (1994, 34).
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Gomes, S. (2021). Rastafari Citizen-Subjectivities. In: Cosmopolitanism from the Global South. Palgrave Studies in Literary Anthropology. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-82272-9_7
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