01/13/2005 1:34 PM, AP
Stevenson Jacobs
Jamaicans reacted angrily Thursday to plans by Bob Marley’s widow to exhume the reggae legend’s remains and rebury them in Ethiopia, an African country holy to Rastafarians, saying it would rob the Caribbean island of its national heritage.
The news ignited radio call-in programs and Internet chat rooms in Jamaica and around the globe, with most people coming down strongly against moving the remains of the singer, who died of cancer in 1981 at age 36.
One university professor said such a deed would meet “serious hostility.”
“Has Rita lost her mind?” P. Chin wrote in a letter published Thursday in Jamaica’s most widely read newspaper, The Gleaner. “Bob loved Jamaica. He wouldn’t have made it his home if it were otherwise.”
Speaking Wednesday in Ethiopia’s capital, Addis Ababa, Rita Marley said she was working on bringing her husband’s remains to his “spiritual resting place.”
She said the reburial would occur after February celebrations in Jamaica and Ethiopia marking Bob Marley’s 60th birthday and has the support of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church and Ethiopian government officials.
“We are working on bringing his remains to Ethiopia,” said Rita Marley, a former backup singer for her late husband’s band, The Wailers. “It is part of Bob’s own mission.”
The announcement brought immediate controversy and confusion. In Kingston, the Bob Marley Foundation, a charity headed by Rita Marley, denied reports of her statement in Ethiopia, and a spokesman for the family later issued a statement quoting her as saying that Jamaica “will remain the resting place for Bob Marley for the foreseeable future.”
A Cuban-born Jamaican citizen who now lives in the West African country of Ghana, Mrs. Marley, 58, has had an uneasy relationship with her adopted Caribbean homeland, where some complain she has exploited her late husband’s image and music for commercial gain.
Popular host Cliff Hughes voiced opposition to moving Marley’s body on his nightly show on Jamaica’s Power 106 radio.
“The Marley family is going to have to convince me that this is what Bob wanted,” Hughes said Wednesday. “He’s part of Jamaica’s national heritage. With the greatest respect, he belongs to the Marley family, and he belongs to the people of Jamaica.”
Born in 1945, Marley grew up in the gritty shantytowns of Kingston and later shot to global stardom with hits like “I Shot the Sheriff” and “No Woman, No Cry.” His poignant lyrics promoting social justice and African unity made him an icon in developing countries.
Marley was given a state funeral and buried along with his Gibson guitar and bible in a marble mausoleum at his birthplace of Nine Mile, a rugged hamlet in the green hills of northern Jamaica that’s popular with tourists. A statue of Marley graces the entrance to the national sports stadium in Kingston.
Mrs. Marley said her late husband would be reburied in Shashemene, 155 miles (250 kilometers) south of Addis Ababa, where several hundred Rastafarians have lived since they were given land by Ethiopia’s last emperor, Haile Selassie.
Rastafarians worshipped Selassie as their living god, a belief based on the prophecy by Jamaican civil rights leader Marcus Garvey that a black man would be crowned king in Africa.
A devout Rastafarian, Marley’s lyrics were laden with references to the faith, whose followers preach a oneness with nature, grow their hair uncombed into dreadlocks and smoke marijuana as a sacrament.
Rupert Lewis, a political science professor at the University of the West Indies in Kingston, said Marley is a crucial part of Jamaica’s identity and that any attempt to move his remains would be met by “serious hostility” on the island of 2.6 million.
“The people would not allow that body to physically leave Jamaica,” said Lewis. “He’s a focal point of the Jamaican identity. What it means to be Jamaican is inherently bound up in Bob Marley.”
Others saw no problem with the idea.
“She feels he wants to be in Africa? Go ahead,” broadcaster Allen Magnus said during his morning program on radio RJR. “She has the right. It’s her husband.”
This isn’t the first time that Rita Marley has created a stir. While promoting her autobiography last year, she was quoted in Britain’s Daily Mirror tabloid as saying that Bob had raped her once. She later said she was misinterpreted, but the remarks angered many of the late singer’s faithful.
The latest uproar comes less than a month after Marley’s estate announced plans to lobby the government to make the revered artist a national hero, Jamaica’s highest honor.
Credit: AP