Rex Nettleford's Reflections on the Rastafari Report and Movement and His Impact on the Trajectory of Rastafari Scholarship

Abstract

Rex Nettleford's reflections on the Rastafari ReportIn his classic 1970 book Mirror Mirror: Identity, Race and Protest in Jamaica, reflecting on the i960 report on the Rastafari movement in Kingston which he had co-authored along with two other scholars of the University of the West Indies, M.G. Smith and Roy Augier, Rex Nettleford suggested that the Rastafari Report saved the movement from the fate of quietism and passivity, in that the recommendations from the report served to bolster the movement and legitimise it to the wider society.1 Nettleford further contended that it was the fact that the Jamaican Rastafari movement at that time contained a Jamaica-focused dimension, along with its quest for repatriation, that allowed for a justification of some of the recommendations of the report, without incurring the wrath of the movement as a whole.2 Some of the recommendations clearly advocated for local rehabilitative measures for the movement. For instance, the report advocated for the building of low-rent houses in greater number, the introduction of self-help co-operative building schemes, the provision of such facilities as light, water, sewage disposal and garbage collection, for those members of the movement who were effectively squatters living in slum areas; also, the establishment of civic centres in Kingston, with facilities for technical classes, youth clubs and child clinics, and the extension to leading members of the Rastafari movement of press and radio facilities. The authors of the report also recommended that an invitation be extended to the imperial Ethiopian government to establish a branch of the Ethiopian Orthodox in Western Kingston.3 (See appendix 1 for the complete listing of the original ten recommendations of the report - see also appendix 2 for presentday reflections on the report.)Nettleford stated that all of these rehabilitation-oriented recommendations met with the approval of many of the Rastafari brethren, except members of the Church Triumphant whom he saw to be Nyabinghi militants. They were only interested in a return to Ethiopia. Notably, the first and second recommendations of the report were non-rehabilitative in nature, imploring the Jamaican government to send a fact-finding mission to Africa, for the purposes of exploring the possibility of emigration of Jamaicans to Africa, and further recommending that some Rastafari brethren be a part of this mission. According to Nettleford, what was interesting was that it was these two recommendations which invited strong criticism from the wider society. He cites three key possible reasons: firstly, there was an implied allegiance to what was perceived by the wider society to be a foreign head of state; secondly, the emphasis on Africa brought uneasiness to a country which had never regarded itself as black; and thirdly, the adoption of the Rastafari faith was, to the orthodox Jamaican Christians, blasphemous and anti-Christian.4Nettleford suggested that most Rastafari at that time were grateful for the report (even if they were not pleased with all the findings), because for the first time their cause was being aired. 5 The People's National Party government led by Norman Manley, which was in power at the time of the report, intimated that they would implement the first two recommendations in the near future, and this gave the movement much hope. The Jamaican missions to Africa commenced the following year, in 1961. This was a watershed period as it effectively started two-way traffic between the continent of Africa and Jamaica.Sir Roy Augier, one of the authors of the report (and in fact the only surviving author at the time of writing this article), told me that at that time of his field work among the Rastafari brethren in i960 it became obvious that repatriation was a key concern for them. As a result of this, as well as through deliberations with Sir Arthur Lewis who was then principal of the university, special care was made to prioritise the report recommendations that pertained to repatriation. …