The Criminalization of African Spirituality: Part 1

"Democracy means that people can say what they want to. All the people. It means that they can vote as they wish. All the people. It means that they can worship God in any way they feel right, and that includes Christians and Jews and voodoo doctors as well."

~Dalton Trumbo

 

For most of my life Obeah in Jamaica has been a taboo. Scoffed at by academics and intellectuals rooted deep in empiricism and cynicism. The Church associates Obeah with spiritual wickedness and evil, skeptics tend to think it is used to defraud vulnerable people like the snake oil man to swindle and bamboozle. In my family it was the butt of jokes and was the stuff of old time superstition.For me the stuff Obeah was like the mythos of slavery... a literature populated with Rolling Calves, Black Heart men, Ananse, masks, Pocomania, Kumina, Revival, Jonkunnu, Bats(what Jamaican call moths), owls, D. Lawrence, Bible and Key and Maccabees Bibles.

In a more academic light... Obeah is a term used in the West Indies to refer to folk magic, sorcery, and religious practices developed among West African slaves, specifically of Igbo origin. Obeah's history is similar to that of other Afro-American religions including Palo, Vodou, Santería, and Hoodoo. Obeah is practiced in Suriname, Cuba, Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago, Dominica, Guyana, Grenada, Belize, The Bahamas, and other Caribbean nations. Enslaved Africans brought spiritual practices to the Caribbean that included folk healing and a belief in magic for good and for evil to opposition.

Vodun means spirit in the Fon and Ewe languages, pronounced [vodṹ] with a nasal high-tone u; also spelled Vodon, Vodoun, Vodou, Voudou, Voodoo, etc. is practiced by the Ewe people of eastern and southern Ghana, and southern and central Togo; and the Kabye people, Mina people, and Fon people of southern and central Togo, southern and central Benin. It is also practiced by some Gun (Gbe) people of Lagos and Ogun in southwest Nigeria.

It is distinct from the various African traditional religions in the interiors of these countries and is the main source of religions with similar names found among the African Diaspora in the western hemisphere such as Haitian Vodou; Puerto Rican Vodú; Cuban Vodú; Dominican Vudú; Brazilian Vodum; and Louisiana Voodoo. All of these closely related faiths are syncretized with Christianity to various degrees and with the traditional beliefs of the Kongo people and Indigenous American traditions.

Now the term 'Obeah' is first found in documents from the early 18th century, as in its connection to Nanny of the Maroons, but discussion of it becomes more frequent when it was made illegal in Jamaica after Tacky's War, in which an Obeah-man provided advice to the rebels. In 1787 a letter to an English newspaper referred to "Obiu-women" interpreting the wishes of the dead at the funeral of a murdered slave in Jamaica: a footnote explained the term as meaning "Wise-women".

A continuing source of white anxiety related to Obeah was the belief that practitioners were skilled in using poisons, as mentioned in Matthew Lewis's Journal of a West India Proprietor. The European world had equated Black and African Spirituality with their own history of wizards and witchcraft and necromancy. Thousands of people in the Caribbean have been subject to prosecution for their religious and spiritual healing practice, since the first law against Obeah was passed in Jamaica in 1760 then in the anti-Obeah law passed in Barbados in 1818 there was the specific forbidding of the possession of "any poison, or any noxious or destructive substance"during slavery, until the recent past.

A doctor who examined the medicine chest of an Obeah man arrested in Jamaica in 1866 identified white arsenic as one of the powders in it, but could not identify the others. The unnamed correspondent reporting this affirmed "The Jamaica herbal is an extensive one, and comprises some highly poisonous juices, of which the Obeah men have a perfect knowledge."


During the mid 19th century the appearance of a comet in the sky became the focal point of an outbreak of religious fanatical millennialism among the Myal men of Jamaica. Spiritualism was at that time sweeping the English-speaking nations as well, and it readily appealed to those in the Afro-Caribbean diaspora, as spirit contact, especially with the dead, is an essential part of many African religions. During the conflict between Myal and Obeah, the Myal men positioned themselves as the "good" opponents to "evil" Obeah. They claimed that Obeah men stole people's shadows, and they set themselves up as the helpers of those who wished to have their shadows restored.

Myal men contacted spirits in order to expose the evil works they ascribed to the Obeah men, and led public parades which resulted in crowd-hysteria that engendered violent antagonism against Obeah men. The public "discovery" of buried Obeah charms, presumed to be of evil intent, led on more than one occasion to violence against the rival Obeah men. Laws were passed that limited both Obeah and Myal traditions but due to the outrages perpetrated by the mobs of Myalists, the British government of Jamaica sent many Myal men to prison, and this, along with the failure of their millennialist prophecies. 

Obeah laws, which still exist in many Caribbean countries, there have also been laws against specific religious groups, including the Spiritual Baptist faith, which was outlawed for a substantial part of the twentieth century in Trinidad and Tobago, St. Vincent, and Grenada. Other people faced prosecution for independent religious and healing work under laws against practicing medicine without a license, vagrancy, and ‘night noises’, among others.

• 1760: In response to a major slave rebellion, the colonial government outlaws Obeah for the first time in the Caribbean, with the Act to Remedy the Evils arising from Irregular Assemblies of Slaves, defining Obeah as: "The wicked Art of Negroes... pretending to have Communication with the Devil and other evil spirits"
• 1898: Under the Obeah Law practitioners face 12 months in jail and flogging. An Obeah practitioner is defined as: "Any person who, to effect any fraudulent or unlawful purpose, or for gain, or for the purpose of frightening any person, uses, or pretends to use any occult means, or pretends to possess any supernatural power or knowledge"
  
• 1908: Parliament passes the Medical Law, which was intended to regulate medical practice, but was also used frequently in cases to define difference between medicine and Obeah

Rastafari Today Quotes!

The highest education is that which does not merely give us information but makes our life in harmony with all existence.
~Rastafari Today

Blaze up the Challawah!

OCCUPY PINNACLE

As you may be aware there is movement afoot to get the issue that surround Pinnacle addressed... contribute and play apart...

If you are in Jamaica donate at any National Commercial Bank (NCB)... Leonard P Howell Foundation Act # 1000003 Originally opened at Manor Parkway branch ( if they need to know) Also you may send your US$20 contribution to http://lphfoundation.org/donate/

Madiba: Aluta Continua

“Overcoming poverty is not a task of charity, it is an act of justice. Like Slavery and Apartheid, poverty is not natural. It is man-made and it can be overcome and eradicated by the actions of human beings. Sometimes it falls on a generation to be great. YOU can be that great generation. Let your greatness blossom.” ― Nelson Mandela

The chronicle of Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela, and the variety of ways in which his story crossed paths with Jamaica is important to the island's history and that of our diaspora. It must become part of the story of the emerging self-belief of people of African descent. It is also an account of a human being allowing his best and noblest self to prevail.

It is easy and very plausible to tell Mandela's story without also speaking to Jamaica's story. But as a Jamaican it would be remiss of me not to mention, how this little nation, smaller than the population of Soweto and separated by thousands of nautical miles from the shorings of South Africa, prognosticated for the isolation of South Africa in response to apartheid from as early as 1961, three years before Mandela was condemned to Robben Island.

One of Jamaica's prime ministers, Michael Manley, was in numerous ways the designer of the sporting and cultural boycott of South Africa, which, incidentally, was more cogent than economic sanctions to that degree that the psychology of being a white South African was concerned. It is little wonder that Jamaica was one of the first two countries visited by Madiba after his incarceration. He visited Jamaica and Cuba in July 1991, with our beloved Winnie Madikize Mandela at his side, and they received honour from the Jamaican people.

He was a visionary, he had a grand project. He was political. He had an avid sense of strategic timing. Yet he wasn't Machiavellian. He was loved because he was neither Mugabe nor Blair. His vision ran through his life. He was noble. And, like a virtuous father, to be kind, he sometimes could be cruel.

He was distinguished and most especially he had an vast love for his people and for the project of establishing a non-racial and non-sexist South Africa.

Mandela vigorously defended of his loyalties to Iran, Cuban leader Fidel Castro and Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi, all of whom supported him in his battles against South Africa's apartheid regime.

Mandela was on the U.S. terrorism watch list until 2008, when then-President George W. Bush signed a bill removing Mandela from it. (Obama is yet to oblige Marcus Mosiah Garvey similar courtesies.)

South Africa’s apartheid regime designated Mandela’s African National Congress (ANC) as a terrorist organization for its battle against the nation’s legalized system of racial segregation that lasted from 1948 to 1994. (Marxist legal theory at work here: Karl Marx argued that the law is the mechanism by which one social class, usually referred to as the "ruling class", keeps all the other classes in a disadvantaged position).

Former U.K. Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher also described Mandela’s ANC as a “typical terrorist organization” in 1987, refusing to impose sanctions on South Africa’s apartheid regime. President Ronald Reagan did as well.

But Madiba was more than that, he was an African man of moral sense. He was a man of virtue. Moral excellence and moral sense that made him so acclaimed globally since he led a nation at a time when virtue and morality were universally absent amongst global leaders. He slammed Bush and Blair for the war on Iraq: 'What I am condemning is that one power, with a president who has no foresight and who cannot think properly, is now wanting to plunge the world into a holocaust.' For Blair he had these words: 'He is the foreign minister of the United States. He is no longer prime minister of Britain.'

He rose above acrimony and bitterness. He was unselfish and could reach out to his enemies and cross many divides. He was eminent because he was the great unifier. In many ways he was the designer of the New South Africa.

Mandela was neither magnate nor angel. Mandela wasn't unaccompanied in the grand journey of African redemption in South Africa. One only has to read Bertolt Brecht’s great poem, Questions From a Worker Who Reads, to know: 'Who built Thebes of the 7 gates? / In the books you will read the names of kings. / Did the kings haul up the lumps of rock?...'

The fight to emancipate South Africa was a collectivized crusade. Furthermore it was the force of the most oppressed, the workers in the factories, the destitute in the community, blue-collar women and youth that ultimately carried the apartheid government, if not totally to its knees, at the least to talk terms and discuss the conditions of the end of their racial scheme.

All struggle requires a vehicle, a social movement with leaders that can present political focus, tackle the arduous strategic and tactical routes. Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela's ANC came to prevail. Even so, Mandela was the first to recognise the parts played by a broad array of social movements that formed the fight for national liberation and the mass democratic movement.

And while Mandela was the one to start dialogue with the apartheid government, he tied himself to the collective leadership of the ANC. He took the first steps, he led but he did so as part of a collective. He was an organisational man. He took pains to explain he was a product of the ANC. He was a man of the black, green and gold – but he could reach beyond organisational limits.

He had this quality of being able to keep people together. Even his critics – and he had them – submitted to him at the end of the day as a moral leader. Without him I can't envision how the transition would have gone.

Aye, zillions of words will be spoken and written on Madiba’s legacy, now, in the months to come, next year and thenceforth. And we will scramble to do this legacy justice. The hardest part will be to catch the essential Mandela, going beyond myth-making whilst precisely evaluating the inconsistent nature of that legacy.

Since the present can't be interpreted without understanding the past, and not everything that is haywire with current day South Africa can be put at the doorway of Zuma or Mbeki. The negotiated resolution that effected a democratic South Africa on the cornerstone of one person one vote will be reckoned as Mandela’s greatest accomplishment. It avoided the scorched earth route of bloodletting which we at present see in Syria. And even so it's those compromises that are nowadays falling apart at the seams. The unharmonious social inequality (very Marxist in nature) that has given rise to South Africa as a country of two nations: one white and relatively prosperous, the second black and poor (I believe arx would have termed these the: bourgeoisie and proletariat respectively).

Social divide the hallmark of society today!

Mandela’s legacy will likewise have to be weighed by the reality that South Africa is more disunited than ever as a result of inequality and social exclusion. The rich are richer and the poor poorer. The great unifier could undertake great emblematic acts of reconciliation to pacify the white nation but because, by definition, this involved sacrificing the redistribution of wealth, reconciliation with the whites was performed at the expense of the large majority of black people.

Mandela was great, but not so great that he could bridge the social divide built into the 21st century capitalist economy that has given us the era of the 1 percenters. It is the ill-fated timing of South Africa's transition, coming about as it did in the period in which global power got inextricably tied into the global corporation, empowered through the conventions of neoliberal globalisation. Reconciliation necessitated the forsaking of ANC policy as vocalised by Mandela on his discharge from jail, 'nationalisation of the mines, banks and monopoly industry is the policy of the ANC and the change or modification of our views in this regard is unimaginable.'

Nevertheless it's this forsaking of nationalisation, nationalisation representing the redistribution of wealth which was determined by the needs of reconciliation not just with the white establishment but with the international capitalist economy. His encounters with the international elite at Davos, the home of the World Economic Forum, convinced him that compromises needed to be made with the financiers. In the words of Ronnie Kasrils: 'That was the time from 1991–1996 that the battle for the soul of the ANC got underway and was lost to corporate power and influence. I will call it our Faustian moment when we became entrapped.'

It's exactly this capitalistic road that's verified such a calamity and which could ultimately demolish Mandela’s life’s work. To do justice to Mandela’s lifetime of commitment and sacrifice for equality betwixt black and white, the fight must continue.

It today has got to stress on subduing inequality and attaining social justice. In this fight the entire African Diaspora will require the greatness and sapience of umpteen Mandelas. Our brethren and sistren in South Africa require an organisation committed to marshalling all South African black and white for the freeing of the wealth of that state from the hands of a bantam elite. It will necessitate a movement akin to Mandela’s ANC, a social movement based on a collective leadership with the blended qualities of Steve Biko, Neville Alexander, Walter Sisulu, Albertina Sisulu, Govan Mbeki, Ahmed Kathrada, Fatima Meer, Chris Hani, Ruth First, Joe Slovo, Robert Sobukwe, IB Tabata and the many greats that led the battle for African liberation. But most importantly the African Diaspora and South Africa will need the multitude who take their fate into their own hands and become their own liberators.

Are these the things that Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela struggled to achieve?

Save Pinnacle for RasTafari

The planned eviction of I and I Rastafari family from Pinnacle -- the first self-sufficient Rastafari community on the island, located on lands purchased by Leonard P Howell -- seems to be manifesting as Babylon would will it. Already set to give away Goat Islands the Government now intends to take Rastafari lands.

So I and I would like to know, while Jamaica works out with its neighbours sanctions against the Dominican Republic for disinheriting Haitians in that country, our own courts do the same to Rastas?

As far as I and I comprehend, the Jamaican State has made the site a national heritage site, and wishes to evict whoever lives on it. Hence this is firstly a case about land title -- who "owns" the land?

Many of the revolutions of history were fought on grounds of land and property, the Coral Gardens incident of 1963 had similar issues of land ownership to the dispute and ensuing tragedy. So, for public clarity I and I would like to know whose land is it?

If the Rastafarianism is a recognised religious group in Jamaica, and by this I mean in law -- which I believe they are -- and seeing that Jamaica has recently adopted its own Bill of Rights, then there is no denying that Rastafari is a legitimate with regard to religious freedom as recognised in Jamaica, Great Britain, the United States, and other countries. I and I believe one of the arguments against this heinous act of the state, is based on freedom of religion.(ie by evicting off the land and interfering with Rastafari's freedom of religion). Thus this makes the case a constitutional one as well. Does the public defender have anything to say?

I and I cannot be sure what the State intends to do with the site. If the idea is to keep it as State property, as an important part of Jamaican history, it may seem hard to argue against that. After all, the State may argue that they are taking care of the place by doing this, and making sure its historical significance is well known by everyone. This is a controversial notion and forces the question, who have the stakeholders consulted? Could not an initiative that engenders a community and communal heritage trust be set up to navigate the dual existence of a heritage site and the Rastafarian community?

Bearing this in mind, I ask, is it time for some Rastafari agencies and groups, artistes, and lawyers to find a way to take this case to the Privy Council or the Caribbean Court of Justice? There needs to be good advocacy and help in raising international awareness for this undoubted human rights travesty.

I encourage both the Rastafari community, as well as the State, to examine the Saramaka People v Suriname case before the Inter-American Court of Human Rights. In this case, descendants of self-liberated African slaves were held to be "indigenous peoples" and to enjoy the rights recognised to these categories of people under international law. A similar case can be made for the communities at Pinnacle as well. Using that line of argument, if the land if sold no project will be able to start unless the consent of the local communities has been secured by the company. (See the International Finance Corporation Performance Standard number 5 and 7). This is a powerful tool. I hope you understand, this does not change anything with regards to the title to the land, but at least it could prevent the land from being destroyed by logging, mining, tourist resorts, or whatever their plans are.

Ultimately, whilst seeing that Jamaica has not joined the appellate jurisdiction of the Caribbean Court of Justice, it would appear that no case can be brought there. The final Court of Appeal of Jamaica is still the London-based Privy Council. They apply the same law so it ought not to matter much for your case. These are issues representatives of the RasTafari community and its lawyers if there are any must be aware of.

This injustice cannot be allowed!

Read more: http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/letters/Save-Pinnacle-for-RasTafari_15580078#ixzz2moS7571i

p.s. Thanks to Nadia Bernaz of RightsAsUsual for her expertise on the matters of rights and point of law!

The Debacle at Pinnacle: RasTafari Robbed of The Promised Key - Babylon's New Assault!

#Rastafari robbed!!!
So what of OUR PROMISED KEY?

The planned eviction of InI RasTafari Family from Pinnacle: the first self-sufficient RasTafari Community on the island located on lands purchased by Hon. Leonard P Howell, seem to be manifesting as Babylon would will it!

IS THIS A CASE FOR THE #CCJ???
The Caribbean Court of Justice is a shared final court of appeal for currently three Commonwealth Caribbean countries: Barbados, Guyana and Belize. Jamaica is probably the next country of the region that will stop sending their appeals to the London-based Privy Council and switch to the CCJ as well. A human rights assessment of the Court and concluded that its very creation constitutes a positive step towards better access to justice in the region and shows once again the key role superior courts can play in protecting the rights of vulnerable groups.

Bearing this in mind again I ask is it time for some RasTafari agencies and groups artistes and lawyers, to find a way to take this case to the CCJ???

Time for #Rasta to find the #CaribbeanCourtofJustice!

Land reform and revolution reaching to ahead... THIS CAN'T WORK!

Whapp'm to "adverse possession"???

Gi weh GOAT ISLAND and tief RASTA LAND! (Having given away the Goat Islands the Government now intends to steal RasTafari lands!)

So InI would like to know, while #Jamaica works out with its neighbours sanctions against the Dominican Republic for disinheriting #Haitians in that country our own courts do the same to Rastas????

Why this situation wasn't blasted over the #media ages and ages ago? This case has been in court for a while now! Where are the artistes to chant on this issue???

Leonard Howell, his seed and scions, the early Howellites all suffered for this. InI cannot leave History to repeat itself. InI will not allow Mr. Lake and his friends at the National Heritage Trust to deceive us into believing they care to preserve RasTafari legacy.

Never forget the atrocities of CORAL GARDENS, when many RasTafari bredda and sista were abused and massacred.

As a member of the Rastafari community in Montego Bay and growing up in the aftermath of the Coral Garden atrocity and having gleaned 2nd hand knowledge of it, heard first person accounts, InI cannot sit by whilst InI bredda and sista are being dealt another modern day injustice and atrocity, no matter the civility of the apparent legal process, this is a violation of a vulnerable sector of society by the state, guised as civil law and legal prociess, it is vile and unethical, a violation of culture!

#ancestoral land theft, Rasta #oppressed in the 21st century, SUBDIVISION... robbery...

http://lphfoundation.org/rastafari-ordered-to-vacate-pinnacle-by-january-31-2014-resident-magistrate-vashti-chatoor-131113/

#Rastafarian #digitalactivism #socialactivism #IandI #Selassie#Haile #EqualRights #Justice