Bob Marley's widow plans reburial in Ethiopia.

By : ANTHONY MITCHELL IN ADDIS ABABA [13/1/2005]

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BOB Marley’s widow plans to exhume the reggae musician’s remains in Jamaica and rebury them in his "spiritual resting place" of Ethiopia, she announced yesterday.

The reburial is set for next month to coincide with a celebration in the African country of the 60th anniversary of Marley’s birth. "We are working on bringing his remains to Ethiopia," Rita Marley said. "It is part of Bob’s own mission."

Both the Ethiopian church and government officials have expressed support for the idea. Marley was born in St Ann, Jamaica, in 1945. He died of cancer in 1981.

Ms Marley said her husband, a devout Rastafarian, would be reburied in Shashemene, 150 miles south of Ethiopia’s capital, Addis Ababa, where several hundred Rastafarians have lived since they were given land by the country’s last emperor, Haile Selassie.

Hundreds of thousands of Jamaicans embraced Selassie as their living god and head of the Rastafarian religious movement.

Jamaican resting place of Bob Marley

Marley was a devout Rastafarian, a faith whose followers preach a oneness with nature, grow their hair into dreadlocks, and smoke marijuana as a sacrament.

Bob’s whole life is about Africa, it is not about Jamaica” said Rita, who married Marley in 1966.

How can you give up a continent for an island? He has a right for his remains to bee where he would love them to be. This was his mission. Ethiopia is his spiritual resting place”.

The announcement stirred controversy in Jamaica, however, where the Bob Marley Foundation strongly denied there were any plans to move the start’s remains.

A representative for the charitable foundation, chaired by Rita Marley, said there was no truth to reports the body would be removed in February, though he could not say if there were plans to move the body at another time.

Roger Steffens, a prominent Marley historian and reggae archivist, called the news of a reburial “an appalling development for Jamaica”.

Rita Marley

Bob never expressed any interest to be buried in Ethiopia”, Steffens said by phone from his home in Los Angeles. The country that created the faith of Rastafari is Jamaica, not Ethiopia”, he said.

Together with the African Union and Unicef, Mrs Marley has organised celebrations in Ethiopia, including a concert on Marley’s birthday, February 6, to be held in Addis Ababa.

The month-long celebration, called “Africa Unite” after one of Marley’s songs, aims to raise funds to help poor families in Ethiopia. The event is expected to be broadcast in Africa and beyond.

AP

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