Punching holes into Selassie’s divinity
Hailie Salassie continues to generate debate well after his death. Was he or was he not God? This is the issue that Blantyre-based ‘Devoted Christian’, as he calls himself, takes up.
Rita Marley, the wife to Bob Marley, claims that when Selassie visited Jamaica in 1966, he looked straight at her and somehow she ran home believing that Selassie was God.
She is just one of the many people that somehow have come to take Hailie Selassie I (real name Tafari Makonnen) who ruled Ethiopia between 1916 to 1930 as the Messiah, an equivalent of Jesus in Christianity, some even say he is God! Or is he?
Tafari took on the name Hailie Selassie I, (his Christian baptismal name), upon his coronation in 1930. When he was christened the title “Lion of Judah, Elect of God, King of Kings,” it sent a shock wave through Afro-Caribbean culture.
In Jamaica, the likes of Joseph Hibbert started declaring that Hailie Selassie was the long awaited Messiah, the second coming of Christ. Thus was born one track of Rastafarism, which looked to Selassie as the living God and black messiah who would overthrow the existing order and usher in a reign of blacks.
Saying Selassie is God or giving him the titles King of Kings and Lord if Lords is certainly a copycat of Revelation 19:16 and that would be stealing Jesus’ title which would amount to apostasy.
Ironically, Selassie himself was a devout Christian; he confessed that he read the Bible almost daily; he never admitted that he was a God and he must be turning in his grave when some Rastas call him God.
Christianity was a label as Selassie oversaw some of the worst times Ethiopia has been through. Under him, corruption flourished, dissenting voices were crushed and at some point western journalists were not allowed to see some of the areas in Ethiopia.
One British cholar noted that at some point the gap between the poor and rich in Ethiopia was the biggest in the world ever at some point with Selassie at the helm, and yet he was filthy rich and lived like Solomon and threw copper to his subjects on his birthday.
During his exile, he stayed in hotels in Britain and bought a 14-roomed house there while his subjects suffered back home, while there he attended church, he was an Orthodox Christian.
Polish journalist Ryszard Kapuscinski wrote of Selassie: “the Emperor himself amassed his great riches. The older he grew, the greater became his greed, his pitiable cupidity…he and his people took millions from the state treasurer and left cemeteries full of people who had died of hunger, cemeteries visible from the windows of the royal palace.”
In an interview with Bill McNeil, Selassie said: “I have heard of that idea [i.e., of Hailie Selassie being the reincarnation of Jesus Christ]. I also met certain Rastafarians. I told them clearly that I am a man, that I am mortal, and that I would be replaced by the oncoming generation, and that they should never make a mistake in assuming or pretending that the human being is emanated from a deity.”
One voice from Rastas is Christafari. He has been there and seen it all, grown hemp, worshiped Selassie but when he reflected he turned to Christ and to this day he continues to preach the word of Jesus to Rastas and all, he has been criticised but he maintains that just like Selassie himself said: “Let us labour to lead our sisters and brothers to our Saviour Jesus Christ.”
It all started with an error, Marcus Garvey a Pan-Africanist, said in 1927: “Look to Africa, for there a black king shall be crowned,” and the next thing Marcus is a prophet and taken as a second John the Baptist.
Was Marcus sent by God? Was the Black King Selassie and Was the Black King to be a God?
With notes from: www.libcom.com
Editor’s note: If you have a strong view on the issue, put it in writing and send it to nation@mwnation.net
