From its beginnings in 1930s Jamaica, the Rastafarian movement has
become a global presence. While the existing studies of the
Rastafarian movement have primarily focused on its cultural
expression through reggae music, art, and iconography, Monique A.
Bedasse argues that repatriation to Africa represents the most
important vehicle of Rastafari's international growth. Shifting the
scholarship on repatriation from Ethiopia to Tanzania, Bedasse
foregrounds Rastafari's enduring connection to black radical
politics and establishes Tanzania as a critical site to explore
gender, religion, race, citizenship, socialism, and nation. Beyond
her engagement with how the Rastafarian idea of Africa translated
into a lived reality, she demonstrates how Tanzanian state and
nonstate actors not only validated the Rastafarian idea of diaspora
but were also crucial to defining the parameters of
Pan-Africanism.
Based on previously undiscovered oral and written sources from
Tanzania, Jamaica, England, the United States, and Trinidad,
Bedasse uncovers a vast and varied transnational network--including
Julius Nyerere, Michael Manley, and C. L. R James--revealing
Rastafari's entrenchment in the making of Pan-Africanism in the
postindependence period.