Unholy smoke tears Rasta group apart
SHANTHINI NAIDOO
Cape Town's Rastafarian movement has been split in a dispute over whether Rastas should smoke their dagga mixed with cigarette tobacco.
The battle is taking place within the Burning Spear Movement - an organisation founded in 1981 to promote "community development, righteousness and self-sufficiency".
The rift is between the founder and ex-president of the movement, Bernard Brown, and interim president, Douglas Williams.
Brown ditched the movement, claiming its members did not adhere to "true" Rastafarian practices anymore, by "mixing" the dagga, as well as consuming meat. However, Williams said 90% of people who smoked dagga mixed it with tobacco and insisted they were good Rastas.
Brown is so disillusioned with the group that he has shunned the Burning Spear's religious Saturday dance celebrations, saying he cannot go back due to the "harmful smoke" emitted from mixed dagga.
Quinton Solomons, a herbalist who stands by Brown and who has also left Burning Spear, said: "Saturday is the Sabbath for Rastas. It's like our gym, the exercise. It is a spiritual gathering too. They're smoking mixes and all sorts of things and it's very bad for our health, this mixed smoke. Cigarettes are the poison of Western colonial imperialism and it is the slow killing of us."
However, Williams said: "I really believe it doesn't make a difference. You must look at people from within. Look at what they do, their doings."
The dispute has also involved other allegations, ranging from the presence of "gangsters" in the movement to the alleged misuse of organisation funds.
Brown claimed that the organic garden he produced as a feeding scheme in the community was abandoned after he left, and that true Rastas were not meant to work for a living - as some members of the movement did.
"I feel disturbed in a way because it all concerns social dynamics . . . We have aims and objectives, we do good things but these people are going the wrong way," said Brown.
However, Williams said Brown was welcome to return. "We want him back. We deal with love and everyone makes mistakes."