There seems to be a thriving Jamaican cultural exchange taking place between Harare and Johannesburg. It’s loosely structured like this: Zimbabwe, keen to reconnect with the rest of the world after a decade of isolation, is inviting musicians to play in Zimbabwe and these artists invariably make the journey down south to jam in Johannesburg.
The fiery singer-DJ, Sizzla Kalonji, invited to play at Robert Mugabe’s birthday in February, was in South Africa for weeks before he went back to perform at Zimbabwe’s independence commemorations in April. Cerebral Jamaican dub poet Yasus Afari, who played at the Harare International Festival of the Arts, is the latest to trek to South Africa via Harare.
The turban-clad dub poet has been in South Africa for more than a week now for a series of performances and workshops. Christened John Sinclair, Afari abandoned his “government name” for Yasus Afari, a moniker with more religious cadences.
The poet and university teacher has written a Rastafarian primer: Overstanding Rastafari: Jamaica’s Gift to the World. Afari straddles with ease that (false) divide between entertainment and education. He has an impressive discography that includes the albums Dancehall Baptism, Mental Assassin, Honour Crown Him and Revolution Chapter 1.
The poet combines his booming, echoey voice with an egalitarian outlook and a sharp mind. Even though unknown in this part of the world, Afari has collaborated with some of the biggest names in reggae including Beres Hammond, his childhood friend Garnett Silk and Black Uhuru.
“We are very much aware of our social responsibility, so therefore we use poetry as a surgeon would use his knife,” he says about deploying his craft for a social cause. Afari uses the pronouns “I” and “we” interchangeably, moving from the individual to the collective and back with relative ease.
“I am an individual and I am also a member of a community. I am the glue that holds the different houses and mansions of Rastafari together, because we don’t want Rastafari to degenerate into denominational attitude of confrontation and division,” he says of his attempt to promote peace among the various Rastafarian sects.
The egalitarian Rasta is an ambassador of the Parliament of the World’s Religions, the only Rastafarian in the parliament’s 100-year history. Inaugurated in Chicago in 1893, the parliament was the first conscious attempt to create a platform to facilitate dialogue between faiths. “I think we need a livity,” he says, using a popular Rasta term.
“Livity would mean the formula, the methodology to nurture life, sustain life and to enhance our social relationships.”
It’s a point he is keen to emphasise: “When religion, like politics and economics, is subverted for selfish means then it is polluted and is contrary to its fundamental purpose.”
True spirituality, he says, is in communion with the universe and the creator. It’s a theme he has given musical expression to in the rather preachy, environmentally conscious song The Earth Is a Friend on his album Jamaica’s Gift of Vision. He has nothing of the bigotry that is typical of many religious people, pointing out, in cliched tones, that “variety is the spice of life”.
Although this is Afari’s first visit to Southern Africa, he is not a stranger to the continent. The dub poet has visited Ethiopia (most Rastafarians make the proverbial journey to the East, the birthplace of Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie), the Gambia and Ghana. But it was in Zimbabwe that he felt more at home.
Naturally, when asked about his thoughts on Zimbabwe, Afari was obliging to his hosts. “It is far removed from the media representation painted in Jamaica and elsewhere,” he says, “Zimbabwe is pregnant with the possibility of renewal.”
At one of his performances in Harare he called upon Mugabe and Morgan Tsvangirai to work together. When we ask him what has so far struck him about South Africa, the poet looks around at the passing traffic on Jan Smuts Avenue, the buildings, and confesses that most people in Jamaica wouldn’t believe that this is Africa.
In the 1980s, especially, South Africa was a recurrent motif in reggae music and many of artists decried the injustice of the apartheid system. “I knew South Africa was affluent and had a turbulent history of apartheid,” he says. “But I can see that black people still struggle.”
The real struggle, he notes — the struggle to unshackle the black population from poverty — has just begun.