For local Rastafarians, April 18th is one of the most important days in their calendar. 58 years ago, on the day, the late Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie visited Trinidad and Tobago upon an invitation by Former Prime Minister Dr Eric Williams.
Selassie accepted the invitation, seeing it as an opportunity to gain support from Caribbean leaders for the Organization of African Unity. Hundreds of people lined the route from the airport to Port-of-Spain. It was the first visit by an African king to the country. It was also the arrival of a significant figure representing the struggle against colonialism.
One of the many people who saw Selassie during his visit was the Corporate Secretary of the All Mansions of Rastafari Glenroy “Bongo Grease” Halls. “It did increase the number of Rastafarians in the country because even I - at the age of seven went to see his majesty in Port-of-Spain and San Fernando - am a Rasta today. So the impact was tremendous. The 18th April 1966 is enshrined in the Rastafari annals throughout the Caribbean,” the Nyabinghi elder said.
Selassie, during his two-day stay in Trinidad and Tobago, stopped in Arima and then at the Ethiopian Orthodox Church in Arouca. At the church, there was a ceremony where the Emperor read a Biblical excerpt and kissed the Book - a scene passed down through stories by local Rastafarians.
On April 19th, Selassie delivered a speech to parliament, saying “The systems of Government which have sought to impose uniformity of belief have survived briefly and then expired, blinded and weakened by obsessive reliance upon their supposed infallibility. The only system of Government which can survive is one which is prepared to tolerate dissent and criticism, and which accepts these as useful, and in any case, inevitable aspects of all social and political relations.”
While the Rastafarian community in Trinidad and Tobago today looks back on the Emperor’s visit as a divine occasion, in 1966, there was no established Rastafarian community in the country as yet, Halls said. He said the community would come later, with the emergence of the Black Power Movement and then the National Union of Freedom Fighters sometime between 1966 (after Selassie’s visit) and 1975.
“There was a strong Pan-Africanism community involved in activism (at the time), like CLR James, Elma Francois, George Padmore, Sylvester Williams, that succeeded in the liberation of Africans from colonialism and highlighted all the ills that were happening in Ethiopia and be more aware of their African identity.
"I believe more youth can benefit from the teachings of Haile Selassie because knowledge of self is everything. If you don’t have a knowledge of self, then you are lost. We are now faced with a generation of youth that is lost,” Bongo Grease said.
Selassie also visited Barbados, Haiti and Jamaica during his Caribbean tour.