Bob Marley to be exhumed for Ethiopian burial
Reggae star Bob Marley’s widow plans to exhume his remains in Jamaica and rebury them in his “spiritual resting place”, Ethiopia.
The reburial is set for February when month-long celebrations of the 60th anniversary of Marley’s birth are planned in Ethiopia.
Both the Ethiopian church and government officials have expressed support for the project, Rita Marley said in Addis Ababa today.
“We are working on bringing his remains to Ethiopia,” said Rita, a former backing singer for Marley’s band, The Wailers. “It is part of Bob’s own mission.”
Marley died of cancer in 1981.
Rita Marley said her husband would be reburied in Shashemene, 155 miles south of the capital, where several hundred Rastafarians have lived since they were given land by Ethiopia’s last emperor, Haile Selassie.
Hundreds of thousands of Jamaicans embraced Haile as their living god and head of the Rastafarian religious movement.
Marley was a devout Rastafarian, a faith whose followers preach a oneness with nature, grow their hair into long matted strands called dreadlocks and smoke marijuana as a sacrament.
“Bob’s whole life is about Africa, it is not about Jamaica,” said Rita, a Cuban-born singer who married Marley in 1966.
“How can you give up a continent for an island? He has a right for his remains to be where he would love them to be. This was his mission. Ethiopia is his spiritual resting place,” she said. “With the 60th anniversary this year, the impact is there and the time is right.”
