I am concerned about Zimbabwe's Rastafarian population, and here you are going on about the Carribean one.

We cannot ignore Mugabe's tyranny when talking about Rastafarians in Zimbabwe. This man has spoken against Rastafarians many times, which is why I am always shocked at the esteem he is held outside Zimbabwe. It's like a German Jew in the 1930s visiting Engalnd to find that Hitler is well-regarded by the Jewish community there. Or an Iraqi Kurd finding out that his kin love Saddam in Turkey.

Long before the present problems started, Rastafarians in Zimbabwe have had to put up with brutality, marginalisation, every violation of our human rights imaginable. I am in the process of building a website, the first pages should be up by Friday so you may be able to see what I am talking about. ( It is starting on a free site, maybe geocities, but the search key words would be Ophir ( Biblical name for Zim), Zimbabwe Rastafari.

I reject as misguided this knee-jerk mentality that anyone opposing Mugabe must be doing so because they are in league with the various forces in the West. As long as you think like that ( like the two legs bad, four legs good credo of the sheep in Animal Farm) you will always have problems seeing things for what they are, and end up plunging in to delusions.

Of course, the government is not the only anti-Rastafarian organisation, but they are the ones with the guns and prisons and the dogs and batons etc.