Everybody came back. It was night by the time we got back. And all of these people were looking through the windows. It was a frightening experience. But they were trying to show their gratitude and their love. But you know how people get happy after soccer games and they start riots? It was near a frenzy. And Bob was just calm, smiling away. It’s amazing, because what are you going to do? I mean, it’s a good lesson. I try to practice that. It doesn’t work too much, but I do. Because what can you do?
In Gabon Bob was very, very happy to be there. I would see him early in the morning, because he could get up very early. And he was very, very kind. We were in a five-star hotel, the best that they had, and the people that were there were just very, very, very poor. And many of them had never seen an inside toilet. And they [their hosts] were ready to see us go because Bob would bring them up. [Mimicking Bob:] “They’re with me! They’re with me! C’mon, c’mon.” So we’d be marching through this beautiful lobby with people with no shoes, dirty feet. And they’d bring them into the room and give them clothes. I don’t think we left with too much of anything, because we gave so much out. I remember having breakfast with Bob a lot in the morning. We’d just sit there and look at each other and smile. He’d always have a big thing of fruit.
But he didn’t look at them as having so much poverty, because they had so much wealth in the natural resources. Even with all of the property that was there, the people did not usually come to that area where we were. They heard Bob Marley was there. But they wouldn’t dare come near that hotel and hang around that type of hotel. That would not be their stomping grounds. But thanks to Bob they came into the hotel, and they’d look around with their eyes wide, looking at everything. It was like he was giving them a tour of the hotel. And they would rub his hair.
ROGER STEFFENS: Marley was disappointed that he was playing mainly for President Bongo’s cronies, the special people who had the pull to get into his concerts. What he really wanted was to get out to the people at large.
DONNICE SIMS: Oh absolutely, because those were the people that were out there, banging on that bus. That’s what he wanted to do. And that was when Don Taylor got hung out the window. Because Bob, that was the last thing on his mind is to take some money. And if that were the case, I know, I’m sure his mind was saying, “If that’s the case, I would have done it for the people. I would have done it for free.” He wouldn’t have to get paid.
CHAPTER 31
Natty Mash It inna Zimbabwe
R
OGER STEFFENS: Marley’s trip to Gabon had been instructive, if unsettling, but his most triumphant return to the motherland was yet to come.
Bob’s three excursions to Africa—to Kenya and Ethiopia in 1978, to Gabon in 1980 and to Zimbabwe the same year—gave him a much clearer picture of the fabled continent. His determination to move to Africa grew. Privately he told Dessie Smith and Yvette Anderson, “Our duty is to build a blood-claat studio inna Africa, have hit after blood-claat hit, then we number one, then we laugh!”
During this period Dr. Gayle McGarrity continued to give him insight into the wave of political insurrection happening in the 1970s throughout Africa.
GAYLE McGARRITY: By the time I went to Cuba it was already known, the role of the Cuban military in supporting the Ethiopian military. So I remember Bob saying that he used to think that Cuba was really a great place, and that they had eliminated capitalism, and blah blah blah, but they clearly were doing the Devil’s work now, because they had this role in Ethiopia. And thus a kind of struggle began between Bob and me, with me trying to tell him the positive things of socialism and him being more and more convinced of the negative. And also the fact that he saw Communism as godless and that it was an “ism”—you know, his whole thing about Rasta don’t deal with ism. So that whole thing of Marxism and socialism he was very against. So I would continue to try and talk to him.
I also introduced him to someone who he became very close to. I had dated a Rhodesian guy in England called Joe Steblecki. We dated for a long time. His father was a Polish aristocrat and his mother was a colored woman from Rhodesia. And I met him in London in ’72. Joey was madly in love with me and I remember when I said goodbye to him in London, I gave him my address and phone number and the next thing I knew, I had been in Jamaica a week and he called me from the airport, he was in Jamaica. I wasn’t particularly interested in him anymore and I didn’t know quite what to do with him, but I remember taking him over to Bob and them instantly getting to be very close, and Joe teaching Bob a whole lot of stuff about the realities of southern Africa. Because at that time Bob was very interested in South Africa and the anti-apartheid movement and Africans liberating Zimbabwe. I think that came out in “Africa Unite”—that’s definitely after he met Joe, because he talked to Joe a whole lot and I remember long reasonings when we’d go over there. I would be present and, as I say, as long as it didn’t get into the Cuban role in things, Bob was all in favor of it. But whenever it came up that the Cubans were helping the black South Africans or the Zimbabweans, he would get very upset and say that couldn’t be because of what they’d done in Ethiopia.
ROGER STEFFENS: One of the greatest moments in Bob’s career came when he was invited to headline the independence celebrations in Zimbabwe in April 1980. Known as Southern Rhodesia when under the colonial control of Britain, the country, under a white-minority government, declared itself independent in 1965 as Rhodesia. A lengthy civil war continued until 1980, when the independent nation of Zimbabwe was declared. Robert Mugabe’s faction invited Marley to headline the formal turnover of control on April 18. Marley’s song “Zimbabwe,” though banned, had become a rallying cry among the freedom fighters. Bob paid the way for his troupe and for the costs of a stage, lighting and sound, but stayed busy on his new album right up to the last minute before departure.
ERROL BROWN: I can remember in Jamaica working on “Could You Be Loved” right to daylight, went home and packed and head to the airport. We had to go to England and from England we go to Zimbabwe.
NEVILLE GARRICK: I think Bob’s financing the whole trip to Zimbabwe is one of the biggest things he ever showed in his commitment money-wise, that a lot of people still don’t really talk about it all the time, ’cause it was kind of amazing to me. It’s not like at that time he was no millionaire or anything, but I think he felt a commitment that—I think basically him said to me, like, my baby gonna be born and I haffe be there, can’t cause no stillbirth or nothing like that. Because we were invited but what they sent us was like an invitation for two people. They said that’s what they could afford, because of what these independence celebrations cost in bringing people in from all over the world. Some people say Bob spent $250,000 to go there, but it was more like $90,000 if I remember correctly. We didn’t bring the stage, we built the stage there. What Bob basically said is that, when we checked out what they had, Bob say him want to perform like he was performing at Madison Square Garden, so we rented lights and sound and all that was on one plane. That was how we were able to do the second free concert the next day, because we had all the equipment there, we’re paying for it, we’re paying for the plane on the tarmac. He didn’t donate that to Zimbabwe. That’s a rental! That would have been a quarter of a million dollars right there, all that rigging. No, he just wanted to perform on the same kind of level that he performed in Europe and America. He didn’t want to give Africa a show like under a streetlight with some floodlights!
ROGER STEFFENS: The person who shepherded Bob throughout his stay in Zimbabwe was Dera Tompkins, a fiery, dreadlocked American Rasta woman who had met the Wailers in the mid-1970s during her research into Jamaican religion, culture and music. But it wasn’t until 1979, at the Black Music Association convention in Philadelphia, that she and Bob began to reason heavily. A medical librarian at a national institute, she was an adviser to Bob’s cancer team and an unofficial host of his Zimbabwe entourage. Her father had been active in the movement to free the country, and he invited
her to join him at the independence celebrations. Her testimony here is adapted from an interview we did at her home in Washington, D.C., in 1988 for The Beat, in which she tells the most complete story of events.
DERA TOMPKINS: I was in different places with the Wailers and I was invited to come tour. Sometimes I would come meet them in New York, and I would move with them. I was there for the four days in Harlem at the Apollo, the International Year of the Rasta Child show in Kingston, Reggae Sunsplash ’79 in Montego Bay, Madison Square Garden. And of course Zimbabwe.
Historian and activist Dera Tompkins in Washington, D.C., with a banner from Zimbabwe’s 1980 independence celebrations.
My story has its roots in an uptown church in Roxbury, Massachusetts, my hometown. It was called St. Mark’s and there was a council that sends ministers to different congregations. Many people were fair-skinned in our church. They sent us a brother from home. The people in church were not pleased. He was dark-skinned and he was from a place they probably never heard of, Rhodesia.
My father was a radical. He looked white at a distance, but he was not white at all. He was very black, and my father was my political guide, how I got where I am. He was a pan-Africanist socialist, very progressive throughout his life. The African minister, the Reverend Mazobere, and my father struck up a strong friendship, visiting prisons, attending the sick. But three years before Rhodesia’s transformation into Zimbabwe, the Reverend Mazobere returned home to contribute to the final struggle. My dad took out his first adult passport and prepared to join him. But I convinced him to wait until the war was over. When, in January 1980, it was announced that independence celebrations would take place on April 18, my father called and said, “Dera, do you want to go home?” And I said, “Yes! You kidding? We’re going to go to Africa!”
ROGER STEFFENS: When they arrived, the week before the festivities, Dera found Reverend Mazobere to be a staunch supporter of Joshua Nkomo, whose ally in the civil war, Robert Mugabe, was now his political rival and was to be the nation’s first prime minister. So the good reverend decided he’d boycott the festivities, opting to watch them on a little black-and-white TV. Dera gathered her robes around her and hightailed it to downtown Harare (actually still called Salisbury, for a few more days), where her dreadlocks caused her to be mistaken for Rita Marley. She had brought ten copies of Bob’s African liberation album, Survival, with her as gifts, thinking that it would be new to everyone.
DERA TOMPKINS: Instead, when I got off the plane, very soon I found out that Survival was the number one album in the country. And number two was Eddy Grant’s—he had a revolutionary song, “Living On The Front Line.” Those two songs were the unofficial anthems of independent Zimbabwe! So they did know about the albums and the music, but nobody knew about Rasta, really. The energy on the streets and in the homes was electric, like a thousand Christmases celebrated at one time. We had flags! The red, black, green and yellow flags of the new nation of Zimbabwe were everywhere. It was Zimbabwe and that sounded and felt just right. We had won a seven-year war and endured many more years of wicked colonial oppression. Now we were going to have the biggest African Liberation party we could have. We won in Zimbabwe! Their guns were greater but our cause was greater than their guns. We chased those crazy baldheads out of town!
When I say it was like Christmas, I mean that there was just pure excitement all day everywhere. The people of Zimbabwe chant. They sing beautiful a cappella songs wherever they may be gathered. The streets were always full of music. Every day there were bands playing in the city center and the schoolchildren would come to town after school in their uniforms to join the daily celebrations. Their parents were busy shopping for new clothes, food, fabric and decorations—hats, posters and flags, banners that were fluttering everywhere in the city that said “Welcome to Zimbabwe” with pictures of Mugabe hand-painted. But the flag was the more important, representing to us that we had our country and our land back in the hands of our people. It was “Viva Zimbabwe! Long Live Zimbabwe!”
When I learned that Bob was coming, it was just too fantastic to be believed. At the invitation of ZANU, Mugabe’s party! It was as if Jah had interceded to place his son just where he was supposed to be on this great African Liberation day. The street excitement grew into a wild and joyful frenzy.
I was at the airport when Bob arrived on April 16, at the same time Prince Charles’s plane landed. Some officials were there, but most of the top officials were present to greet Prince Charles. There were not many members of the public there to meet Bob because Bob’s arrival time was not publicly announced.
AL ANDERSON: Prince Charles and Bob met briefly in a transit lounge. The Prince wanted to know where Bob got his sneakers.
GILLY GILBERT: The entire revolutionary cabinet met us at the airport in Harare. When we stepped off the plane, they said, “Welcome home, brother!” They took Bob in a jeep and paraded him all over and the people yelled “Viva Bob Marley! Viva Mugabe!”
DERA TOMPKINS: The Wailers were a bit suspicious at my unexpected appearance far from home. I’m certain that everyone wondered if I was really an agent. This was, of course, an incredible coincidence for all of us. During the bus ride from the airport, I was able to tell my story and all fears were calmed.
The entourage included the band: Bob, Tyrone, Wya, Family Man, Carly, Al, Junior, Seeco, the soundman Dennis Thompson, Judy, Rita, Marcia, sons Stephen, about to turn eight, and ten-year-old Ziggy, Tommy Cowan, lighting director Neville Garrick, Jamaican lawyer Donna McIntosh and Island Records’ Denise Mills. First we were taken to Rufaro Stadium, because Bob wanted to see the stage. That was in the afternoon. While we all stood on the slope of a hill inside of the stadium beside the stage, we heard beautiful chanting and the sound of people marching coming from the outside of the stadium to the right. It sounded like an African choir. At first, we could only hear the voices because the stadium bleachers blocked our view. The voices drew closer and closer and soon the entire group rounded the corner. All eyes were watching. The officials at the stadium told us that they were the ZANU freedom fighters arriving at the stadium for practice. They were singing chimurenga songs, songs of the revolutionary war. There was one soldier out front who led the chanting. The marching was strictly African, rhythm and style.
They were at least three hundred strong, brothers and sisters. It is important to note that the women of Zimbabwe have the maximum respect of the people because they fought the guerrilla war in the bush side by side with their brothers for all the years of the revolution. They all wore green army fatigue pants with different solid-color shirts in the colors of the new flag: red, green, yellow and black. And when you heard them chant, you know that it was songs of freedom! And we all collectively felt so unbelievably proud. These are the brothers and sisters who put their life on the line for all of us. Frontline soldiers. They were the reason we all could be standing there today. We owed everything to them.
I turned to look at Bob, who was standing beside me, and he was staring directly at the soldiers and he had tears in his eyes. I knew exactly how he felt. These were tears of the deepest and highest respect from one committed freedom fighter to another. This moment touched my soul. I cried too. I don’t know if you understand in Rasta how much we look up to our freedom fighters. There’s just an overwhelming sense of pride and respect. We all had that. But I saw him cry, and it was because he loved revolution and he loved revolutionaries. Because he was really like them, he identified with them, he’s one of them, and he just felt it. He was captivated by the presence of an African army. It was the first time he had seen a revolutionary African army: the ZANU Patriotic Front. These were the people who fought and won this war for us. So you could really see that in him. He was very proud. I will always keep that moment in my mind and heart.
After that we were taken to a hotel that was twelve miles outside of the city, the only available hotel space for the number of rooms required. The accommodations were substandard. Everyone was disappoin
ted and soon we were rerouted back to the city.
ERROL BROWN: When we got there from England they took us to some village, lot of people running up and down there. There was no safety in that place, outside bathroom. So the group say we can’t stay here, and that’s when they took us to an international hotel with nuff security.
DERA TOMPKINS: From there, everyone got taken to a nightclub owned by an entrepreneur named Job. They took us there to eat—and they served pork! Our hosts did not know the dietary restrictions for Rasta against pork, and took the appetizers off the table immediately. When Job learned that the hotel situation had failed, he offered his own home complete with pool and house help, while he stayed in the city. The only thing was, his phone had been disconnected. It appeared that Job was in the black upper class. And this is where everyone had to stay until hotel rooms were available. But it was a really strange situation for the Wailers to be in. I mean, this is Bob Marley! We are in a home where no one knew the address, with no phone, and no one attending the group other than the house help.
Now I became a vital link to the group—this is my special story—because when they arrived, they were taken from place to place so nobody had time to change their money to Rhodesian dollars. They didn’t even know what the exchange rate was. I had Rhodesian dollars because I had been there a week.
So Much Things to Say: The Oral History of Bob Marley Page 36