ABSTRACT
It is a time in history when many people feel things are approaching an end. The growing threat of nuclear annihilation, the accelerating depletion of natural resources, the toxification of the atmosphere; these give concrete historical substance to the sense of fin de siecle. The conviction is growing amongst certain groups that many other things are ending too. And these groups have no substance to their prediction - it is based simply on a faith in a deity, Haile Selassie, and a myth of a golden age that is shortly to be restored. Members of the modern day rastafarian movement believe that the whole social cosmos is shortly to be overturned by their messiah; after the transformation, the whites' material control over blacks will be broken and black people will be returned to Africa to live harmoniously and self-sufficiently.
