ABSTRACT
As the world continues to suffer from the devastating effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, it has become thread-bare that no one is completely safe from the ferocity of the disease across the class, gender, age, race and national divides. This chapter examines the Rastafari communities’ responses to COVID-19 crisis in Zimbabwe and Malawi. The chapter argues that Rastafari, an often stigmatised, demonised and criminalised minority religious movement located on the margins, has navigated around hegemonic attitudes, politricks and conspiracy theories of ‘Babylon’ system in order to reposition their agency in the context of COVID-19 crisis in both Zimbabwe and Malawi. By using an Afrocentric theoretical framework, the chapter further demonstrates that Rastafari cultural identities such as music, Ital foodways, wholistic natural herbalism and environmentalism as well as spiritual and physically balanced lives engender creative and unique parameters that promote public health and human flourishing. The chapter concludes that Rastafari Afro-epistemological strategies in response to COVID-19 defy Western epistemological hegemonic tendencies and biomedical approaches. In the final analysis, Rastafari foregrounds the embracement of human diversity and the practice of One love, One aim, One people and One human race to drive positive complementary actions in the face of pandemics in Southern Africa and beyond.
