Everyone now is turning into a Rasta out there. The Rastafarian religion is becoming popular nowadays especially to the youngsters of South Africa. You now find your brother not eating meat and starting to wear the Rastafarian colours. Maybe if you are having a conversation he will start to talk about the great Haile Selassie because he calls himself a Rastafarian. Now the question is what attracts them in Rastafarism? Could it be the colours, the style, the dreadlocks, the rituals, the gatherings that they have, where they sing and do poetry or just maybe the fact that Rastas are spiritually using what they call the holy herb (marijuana or ganja)?

The Rastafarians have their god, Haile Selassie I, who died in 1975. The Rastafarians don’t believe that he died because they claim that there was never a grave for him. They recall that Selassie was the greatest mighty. The Rastafarians do not believe in schools either, because they believe that what you are being taught in schools is to fool you into seeing things the way you went suppose to see them. They also are against the law that allows people of the same sex to be involved with each other. They say that it’s the disgrace towards what the people were made for.

They have rituals that they do to praise their god, and also have a ritual called reasoning, whereby they sit in cycle and smoke ganja and they would sing their songs. We all know that rastas are known for their dreadlocks, they say that it symbolizes the link with Jah (god). Rastafarians are famous for smoking marijuana which is an illegal drug.

Now that’s where my worry comes in. Are those young people who are joining the rastafarism going after the use of marijuana, or are they really passionate about being rastas? When a child starts smoking ganja, his health and behavior get influenced badly, due to the smoking of ganja.

In my opinion I say that you can go and join the Rastafarians and be a part of them, because there is more fun in being a Rastafarian like their rituals and gatherings, whereby they sing to worship their God. You can also show your talent in poetry, but make sure that you do it for the love of it. Don’t do it for the fact that they smoke ganja because if you concentrate on that, you will not achieve in life.