Imani Tafari-Ama | Justice denied: Nzinga King stands firm after DPP ruling

A firestorm has erupted around the conundrum of the loss-of-locks trauma suffered by Nzinga King during her incarceration at the Four Paths Police Station. The Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP), Paula Llewellyn, released her report on the matter on February 9.

The state prosecutor announced that no criminal charges would be brought against the police officer who arrested her and the police officer who was alleged to have shorn Nzinga’s hair. The DPP has also introduced witnesses who challenged Nzinga’s claim that her locks were trimmed by the officer in question. Multiple witnesses claimed that Ms King had undone her hair herself. The DPP’s report was shocking for a public that has been waiting for months for a response from the state about the case. The public’s hopes for a straightforward response to Nzinga’s claims of being subject to assault occasioning bodily harm were shattered with the DPP’s ruling. Isat Buchanan, attorney for Ms King, responded that he was not surprised at the DPP’s ruling. He announced that on behalf of the King family, he would be pursuing justice for Nzinga King in the civil court.

The DPP’s report on Ms King outraged members of the Rastafari community, which has been exposed to numerous experiences of assault over the course of the livity’s (Way of Life’s) nine decades of cultural activism in Jamaica. These notorious experiences of confrontation with the police include the infamous Coral Gardens incident in 1963 and routine incidents of incarceration of Rastafari for minor offences like marijuana infringements. Such clashes are immortalised in Peter Tosh’s ”Nah go a jail fi ganja no more”.

In 1960, the Rastafari community approached the University of the West Indies (UWI) in 1960 to conduct a study on the Rastafari community to debunk popular stereotypes of Rastafari social dysfunction. Similarly, through the Rastafari Coalition, Rastafari recently brokered an agreement with the Andrew Holness-led government to address Rastafari concerns. The deputy prime minister agreed to establish and chair a quarterly mechanism for ongoing interface with the Rastafari community, through the coalition, to jointly monitor progress and ensure accountability for agreed sanctions on priorities related to justice and development of the Rastafari community in Jamaica.

LEGAL RESPONSE

Responding to the DPP’s ruling, coalition member Marcus Goffe concurred with Isat Buchanan’s conclusion that an appropriate legal response to the DPP’s ruling should be channelled through the Civil Court. He also observed that the fact that the DPP had not assigned any criminal charges does not mean that justice has been served. Despite inconsistencies introduced in Nzinga’s story, the state prosecutor did not address remaining doubts about the visibility of Nzinga’s locks while she was incarcerated and subsequent images of her, available on social media, without her hair.

In a telephone interview, Nzinga traced a timeline from June 29, 2021, to July 22, 2021, which represents the significant dates of her arrest (and bail) and the day she went to court and was charged.

Nzinga recalled that after being interrogated on June 29, 2021, she was released. She returned to court on July 22, 2021, and after sentencing, she spent five days locked up at the Four Paths Police Station.

“The police did not look at me for two days,” she said and added that the lock-up only accommodates women. Her account coincides with the DPP’s report that she shared the cell with two other females – who served as Crown witnesses in the case.

Ms King claimed that her hair was trimmed by Officer Mitchell while she was at the Four Paths station, an allegation that was refuted by the DPP in her analysis of witness statements. Recalling her ordeal, Ms. King recalled:

“On the first and second court visits, the police officer was not present. The judge just told me that I was charged for disorderly conduct. They did not charge me for not wearing a mask. They did not try to make me fully understand that it was either pay $6,000 or 10 days in jail. When my mother came to visit me to bring some things for me, that was when they told her she could pay the $6,000. I was in there through my [menstrual] period. It started from the Thursday and it finished on the Monday, the day I was released. My mother took the pads for me, but they did not bring it for me. I got to bathe in there but I had to use toilet paper.”

TRIGGER

Nzinga admitted that the incarceration experience was a trigger for her because being locked up reminded her of a traumatic rape experience that she had suffered a few years earlier. Even recalling this experience, she said, was distressing for her. Ms King said that she is looking forward to the opportunity of having her day in court, which will afford her the opportunity for full exposure of her case and enable her to ask the plethora of questions that are churning in her head.

As Ms King continued: “I am sticking to my story because that is the truth. The truth remains. The police officer was upset with me. I was very calm when she cut my locks; I did not do anything. When she cut my hair, I got upset, but I managed to have self-control. I picked up my locks off the ground and I had them in my hand. The two girls who were there asked me, “You did not have locks?” I said it was Ms Mitchell who cut it. And the biggest question I want to ask is, why am I not charged with public mischief if what I said was not true?”

Responding to this obvious clash of accounts of the incident, between the DPP’s report and Nzinga’s testimony, Marcus Goffe observed that the critical incident of King’s loss of locks has to be placed in the context of the prevailing political economy of identity politics in Jamaica. He reflected that the cultural environment of post-colonial Jamaica is decidedly anti-African/black and anti-natural hair/locks. This response suggests that the public discourse of beauty still places a premium on what Michael Witter and George Beckford in their classic book Small Garden, Bitter Weed characterise as social whiteness, and conversely, undervalues the African-ness that Rastafari embody.

For several decades, the average Rastafari child in the Caribbean had to routinely respond to and resist ethnocentric narratives about locks. In the case of the five-year old child who was barred from attending the Kensington Primary School in Portmore, it was alleged that she was a threat to other children who could potentially be infected with “junjo and lice” from being proximal to her hair.

The Rastafari Coalition concluded that the Nzinga King case provides an opportunity to reassert the Black Lives Matter perspective in recognition that the struggle for equal rights and justice is unfinished business.

Dr Imani Tafari-Ama is a research fellow at The Institute for Gender and Development Studies, Regional Coordinating Office (IGDS-RCO), at The University of the West Indies. Send feedback to imani.tafariama@uwimona.edu.jm.