Reggae singer Queen Ifrica says there’s a narrative that women who share romantic history with a man can’t peacefully coexist, and she wants Rita Marley and Cindy Breakspeare to disprove it.
The Black Woman singer wants Bob Marley’s wife and former mistress to meet publicly amid the backlash Breakspeare has been getting for reminiscing on their affair.
“I would love for Cindy and Rita to, in this modern time, you guys are still alive and heterosexual black family relationships is under attack, it would be nice for you guys to meet up and mek the world see seh Cindy and Rita good, so the narrative that dem trying to shape around Jamaican women right across the board being bitter and ignorant side chicks and baby mothers, and no respect nah put round the names of these women, considering all the efforts and all the sacrifices made,” Ifrica argued in a recent Instagram Live.
She acknowledged that though the Marley matriarch is Cuban and Breakspeare is Canadian, they connected with a Jamaican man and inevitably contributed to Jamaican culture, making them the perfect representatives for this unity message.
But as history tells it, the women have already put their differences aside.
During a 2014 Bob Marley lecture, Breakspeare revealed that Rita paid her a visit after she gave birth to Bob’s son, Damian. The 1976 Miss World claimed she was previously unaware that the two were “still” married, but that they would go on to spend Christmas together at Marley’s mother’s Florida abode.
The women also tended to Bob as he fought a rare form of skin cancer before succumbing to his illness in 1981.
“Rita set her grievances aside and we all rallied around him,” Breakspeare told The Gleaner in 2001. “It was all about him at that point; caring for somebody who was going through this terrible thing. None of us wanted to lose him, whether or not we were romantically involved with him.”
Ifrica, who was in a high-profile relationship with singjay Tony Rebel, encouraged women to emancipate themselves from unhealthy relationships, while taking accountability for their actions.
“To my fellow Jamaican women who are in relationships that you don’t feel good in, you don’t feel welcomed in, you don’t feel like you should even be a part of, there’s a choice that you can make and the choice that you can make is how do I center myself in all of this situation? And how do I value myself in any situation that you find yourself in?”
She continued, “It is very good fi we go turn feminists and ‘all man must go down’ kinda thing, but taking some responsibilities fi the actions dem weh we tek inna some of we situations will afford us, as black women, to have the kind of relationships that we really want to have with our black men.”
