Bob Marley’s Relationship With Dictator Bongo’s Daughter Helped Him Strengthen His African Root

IN “Bob Marley and the Dictator’s Daughter”, French journalist Anne-Sophie Jahn looks back at the passionate love affair between reggae star Bob Marley and Pascaline Bongo, the daughter of Gabon’s former president Omar Bongo. This relationship helped the singer to strengthen his African roots.

The story was told by Pascaline Bongo herself in a documentary released in 2012. When the daughter of Gabon’s former president Omar Bongo, then a 23-year-old student in the US, first met the global superstar Bob Marley, the reggae singer was busy smoking a large joint and said only one thing to her: “You’re ugly.”

This comment was in reference to the young woman’s straightened hair, which Marley considered an unacceptable insult to his Africanness. Despite this embarrassing first introduction, the couple enjoyed a passionate love affair that lasted until the idol’s death on 11 May 1981. Passionate but almost impossible, admits Bongo herself in the