5 Things you should know about Benjamin Zephaniah

After a lifetime of poetry, writing and activism, Benjamin Zephaniah passed away on December 7, 2023. To celebrate his rich legacy and the indelible mark he left on Britain and the world, we take a look back at some moments in his life.

After spending time in approved schools (residential institutions for young people deemed to be beyond their parents’ control), Zephaniah left school at the age of 13 unable to read or write. It was only when he was 21 attending an adult education class in London to learn how to read and write that he found out he was dyslexic.

When his teacher told him he had dyslexia, his first response was to ask if he needed an operation. After she explained what it meant, he felt relieved to have a word for it. He didn’t see dyslexia as a problem to be solved—in fact, he wrote, “I think having dyslexia can make you creative. If you want to construct a sentence and can’t find the word you are searching for, you have to think of a way to write around it.That’s the way architects work.”

Among many passions, Zephaniah was dedicated to animal rights. His experiences with racism at school meant that he would often sit alone in the playground talking to cats, birds and bees. He found that he never met a racist animal, and made the decision to stop eating meat.

He became a vegetarian at the age of 11, and his mother thought it was a phase he was going through until he became vegan at 13. He has spoken of various health and urgent environmental reasons for going vegan (a plant-based diet can reduce emissions by up to 70 per cent, and if everyone decided to adopt a plant-based diet we could save 75 per cent of the world’s farmland) but ultimately for him, it came down to loving animals. 

In 1982, Zephaniah released an album called Rasta. It featured The Wailers’ first recording since Bob Marley’s death, and a tribute to Nelson Mandela, who at the time was a political prisoner. The record became a number one hit in Yugoslavia.

While Nelson Mandela was in prison on Robben Island, someone gave him some recordings of Zephaniah’s music and some of Zephaniah’s books. On his release, he requested a meeting with Zephaniah and the two became friends. Zephaniah went on to work with children in South African townships and hosted the President’s Two Nation’s Concert at the Royal Albert Hall in July 1996.

In November 2003, Zephaniah was offered an OBE (Officer of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire). Zephaniah had a longstanding history of anti-racism activism and spoke in favour of the dis-establishment of the Crown, so little wonder he rejected the OBE. 

Zephaniah wrote about the offer for The Guardian: “Me? I thought, OBE me? Up yours, I thought. I get angry when I hear that word ‘empire’; it reminds me of slavery, it reminds of thousands of years of brutality, it reminds me of how my foremothers were raped and my forefathers brutalised. It is because of this concept of empire that my British education led me to believe that the history of black people started with slavery and that we were born slaves, and should therefore be grateful that we were given freedom by our caring white masters. It is because of this idea of empire that black people like myself don't even know our true names or our true historical culture. I am not one of those who are obsessed with their roots, and I'm certainly not suffering from a crisis of identity; my obsession is about the future and the political rights of all people. Benjamin Zephaniah OBE—no way Mr Blair, no way Mrs Queen. I am profoundly anti-empire.”

While he is best known for his poetry, books and wide-ranging activism, Zephaniah also appeared on screen. His most notable credit is BBC drama Peaky Blinders, in which he played the role of Jeremiah “Jimmy” Jesus, a Jamaican born street preacher and close friend of lead character Tommy Shelby (played by Cillian Murphy).

Murphy paid tribute to Zephaniah, saying “Benjamin was a truly gifted and beautiful human being—a generational poet, writer, musician and activist. A proud Brummie and a Peaky Blinder. I’m so saddened by this news. RIP.”

Cover image: David Morris from Hull, England, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons