Zephaniah lived for many years in East London; however, in 2008, he began dividing his time between a village near Spalding, Lincolnshire, and Beijing in China.[105] He was a keen language learner and studied Mandarin Chinese for more than a decade.[106]
Zephaniah was married for 12 years to Amina, a theatre administrator. His infertility – which he discussed openly[107] – meant that they could not have children and his criminal record prevented them from adopting.[3] They divorced in 2001.[108]
In 2017, Zephaniah married Qian Zheng, whom he had met on a visit to China three years earlier, and who survives him.[2]
In May 2018, in an interview of BBC Radio 5 Live, Zephaniah admitted that he had been violent to a former partner, confessing to having hit her. He said:
The way I treated some of my girlfriends was terrible. At one point I was violent. I was never like one of these persons who have a girlfriend, who'd constantly beat them, but I could lose my temper sometimes... There was one girlfriend that I had, and I actually hit her a couple of times, and as I got older I really regretted it. It burned my conscience so badly. It really ate at me, you know. And I'm a meditator. It got in the way of my meditation.[109]
His cousin, Michael Powell, died in police custody, at Thornhill Road police station in Birmingham, in September 2003 and Zephaniah regularly raised the matter,[75][110] continuously campaigning with his brother Tippa Naphtali, who set up a national memorial fund in Powell's name to help families affected by deaths in similar circumstances.[111]
Zephaniah's family were Christian but he became a Rastafarian at a young age.[112][113] He gave up smoking cannabis in his thirties.[114]
He was a supporter of Aston Villa F.C. – having been taken to matches as a boy, by an uncle[3][115] – and was the patron for an Aston Villa supporters' website,[116] as well as an ambassador for the club's charity, the Aston Villa Foundation.[117][118]
Death and legacy
Benjamin Zephaniah died on 7 December 2023, at the age of 65, after being diagnosed with a brain tumour eight weeks previously.[3][4][119][120] His friend of nearly twenty years, Joan Armatrading, gave a tribute to him on Newsnight on BBC Two after hearing the news of his death. Writing on Twitter, she said: "I am in shock. Benjamin Zephaniah has died age 65. What a thoughtful, kind and caring man he was. The world has lost a poet, an intellectual and a cultural revolutionary. I have lost a great friend."[121]
The BBC later re-broadcast Zephaniah's documentary A Picture of Birmingham, in which he revisited his birthplace and his former approved school.[50] Fiona Bruce, the presenter of BBC's Question Time, on which Zephaniah was a regular panellist, paid tribute to him, saying: "He was an all round, just tremendous bloke" for whom she had "huge affection and respect".[122]
According to Martin Glynn of Birmingham City University, Zephaniah was "never an establishment person", but "got into spaces" where he felt he could be heard. Glynn said: "He was the James Brown of dub poetry, the godfather... Linton Kwesi Johnson spoke to the political classes, but Benjamin was a humanist, he made poetry popular and loved music. He had his own studio.... He did what John Cooper Clarke did with poetry and that was bringing it into the mainstream."[123]
The family issued a statement regarding Benjamin Zephaniah's death, saying, "Thank you for the love you have shown Professor Benjamin Zephaniah".[124]
Aston Villa Football Club paid tribute to Zephaniah on Saturday, 9 December 2023, in advance of their home match against Arsenal F.C., by playing on the big screens his ode to Villa, originally recorded in 2015.[125][126]
His private funeral, attended by close friends and family, took place on 28 December, and it was requested that well-wishers plant flowers, trees or plants in Zephaniah’s honour, rather than sending cut flowers.[127][128]
An artwork featuring Zephaniah that appeared on the wall of an underpass in Hockley, Birmingham, in March 2023 was accidentally painted over by a council sub-contractor employed to remove graffiti, although Zephaniah's family had been given assurances that the mural would be protected.[129][130] Following a public backlash,[131] an apology was issued,[132][133] and new artwork was subsequently commissioned from black artists, to be unveiled on 14 April at Handsworth Park.[134][135]
As a tribute, BBC Radio 4 broadcast the 2018 Book of the Week recording of Zephaniah reading his autobiography, The Life and Rhymes of Benjamin Zephaniah.[136]
