“Children are dying, spies and spying,
Refugees are fleeing, politicians are lying,
And deals are done and webs are spun,
Laws keep the third world on the run.”
Click here to download “Money” in MP3.
Benjamin Obadiah Iqbal Zephaniah, born and raised in Birmingham, England, is a poet. Rejecting the appointment as an officer of the Order of the British Empire in 2003, Zephaniah wrote:
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.
His poem “Money” is included in City Psalms (1992).