John Kani: Protest theatre is still relevant

John Kani says protest theater is still relevant today.

The Tony award-winning actor and playwright says he had been targeted by the government and narrowly escaped a series of hate crimes due to his opposition against South Africa’s apartheid when working abroad as an actor in the 1970’s.

John told City Press: ”I had been detained, I survived an assassination attempt and survived 11 stab wounds. I traveled with a document that did not state my nationality because the government called me a ‘bad ambassador’ of the country.”

When apartheid fell, John was one of millions of South Africans who voted in the country’s inaugural democratic elections in 1990, and he admits he was doubtful as to whether the oppressive regime would change.

He explained: ”I voted. I walked out. And I was f*****g angry after I voted. How can it be so easy to change this country? But then as I walked away with my wife, I said to her, ‘I feel a strange responsibility to nurture this new-found freedom and to continue to be the watchdog of this freedom”’.

John is using his inspiration for his new play ‘Missing’ – which documents the struggles of a South African political exile – and he claims theater still has an important part to play in politics.

He added: ”Protest theater has a place again. It’s not against whites or apartheid. It is against injustice and anything that fails our people.”