Kani was born on 30 August 1942 in New Brighton, Port Elizabeth, in the Eastern Cape province of South Africa.[1] In 1975, after appearing in Athol Fugard's anti-apartheid play Sizwe Banzi Is Dead, which he also co-wrote, in the United States, Kani returned to South Africa. There, he received a phone call saying that his father wanted to see him. On his way there, he was surrounded by police who beat him and left him for dead. His left eye was lost as a result of the incident, and he now wears a prosthesis which is technically a glass eye.[2]
His son Atandwa is also an actor, who made his debut on U.S. television on the CW seriesLife Is Wild, and played a younger version of Kani's character T'Chaka in Black Panther.[3]
Career
Kani joined The Serpent Players (a group of actors whose first performance was in the former snake pit of the zoo, hence the name)[4] in Port Elizabeth in 1965 and helped to create many plays that went unpublished but were performed to a resounding reception.[5][6]
Kani's work has been widely performed around the world, including New York, where he and Winston Ntshona won a Tony Award in 1975 for Sizwe Banzi Is Dead (which ran for 159 performances) and The Island.[8] These two plays were presented in repertory at the Edison Theatre for a total of 52 performances.[9]
Nothing but the Truth (2002) was his debut as sole playwright and was first performed in the Market Theatre in Johannesburg. This play takes place in post-apartheid South Africa and does not concern the conflicts between whites and blacks, but the rift between blacks who stayed in South Africa to fight apartheid, and those who left only to return when the hated regime folded. It won the 2003 Fleur du Cap Awards for the best actor and best new South African play.[11] In the same year, Kani was also awarded a special Obie Award for his extraordinary contribution to theatre in the United States.[12]
Kani is executive trustee of the John Kani Theatre Foundation, founder and director of the John Kani Theatre Laboratory and chairman of the National Arts Council of SA.[13] He starred as T'Chaka in the Marvel Studios blockbusters Captain America: Civil War (2016) and Black Panther (2018). The fact that Kani was a Xhosa native speaker led Chadwick Boseman, who played his onscreen son T'Challa, to make that Wakanda's language, and to learn whole scenes in Xhosa, although he had never studied the language before.
On 20 February 2010, Kani received a SAFTA Lifetime award.[16] He has also received the Avanti Hall of Fame Award from the South African film, television, and advertising industries, an M-Net Plum award and a Clio award in New York. Other awards include the Hiroshima Peace Culture Foundation Award for the year 2000 and the Olive Schreiner Prize for 2005. He was voted 51st in the Top 100 Great South Africans in 2004.[17]
In 2016, Kani received the national honour of the Order of Ikhamanga in Silver, for his "Excellent contributions to theatre and, through this, the struggle for a non-racial, non-sexist and democratic South Africa".[1]
The main theatre of the Market Theatre complex in Newtown, Johannesburg, has been renamed The John Kani Theatre in his honour.[21]
The Island (1973) (co-authored with Athol Fugard and Winston Ntshona)
Statements After an Arrest Under the Immorality Act (co-authored with Athol Fugard and Winston Ntshona)
My Children My Africa! (actor)
Nothing But the Truth (2002) (sole playwright)
The Tempest (2008) (actor in the role of Caliban, at the Baxter Theatre, Cape Town; Courtyard Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon; and tour of Richmond, Leeds, Bath, Nottingham, Sheffield)
↑Britt, Donna (26 September 1989). "Apartheid Through An Angry Lens". The Washington Post. Archived from the original on 2 February 2023. Retrieved 5 April 2018. Kani lost his eye when he returned to South Africa after appearing in Athol Fugard's anti-apartheid play, "Sizwe Banzi Is Dead," here and in New York. The actor was lured from his home by a telephone caller who said Kani was wanted at his father's home. On the way there, Kani says he was surrounded by police, who beat him and left him for dead.
↑"Bonisile John Kani". South African History Online. Archived from the original on 22 November 2023. Retrieved 9 July 2020.
↑Cornwell, Gareth; Klopper, Dirk; MacKenzie, Craig (2010). The Columbia Guide to South African Literature in English Since 1945. USA: Columbia University Press. p.114. ISBN978-0231130462.
