Words matter. These are the best John Kani Quotes, and they’re great for sharing with your friends.
I did ‘Sizwe Bansi is Dead’ for 34 years.
I will always vote. I have done so, ever since 1994.
In 1973, ‘Sizwe Banzi is Dead’ and ‘The Island,’ which I co-wrote with Athol Fugard and Winston Ntshona, transferred from The Royal Court Theatre to the Ambassadors Theatre in the West End.
I always say my first break was a dead man’s break.
I write about the human condition, as a South African. I sometimes see South Africa with the spectacles of the past and there will then be a political content in my writing.
All over the world, there is someone sitting in a cell because he or she is not allowed freedom of expression.
I have never been attracted to television work. Even to appear in series and soapies. I have always appeared in theatre and major movies, writing plays and other things.
I had to look at white people as fellow South Africans and fellow partners in building a new South Africa.
In South Africa, it is different. When you are born not even your father knows what is going to happen in your life.
Shakespeare examines how democracy is built.
‘Sizwe’ is the beginning of protest theatre; ‘Nothing But The Truth’ is post-apartheid South Africa.
If we’d lived in England or America we’d have told stories abut our lives and nobody would have called it protest theatre. But the reality of South Africa was the arrests and detentions and oppression – we could not escape that, so we decided to take it on.
The government harasses everything. The government must keep a constant surveillance of all activities by black people in order to maintain their reign over them, especially when they are in a minority.
A telenovela is a story that’s like a soapie, but it has a beginning, middle and an end.
In South Africa in 1987, apartheid was still going strong. Some of the most brutal race laws had been relaxed, but they hadn’t yet been repealed. There was still a lot of tension.
Acting became a powerful tool for change. You had to tell stories that were important to you.
It dawned on me that theatre is a powerful weapon for change.
I spent 51 years under apartheid. I don’t imagine suffering. I know it.
It is ridiculous to think we can erase racism in South Africa, but through theater there can be a genuine attempt to move on with our lives and build a better country.
We haven’t got those dreams: ‘I wish to become doctor or a lawyer.’ Black people in South Africa have been barred in doing anything that would articulate their cause.
You can give me any of Shakespeare’s plays and I’ll tell you a parallel African folktale.
We’ve got the right to vote, but what does it mean? People now want to have the right to a job, the right to education, the right to medical services.
When I’m abroad it’s almost like I’m in a transit lounge. I’m only comfortable when I know the date of departure.
When western culture developed, we became detached from nature, detached from our relationship with the animals. We saw animals perhaps as only the rhino horn, the elephant’s tusk, we saw it as making money.
Apartheid is a lie, people can work together, people can create together.
I’d read Shakespeare in school, translated into isiXhosa, and loved the stories, but I hadn’t realised before I started reading the English text how powerful the language was – the great surging speeches Othello has.
In Australia, I almost became a counsellor. At the end of each performance there would be a queue of sobbing people backstage. They all wanted to explain why they left South Africa.
This is the problem I have: I write a play and I give it to a director and they say, ‘I’ll do it one condition: if you play the role.’
I want my work to contribute toward creating a better society, toward bringing people together. That is always the first consideration, not the money.
I am a citizen of the world, or no world at all!
Theatre has had a very important role in changing South Africa. There was a time when all other channels of expression were closed that we were able to break the conspiracy of silence, to educate people inside South Africa and the outside world. We became the illegal newspaper.
Forgiving is OK. Forgetting, never.
That’s the beauty of art: art is universal.
In any character you are given to play, be it evil/good/whatever character, you begin with self. You examine yourself and ruthlessly see similarities between you and the devil, or between you and the dictator, or between you and the kind man.
It is a troubled soul that forces the human being to act. It is some kind of gangrene within you, inside of you, that eats your soul, that forces you to save your soul.
‘iNkaba’ has made me famous in the living rooms of the people of my country. It was almost like being famous all over again. People stop me in the street and shopping malls to take pictures.
In South Africa, we’ve been watching these movies all our lives – ‘Batman,’ ‘Superman,’ ‘Captain America’ – and every time the mask comes off it’s a white man.
I must concentrate all my efforts in the attainment of freedom for my people.
Very rarely in the life of an actor and a performer do you do something you truly believe in, do you do something you are absolutely proud of.
I remember the words of my grandmother who died at 102. I remember my great mother, Grand Brika, who died at the age of 106. They talked to us all the time. And my grandmother even lied to me. She said there was royalty. She said that my great-great-great grandfather was the king of the outer Thembu.