Postcolonial Shakespeares in South Africa from Apartheid to Democracy and the Long Futures of Storytelling and Worldmaking
Keywords: South Africa, Apartheid, protest theatre, Nelson Mandela, Othello, Caliban, activism, Sizwe Banzi Is Dead, Kunene and the King, schools, democracy, justice.
PART ONE
Interview audio
Published on 12 August 2024.
PART TWO
Interview audio
Published on 12 August 2024.
John Kani; photograph courtesy of MLA
PART ONE
Interview transcript
Introduction to Part One
Amrita Dhar
Hello and welcome. My name is Amrita Dhar, and I am the Director of the project Shakespeare in the “Post”Colonies which is hosting a series of interviews with postcolonial Shakespeareans from around the world.
This is the first part of my conversation with the legendary South African author, director, playwright, teacher, mentor, activist, and actor for stage and screen, John Kani.
Conversation in Part One
Amrita Dhar
I’d like to begin by asking you about your very first experiences with Shakespeare, please.
John Kani
I think I was a young, young student, in lower primary school in 1952/53. We had a wonderful English teacher who was a product of the Royal Readers. That was the textbooks that we studied in the fifties before the introduction of the infamous Bantu Education, which was simply designed for the Black child, almost to de-educate the Black child. We were expected to speak English with the Queen’s accent. Every quarter or the third term of the year, a white inspector—he was called the Inspector of the Native Education—would visit the school to evaluate the education of the native child. One of the things that were required: we had to look at recitations—poems to recite for Mr Ohmond. That was his name. We chose from Wordsworth, from Milton, from Shelley, and from, from all the kind of known English poets and great thinkers and philosophers.
My favourite was to choose from Shakespeare. And in Shakespeare, I would choose, “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? O no, thou art more fair.” Only because it made me look popular to the girls in the class. And also Mr Ohmond was very impressed, very impressed that this native young boy could recite Shakespeare. And sometimes on the following year, and I would find another one! I loved the sonnets. “Love is not love, which alters when it alteration finds or bends with that remover to remove. Oh no, it is an ever fixed…” “John,” said my teacher, “fixèd. Ba-bum ba-bum ba-bum ba-bum…” I didn’t know what the hell the teacher was talking about. We just wanted Mr Ohmond to go. So he could give the principal and the teacher a blue tick, that truly the native child is getting the right education.
Amrita Dhar
Why this emphasis on poetry, do you think? When did Shakespeare’s plays enter the curriculum? Did they, for you, fairly early?
John Kani
Oh, no, no, not at all! I’m talking ’52, ’53. We were such young, we were really lower, lower grades, so we wouldn’t be able to comprehend an entire play. We would just have to select from these sonnets and these poems. And this was only done because most of our poetry was in isiXhosa, “Uthhuthula” [by J. J. Jolobe], “Ukuzikakuka Mendi” by S. E. K. Mqhayi, [on the sinking of the ship Mendi during World War II]. These are the great writers and the great singers. That was our poetry. But for this particular time, when Mr Ohmond comes to evaluate the education of the native child, our teacher made us choose these English sonnets or poems, you know. So, that was it.
Basically, it was in 1959, I was now doing secondary education, and my teacher came in, uh, it was my Xhosa teacher—I speak isiXhosa—and said, “We are going to do a new play by William Shakespeare, it’s called Julius Caesar. But we are going to do a translation, which was done by W. B. Mdledle. The entire play had been translated in isiXhosa.”
I remember the teacher would say, “You can’t read Shakespeare sitting down. You stand up and hold it. Posture. Open your lungs. Deliver.” But now it’s in isiXhosa. It’s no longer in English. So there’s no da-dum, da-dum, da-dum in iambic pentameter. The reason that the Department of Education agreed that Julius Caesar be taught in Black schools was, first, it was in isiXhosa. Number two, our teacher explained the reason: that the conspirators were like terrorists trying to overthrow the state. Brutus, Cassius, Casca, and all of them. So therefore, Octavius and Mark Antony were the state, the Apartheid state. So, the reason they failed is that we will also fail with the ANC and all these underground and liberation movements if we dare take on the state. But then he would say, “That’s what you answer in the examination room. But let me tell you what this play is about: ambition, conspiracy, dictatorship. And it’s about these walls will crumble against the will of the people and that the people will be free.”
The first part I read, was: “Awu ndixolele wenagada lophisayo ukuba ndilulame ndithambe kwezi zikrelemnqa.” Now, this is the moment when Mark Antony discovers the body of Caesar at the feet of the Pompey statue. In English, it says, “O, pardon me, thou bleeding piece of earth/ That I am meek and gentle unto these butchers!/ Thou art the [ruins of the] noblest man/ That ever lived…” [III.1.280-283]. Later, I got to find the English version of William Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar—quite a letdown in comparison to my studying it in isiXhosa! I felt that he, he missed the pain, the pathos, he missed the, the, the, the vulnerability and also the danger of making this statement with all the senators and the armies of the state surrounding him, especially when he goes to “Friends, Romans and countrymen [sic]” [III.2.82]. That was my first introduction on a full scale to Shakespeare plays.
Amrita Dhar
I have spoken to my undergraduates about this conversation that I was about to do with you, and what they are interested in is King T’Chaka.
John Kani
[laughs]
Amrita Dhar
And it struck me, when I was listening to their enthusiasm, that they perhaps don’t know that there is a very real connection between your being in the role of King T’Chaka and your long history with Shakespeare. And with your long history of using Shakespeare towards liberation, especially in the African continent, and especially in the context of South Africa. Would you be willing to speak a little bit about that relationship, please?
John Kani
In the early 60s and 70s, after the introduction of Bantu Education, which was a really low, low standard of education… The Africaner said, “Just educate the Bantu, which is the Black people, just to understand instructions. And when you give the instructions to a Black person or a Bantu, please repeat the instruction and make sure that they can also tell you what the instruction was.”
We wrote a number of plays, a number of plays within isiXhosa, musicals, isiZulu. We know that Sol Plaatje, who was the first Secretary General of the African National Congress, had translated Measure for Measure into Setswana. And The Merchant of Venice. These were found to be relevant to the given situation. And they also gave a sense of protection from the draconian laws that stopped every political performance which the white deemed to be inspiring people to rebellion. So, when you then do Shakespeare, it felt like, “Oh, leave them alone. The Black people won’t even understand Shakespeare. They’re just mimicking it.” So, when we got into the 70s, there was a decision within the arts—and we called ourselves “the cultural activists”—to look at how we can keep, through the arts, the flame of hope, the flame of liberation amongst the people.
Apartheid in the 50s and the 60s had become so brutal—totally, exactly with what’s going on now in Palestine occupied by the Israelis. There was not even a moment you could breathe, even the air we stole, even the air. Our thoughts we couldn’t even think—lest we think aloud. They had established a massive network of informers within the Black community. It was almost like The Crucible. You could be accused of being a revolutionary like you could be accused of being a witch in Arthur Miller’s Crucible. So, the damage it did within the Black community of distrust amongst each other, and the survival of whatever means that were possible, made us go back to drawing board. And we felt that, as young people, we had a duty to make our voices heard. Not just by saying, “I’m an actor, and art is not politics. Art is art.” We threw that definition out of the window long ago—that art cannot mix with politics. What we knew is that there is a truth that needed to be heard. And we paid for that. We paid in detention, we paid in exile, we paid in death. We paid. But it was like a fever that you watch on screens when people do not care. You think you’re going to be shot, you’re being tear-gassed, you’re being beaten. It’s dangerous. But in the evenings, we would assemble and put on these plays.
Some of, most of them we began in 1971/72. So, Shakespeare came within that.
We looked at the Greek classics like Antigone, The Bacchae by Euripides. And by some people within Africa: Wole Soyinka, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, all of that. How can we use art for change? How can we use art as a weapon to mobilize our people to liberate themselves? So, when we got to a situation where we began to have little spaces within the Black township, theatre became an underground revolutionary act.
Amrita Dhar
What locations were these?
John Kani
Within the townships. Because there was no single theatre in any Black township of the Republic of South Africa. The first time I walked into a proper theatre was in 1972. And I started theatre in 1965.
Amrita Dhar
Right.
John Kani
After 10pm, after the normal play has finished, we would then get a chance. So, there were no theatres. So, actually we performed in open spaces, marketplaces, church halls, school halls, wherever. Sometimes, there were very nice liberal whites with big houses. [laughs] Who would allow us, if there were not too many of us in the cast, to perform in their big lounges or outside in the court, in the yard. So that’s how we survived. And that’s when theatre became important in the struggle.
We also saw the role of Shakespeare in that context. So, when we thought about doing a Shakespeare, like Coriolanus—I did Coriolanus in 1968—we would study the play, we would understand what drives the play. We would then look in the mirror and see what is reflected in the play that is about us. Those days, if it didn’t speak to the struggle, it didn’t speak to issues confronting the society. We could measure it very quickly! If the white policemen let it happen, then there’s something wrong with it!
Amrita Dhar
[laughs]
John Kani
We’ve got to go find another one. [laughs]
Amrita Dhar
Yes!
John Kani
Yes, go find another one. If it’s not banned and we are not arrested, then there’s something wrong with the play, go find another one. And that is why when we did Antigone by Sophocles, the question was, simply: “If the law is unjust, do the people have a right to protest that law and force the government to change that law?”
Amrita Dhar
How many people were in the audience for these performances, roughly?
John Kani
Ah, we were nine in Antigone and there were six in the audience.
Amrita Dhar
Okay.
John Kani
Yes. But slowly, slowly, people began to come out.
Amrita Dhar
Right.
John Kani
Because the people did realize: what we’re doing is not safe.
Amrita Dhar
Yes.
John Kani
But they had not yet defined it as dangerous. Because what would happen in, during the performance of the play, the police would come! The police would just tear gas and everybody out. Some would be detained. Or sometimes the police would park their cars in front of the entrance of the theatre or the hall. So, people would then say, “No, I’m not going. I’m not going.” I remember in 1972 when my father came to see Sizwe Banzi Is Dead with my mother, there were 150 seats in the hall, the church hall, and 750 people on top of each other.
Amrita Dhar
Hm.
John Kani
People were nervous. People were fearing for our safety. The police were outside. My father called. “It’s not a play, it’s a political meeting. You’re not a trade unionist. You said to me you wanted to do plays. You are not playing there, you are provoking these white people. They are not stupid.” [laughs] And that’s then the kind of beginning of what later was to be known in South Africa as protest theatre.
Amrita Dhar
Hm.
John Kani
Which then was the thermometer through which we measured each piece of art, be it a song, poetry, a novel. We wanted to know art, culture, painting. Our struggle was intense, very intense. I buried my brother. Everybody buried someone in their family who was shot. My parents were on Robben Island. My uncle was on Robben Island. I was detained periodically at the end of each play, if I go out and I come back. So, when you came back, there was a passion that was more than just doing art. That is going to be perhaps a profession, is going to be perhaps something that could make me famous or popular. So, there was that drive, that commitment from our youth.
The government of the Afrikaners picked it up very quickly, that this is the most dangerous weapon they are using. I remember when we did The Just by Albert Camus. I was detained because I did a “Russian” play. So that was the most fear of the white people is that the African in the continent and subcontinent is going to be a satellite of the communist Russia and China. And we knew that time that the struggle for liberation was being supported outside, in Africa, in China, in Cuba, by those countries. Because the Western countries were busy with what’s called “constructive engagement”—[Ronald] Reagan and Margaret Thatcher thought you could discuss reforming, reforming Apartheid.
So theatre played that critical role. And we were conscious. It wasn’t “It’s happening because they don’t know what they’re doing.” We in the cultural field, artists, we secretly met constantly to review how we are working, encouraging reading among people, seeing theatre, going to art galleries, buying art, doing, go to concerts and recitals, because the money was used to assist families whose parents or members of the family have been left the country and they’re left destitute or have been detained or they’re also looking for defense lawyers to defend them. Many of the members of our group—we were called The Serpent Players—were, spent time on Robben Island.
Amrita Dhar
Famously, of course, Robert Island is the prison where political prisoners were kept.
John Kani
That is where Nelson Mandela, Govan Mbeki, Ahmed Kathrada, Raymond Mhlaba, Walter Sisulu spent almost three quarters of their lives, incarcerated there and sentenced to life. And life on Robben Island meant you will die in prison. The idea was there was going to be no “I finished my sentence.” No parole, no remission of your sentence, you were sent there to die. And then if they die there, we will forget them.
Let the art take the mantle of the struggle—people felt the need. I mean, the revolution sometimes is a feeling, it’s, it’s a breath, it’s a blowing wind. And when we catch it, no one knows how it started, nor when it will ever end. But it’s just an excitement, an incredible, moving, feeling of “At last, we’re doing the right thing.”
So, when it came the time, I’d already done many of Shakespeare’s plays. The year 2000, when Shakespeare was declared the man of the century, of the millennium, we did seventeen plays in one hour, 45 minutes. Me and an actress. Just selecting the central scene. And we did seventeen of them in one night. It was sold out in the schools. The funniest thing is that the biggest audiences during the week was the white audiences. And schools came. And wanted to engage us: “Why did you choose Much Ado About Nothing?” “Why did you choose The Tempest?” “Why did you choose Julius Caesar?” “Why did you choose “Romeo and Juliet?” “Why did you choose Richard III?” All these plays we chose, it was because we wanted to expose Shakespeare’s universality. And he might have been from Stratford. It may have been a product of colonialism. It may have been used as a tool to de-educate us. And derail our focus as Africans and our identity. We then used it as a tool to fight the owner of the language.
Amrita Dhar
Yes.
John Kani
We were conscious of the fact that if we did these plays in isiXhosa, isiZulu, Sesuthu, Siswati, ChiVenda, Sindebele, Sipedi, Xitsonga, even in Sign Language, it’s more powerful and meaningful and relevant to our people more than it would have been in the Bard… Which, of course, the white actors, white writers, white theatre companies were continuing to do it as if it’s being done in London.
Amrita Dhar
Yes.
John Kani
At the Royal [Shakespeare] Theatre. They continue to be “true” to the Bard, to Shakespeare. We were accused of bastardizing Shakespeare.
Amrita Dhar
Of course.
John Kani
We were almost, like, accused of distorting this powerful, great writer and classic and making it a cheap protest, nonsense. And how we missed the play completely. No, there were no reviews, but once they see it, they would then write to the Editor, discrediting how bad we were! I remember when I did Caliban in The Tempest. I was a young man. They said that you cannot say Black people are actors; they’re good in mimicry.
Amrita Dhar
What year was the one that you were just talking about?
John Kani
It was in the 60s, ’67, ’68.
Amrita Dhar
There was a white reviewer who made that comment…
John Kani
Yes
Amrita Dhar
… about Black people are not actors. They are simply capable of mimicry.
John Kani
Even when I opened Sizwe Banzi Is Dead in London, 1973.
Amrita Dhar
Okay.
John Kani
B. A. Young of the Financial Times… When every critic, every newspaper gave us five stars, B. A. Young—who I found out later, he’s an expert from South Africa who now lives in England—said exactly that. That before we applaud John Kani as a master in his craft, you can see there are 900,000 John Kanis who just mimic without even knowing what they’re saying.
Amrita Dhar
Wow.
John Kani
So, you have this challenge as an artist. You also want to grow as an artist. You want to perfect your craft. You are in a perpetual pursuit of perfection of the art. But there is the other demand from you. That we almost asked ourselves: “If South Africa is free one day, what will our theatre be about?” Because at the moment, theatre and art has become part of the struggle, you know. So, it wasn’t simply because we were trying to liberate South Africa, we were also trying to entrench the reverence for life. The rights to life, that we too are the children of God and we have a right to be here on this earth, like the trees. Like the stars, like the moon. Even like the mosquito and the fly. We have that right.
Amrita Dhar
Yes.
John Kani
So that was basically the power pushing our belief. Of course, then there was the added responsibility because you live in a Black township. You see your fathers being kicked by police, you see your brothers being shot by police. You could not ignore that impact in your environment to your search for perfection in the arts. It is impossible to live within Palestine, impossible to live in the Gaza strip, impossible to live in poverty and still want to do Romeo and Juliet as if you are in a cocoon somewhere in Stratford. You would be denying yourself and your own truth. You would not be able to look yourself in the mirror and say, “What was tonight’s performance about? Did I compromise? How much of me did I compromise and sell?” So, those are the driving factors of my life—becoming an artist, becoming an, an actor and a writer.
Amrita Dhar
I’m speaking now as a Shakespeare scholar, as a postcolonial studies scholar: within postcolonial studies, we think that that is art, when your life informs your craft and your pursuit for perfection in the way that you’re speaking about.
John Kani
In 1982, we did an exercise. We went to three high schools in Soweto, the Black township. It was the Easter long weekend. And we wanted them to write about the week, the coming weekend.
We also went to the three white suburban, in Johannesburg, schools. We asked them also, the students, to write about the coming weekend. And then… I remember a lot of people said, “Why are you doing this?” I said, “I’m searching for the truth.” I don’t like hearing lies. I’m 81 years old. I cannot stand people who tell lies. Those lies are going to affect the lives of millions of people, not just in South Africa, but around the world.”
The students in the white city wrote about going on holiday, going to the beach, going on a boat, going camping, might even go to visit other uncles, in other… Cape Town.
But the students in the Black townships, were going to a nightmare of a weekend—of murders, of fights, of police, of raids, of conflict. And they were almost wishing that the Easter weekend was one day so that they could be back at school, at least spend the first seven hours of the day in some relative safety.
Amrita Dhar
How old were the young students you were working with?
John Kani
11, 13, 14. They were in secondary school. 13, 14. Not more than 16. And there was a difference. Of course, I’m not going to say there weren’t others within Black Soweto who were the kind of pseudo-middle class. You have a car, we don’t have a car. You have a job, the rest of the township doesn’t have a job. You have a house, the rest of the township lives in bedrooms and shacks and made-up structures. So you became kind of like middle class. That’s why I call it fake middle class. They also wrote about a wish life, a life that would be better than where they are. So they also wrote about, “I wish we were going to the beach.” The spine of it all was the hell and the despair—and in the city, the hope and the future. So how then can you, as a writer, as a theatre-maker, as an artist, as, as a painter, how can you ignore that? How can you not see that? How can you not, as a politician, see that? How can you not, as a parent raising children, see that? You have to have some commitment to your godly ancestors that “I swear, I swear, by the bones of my late great, great-grandfathers, my children will have a better life than mine. I will share… And I won’t wish it, I’ll make it happen.” You understand me?
Amrita Dhar
Mm hm.
John Kani
So, then there is this book called The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, and it’s also now compulsorily taught in schools by the late 70s and 80s. Each school would have—must choose which one. And the choice will be made basically by what the Black teachers feel is easier to teach!
I was asked while I was working at the Market Theatre by a school—they were studying Romeo and Juliet, and then the teacher who was teaching English was having a problem of a resistance to this Shakespeare, and he called me to come and speak to the children, hold workshops. I took two actors and we went down there. One actor was white, the lady. And the other actor was Black. So, we sat down and discussed what the curriculum says the play is about. About conflict, about, about revenge, about, violence. But not talking about what the play is in the eyes of young people. So, when we asked what’s the play about, everybody went to the exam-paper answer.
Amrita Dhar
Hm!
John Kani
You know, [laughs] what they’ve been taught, because they’re going to write that. But as we went on, there was a scene that I took Romeo, Black, and the white young actress, white. I said, “If they kiss, what would be the problem?” “Oh, no, no, no, no! You can’t kiss a white girl. He’s going to get in trouble.” I said, “No, no, it’s not a white girl. It’s Juliet. It’s Romeo. It’s not a white girl. It’s not Black.” And there was a young kid at the back who seemed so disinterested in this whole process. He says, “This is written in the language of the Bible. And you know the damage the Bible did in the continent. And wherever there was colonialism, it was the Bible on the left-hand side and the spade on the right-hand side. So, this thing is written in the same language. I wouldn’t even be surprised that this Bible and Shakespeare is written by the same person!”
Amrita Dhar
Hm!
John Kani
You know! [laughs] And you think, “Oh, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, we’ve got to stick to the curriculum!”
Amrita Dhar
[laughs]
John Kani
“We can’t write that on the paper, stick to the… I’m here to make you understand, I’m unpacking the text, I’m unpacking the story. Let’s not go there!” And the teacher says, “That’s exactly what happens when I’m trying to teach Shakespeare. They start talking about their own problems!”
Amrita Dhar
Mm hm.
John Kani
I said, “Sir, they’re using their own culture as a reference point.”
Amrita Dhar
Yes.
John Kani
Now it makes sense to them because they can see it in their own eyes. And this young boy at the back said, “I get it, Dr Kani. It’s like Romeo’s parents are ANC, the African National Congress. It’s like Juliet’s parents are from the Freedom Party Inkatha.” At that stage in KwaZulu-Natal, there were what’s called the killing fields. There was so much war between the drug lords and the Indunas who run the territories. And that war was terrible and it was like Zulu fighting against Xhosa. I thought he was going to go white and Black. He went Black on Black on a tribal level. And I was stunned. And I’m listening. I’m thinking, “Wow, now Shakespeare makes sense.” He didn’t say that Romeo’s parents are white and Africaner, Juliet’s parents are Black. No, he took it from his own experience. I said, “Why?” He said, “One of my uncles was murdered in KwaZulu-Natal. Because he was a member of the opposite cultural group within KZN.”
And I can tell you stories of 1992/93, which wanted to derail the negotiations after the release of Nelson Mandela, moving towards the negotiations for transition to majority rule and the government of national unity. The white resistant group began to buy within Black communities. People fighting against people. It was called “Black on Black violence.” But it was sponsored and paid for by white South Africans.
Amrita Dhar
Of course.
John Kani
So that’s why this young boy in this class said, Romeo is like this Xhosa, from ANC, and Juliet’s father is the IFP, Freedom Party, and Zulu. He said, “Therefore these two children, these two people have no chance. It’s not going to work, this thing they’re trying to do, it’s not going to work.”
So, then my life in the theatre: I wrote Sizwe Banzi, collaborating with Winston Ntshona and Athol Fugard. And in 2003, I wrote my own solo play, Nothing But The Truth. Because I could not forgive. I’d just buried my brother. Who was shot reciting a poem on the funeral of a nine-year-old kid hit by a tear-gas canister. And then Mandela asked us in ’93/’94 to begin to hold workshops for reconciliation within the Black communities in order to make people understand what is this.
Now remember: all my years in the struggle, it was the struggle for the land, our country back, the struggle for liberation. Freedom. Now, they start talking with them white people. They come out of those meetings. They’ve got a new word we’ve never heard before. “Democracy.” Wow. We’ve never heard that before. We’ve never fought for democracy. What the hell are you talking about? I ain’t got nothing to do with democracy. I want my country back, and I want to kill all the people that have killed my brothers and sisters. I want to kill all the people that I stand here in front of you now with 11 stab wounds, survived an assassination in 1981. I was on the list to be eliminated.
We organized the Truth and Reconciliation. It was never organized by white people who felt that we need to level the playing field. It was organized by us—that the person who shot my brother must now say “I shot your brother. I’m sorry.” Now the person who carry all the scars on my body and my face, and I’ve been detained so many times, I’m calling them to ask me to forgive them. That couldn’t work.
But then slowly we begin to write plays that really understand what forgiveness means. And we got to the point that it’s got nothing to do with the other person. It’s got everything to do with me. I got to free my soul. I got to begin to think and be human. Forgiving is not necessarily a gift to the other one. It’s a gift I give to myself so that I could then act as a father, a husband, a grandfather, and be gentle and kind and speak only things that build and emphasize humanity. That’s why we forgive them. Not what they did. Ain’t nothing to do with that. So, when I wrote that play, it was me understanding. I can understand that Truth and Reconciliation says we must forgive so the country can move on. But I don’t forgive. I do not forgive.
It’s now 2024. And I can say to you, it’s work in progress, getting better, getting better every day. But the problem is, being 81… I was 51 years old when I voted in 1994. I walk around with 51 years of a nightmare of my past. My memory is, is the torturer. I live with my memory.
I was walking with my grand-daughter and we got a little white restaurant called Wimpy. Sells all, like, it’s horse meat. But it was for whites only. So, I says to my granddaughter, “You know what? During Apartheid, I wasn’t allowed to come into this restaurant and just buy a burger.” And she says, “Why would you? The food is bad.” I’m trying to hand over a legacy! Then I realized, no, it’s wrong to do that. We’re not going to do, burden these children with the horror of our past. That is placed where we can visit, lest we forget. But it is not thrown away and forgotten.
Amrita Dhar
Hm.
John Kani
2009, with Tempest, the designer is trying to create a costume that is half human, half fish. That’s the ordinary understanding of who Caliban is.
Amrita Dhar
Yes.
John Kani
So I’m saying, “I’m a little confused. Where does that come from?”
Amrita Dhar
Right.
John Kani
Shows me pictures of “In 1932, so-and-so played Caliban, in 1942, in 1920, in 2000-and-what, these are the, these are the costumes…” Sir Anthony Sher said, “Hold it. John, can you speak on Caliban?” I said, “Let’s go back to the text.” Caliban says this to Prospero: “This is my island which thou takest from my mother, Sycorax.” Says, “I taught you the streams, the things to drink, and now you have enslaved me. You’ve taken what belonged to me. You’ve made it yours.” Number two, Sycorax was deported from Venice as a witch. Actually, she was sentenced to death, but you could not execute a woman with child because you will be killing an innocent child. Therefore she was banished to this island. On the other side, it simply would be Africa. So The Tempest takes place in Africa.”
When Miranda says, “I do not understand why my father is so against the Duke’s son,” you know, Sebastian, “because this is the third man I’ve ever seen on this island.” Let’s count. It is the Duke’s son. It is Prospero. So, there’s only three now. So, the third one is Caliban.
And Caliban himself says, “I wanted to people this island with the little Calibans.” And that’s why he was then thrown out of the cave as a savage. There was something cooking between the two. And Prospero couldn’t stand that because he had a hope that one day he would return to Venice and his daughter would marry a duke and into royalty. So there again, the race issue became evident.
At the end of my production, when the Duke leaves, followed by Prospero, followed by all of them, Caliban walks up to the mouth of the cave, and stands, because he’s got his island back. But Shakespeare forgets him. He doesn’t say he’s in that last scene. But then we brought back Caliban to come and be the last person you see as the lights go down—that he’s got his land back. So, it was colonialism. So, Prospero was a colonialist.
Amrita Dhar
Yes.
John Kani
It’s the same thing in 1987 when I did Othello. It was the first Black Othello ever. I don’t know in Africa, but I can say in my country. I made one condition: all actors must be white, only Othello must be Black.
Amrita Dhar
Before this performance in 1987, where you were a Black Othello, with otherwise an all-white cast, were there any productions of Othello among Black people with all-Black casts? Was that a thing? Or…
John Kani
No, not at all. No, we didn’t have the money to put on such a massive production. First, we didn’t even have a venue to do that.
Amrita Dhar
Right.
John Kani
And theatre was really like, to other people, a luxury. And we were seen as kind of like, “Okay, we know what you’re doing, but there’s more important, pressing needs—putting food on the table, keeping the kids at school, keeping the kids safe, keeping everybody out of jail and prison.” Those were the priorities of Black communities. If there was a play, it would have been a song and dance. So, the Zulu dance and the Xhosa dance and the musical things with Gibson Kente playing drums and everything.
Jazz was played because it was beautiful, because it had no lyrics, no words, you know. But once you started to sing, and the song gets banned and you get detained. So, jazz found a way that it called breathing. And we knew the song means give us fresh air. There’s gotta be oxygen in the air. But we just used it. It became South African Jazz. Which the humming melody was almost closer to a liberation song. Though it was jazz, but we knew, who were Africans, that it is part of that song, the rhythm starts like that. That’s why sometimes the white South African government would just simply make the hall not available when it was booked. Because they felt that this art thing, this music thing, is becoming problematic.
Amrita Dhar
Right.
John Kani
“We’ve now got it, Nelson Mandela’s on Robben Island sent into life, most of the elders have left the country, died in exile, so we’re fine. There’s no more any form of resistance. The Blacks have been totally subjugated. They’ve accepted their position that they are like the children, the drawers of water and the carriers, the hewers of wood. That’s what they are.” And the white people kept confusing themselves into thinking that they are few agitators. A few. Which could be nipped in the bud quickly by being shot, sent to Robben Island or live in exile. But the majority of Black people were comfortable because the churches were preaching exactly that acceptance of the situation until God gives us a Moses who will lead us out of Egypt. And we said, “We’ve had so many Moseses, they’re dead. And so many… [laughs] And I ain’t going back to Egypt. I just want to get out of the townships. I just want my life. My country. I want everything.”
So, 1985, I did Miss Julie. By [August] Strindberg. And there were 600 people in the theatre. 80 percent of them white. And when Miss Julie kissed John, the character I played, 400 walked out.
Amrita Dhar
Right.
John Kani
Walked out. Banged the doors. You could see the streets. Calling it “Disgusting!” Some saying, “Yes, if it was just another Black actor, one would understand. Maybe they’re trying to do it the way it was written. But that John Kani, he’s a terrorist. He’s not even a bloody actor. He’s just a terrorist.” But we did it.
Amrita Dhar
By then you already had a reputation for doing protest theatre and being very emphatic about your purpose.
John Kani
Yes. When you are a young man and you go to Circumcision—initiation school—where you stay away in the forest, jungle, and then before we go back to be reintroduced into our own villages and communities, you are asked the purpose of your life. “Why are you here? You’re not just here to eat and die. There has to be a purpose. What are you going to do going back to that village, going back to that township? What is actually your calling?” “I want to be a doctor so that I could look after my people, so that our people could have better service in the township clinics.” “I want to be a teacher so that we could fight against ignorance and indoctrination.” “I want to be a social worker. I want to serve my people.” “I want to be a liberator.” “Excuse me, you’re going to get arrested, say it differently.” “I want to bring humanity in the struggle for liberation. Ubuntu.” You know, those are the things. So you come out as a young man with an incredible purpose.
Amrita Dhar
Yes.
John Kani
They frighten you, when you look at these young people. They’re almost like accusing us as elders of having done nothing.
Amrita Dhar
Yes.
John Kani
Why are we in this situation yet?
Amrita Dhar
Yes.
John Kani
One of them said to me, “You started in the 60s, and there’s still artists dying. There’s still artists being exploited. There’s still artists without work. There’s still people just going back to drugs and drinking alcohol. What do you say you, Dr Kani, you have achieved? What’s your legacy? What are you leaving us with?”
Amrita Dhar
Mm hm.
John Kani
“I know you wrote this. I know you were detained. I know you’ve been [to] Hollywood. I know you’ve done the major blockbusters. I know you even brought isiXhosa and Indigenous languages within these Marvel movies.”
I said, “Well, you’ve just told me what I did.”
Amrita Dhar
Mm.
John Kani
“You just told me what I did.”
Conclusion to Part One
Amrita Dhar
If you enjoyed this conversation, please subscribe to this podcast, spread the word, and leave a review. Do take a look also at our project website at shakespearepostcolonies.osu.edu for materials supplementing this conversation and for further project details. Thank you for listening, and until next time, for the Shakespeare in the “Post”Colonies Project, I am Amrita Dhar.
~~~
PART TWO
Interview transcript
Introduction to Part Two
Amrita Dhar
Hello and welcome. My name is Amrita Dhar, and I am the Director of the project Shakespeare in the “Post”Colonies which is hosting a series of interviews with postcolonial Shakespeareans from around the world.
This is the second part of my conversation with the legendary South African author, director, playwright, teacher, mentor, activist, and actor for stage and screen, John Kani.
Conversation in Part Two
John Kani
So, I remember we were shooting the Captain America…
Amrita Dhar
Yes.
John Kani
… Civil War. Now we’re on set, I read the script, I talk to the directors, I talk to the producers. We discuss the movie. Because I don’t do it for money, I have money. So, I need a reason for being in this movie. “Why me? You could have used an American actor. Didn’t need me.” He said, “I need you because the idea of introducing the Black Panther within the Captain America: Civil War is that there is a major project coming.” He didn’t want to say what it was. Which would then perhaps give a different perspective within the work we do as Marvel.
Remember that time when actors of colour were feeling that they’re being marginalized. There was even an Oscar award ceremony where hardly one actor of colour was nominated.
English is a terrible language. How the hell do I call my people, people of color? But in order for the audience or the receiver of this information to understand what I mean, I have to use a language, or an English sort of constructed sentence that hurts me as I say it, that sucks. It gives me no dignity. Simply because if I say “Black actors, Indian actors,” if I say, “Asian actors”… “Now you’re bringing in racism. So be gentle with us. We’re very good racists. We’re giving you work. So, let’s talk about actors of color.” So, now we…
Amrita Dhar
Mm hm. I joke about this now with my students, all the time that I have never been a Brown woman where I grew up.
John Kani
[laughs]
Amrita Dhar
As I was growing up, I was not a Brown girl. Now I’m a Brown woman.
John Kani
Yes. And also, please help me. I’m not Black. I am. Look at me, see me. That’s who I am.
Amrita Dhar
Yes.
John Kani
So, we get to a scene with the young man, Chadwick Boseman. There is also Scarlett Johansson. So they leave, so I’m left with my son, so I’m going to talk to him. We’re both from this supposed country somewhere in Africa, from a comic book strip that was perhaps written in 1969, of the Black Panther. I don’t know when this thing was, but there’s somewhere they want to locate it in Africa. It can’t be Nigeria, it must be in a country which is not identifiable. So the lines simply is, are, “I miss you, my son. I haven’t seen you for a long time.” And I ask, “Why am I saying this in English? It’s my son. We haven’t seen each other.”
Amrita Dhar
Hm.
John Kani
And the Language Consultant, Advisor-on-Set (for accent on set)—which makes us speak the African accent closer to the American accent… Because they must be able to hear what I’m saying and not be disturbed by my accent, so my Xhosa accent must be slightly twangy!
Amrita Dhar
Right! [laughs]
John Kani
In order for them to understand what I’m saying! Then they ask, “what would you say?” I said, “Well, I would say: ‘Unqabile nana ndakugqibela kudala.” And Chadwick Boseman says, “Ngiyaxolis Baba.” “I’m sorry, Daddy.” I said, “Excuse me, where did you learn to say that?” He said he did a movie in Cape Town and some of the crew and the other extras in the movie… He picked up a few words. And that’s why he was able to respond to me in isiXhosa, a little off accent, a little bit broken Xhosa. But it was clear what he was saying. It was then that isiXhosa became like the Indigenous language of Wakanda.
So, when finally, during the scene of the explosion where King T’Chaka dies, and he runs in, my son, and says, “Everybody down! Everybody down!” And I stand. And then the director comes over and says, “Why didn’t you duck? There’s an explosion.” I said, “If I’m going to die—I’m a king—my son must have the last final image: me standing in the centre of that explosion. I want to give him that as a gift. I’m a king. That’s why I became King T’Chaka. Because you cast me. You know I’m an African. So what do you want me to bring into this role?”
So, by the time we got to doing the Black Panther, I had already established an incredible relationship with the director, Ryan Coogler, who consulted with me constantly about the culture. He was so sensitive about being correct. Being culturally correct. So, when the movie opened, it was like an African movie at the Kodak Theater in Hollywood. People came wearing traditional African garments. People came in their kaftans. Some even came in their saris, wrapped around, showing who I am… And that was the revolution of the Black Panther.
And I remember a journalist saying to me about this Vibranium, that you mine in Wakanda: “How, how would an African tribe get that kind of technology?” I said, “I’m going to tell you something. You know those pyramids, in Egypt, we built them. But we’re not telling you how.” [laughs]
Amrita Dhar
[laughs] That’s right. That’s right, yes!
John Kani
Do you know those mosques and great palaces and those great beautiful shrines in India? We built them, but we are not telling you how.
Amrita Dhar
Right.
John Kani
“The Timbuktu scrolls, which dates beyond the hieroglyphics of Egypt, we wrote them. It’s a library. When you see the caves, it’s a library. Read the book. It’s left for you. The Zimbabwe ruins. The Mapungubwe, where in the thirteenth century Africans were trading in processed and melted gold with the Chinese—we did that. You came and stalled that progress. You stopped everything. But what you haven’t stopped is the memory of us knowing that knowledge. That you can’t take away from us.”
Amrita Dhar
Quite.
John Kani
When we opened Wakanda in South Africa, Johannesburg, we had school children bussed in to come and see this movie. And I watched them. Because the Black Panther opens on the scene where he’s talking to his brother who betrayed him. That is King T’Chaka, younger. And he takes off the mask. And there was a Black man! They know, the children, “He looks like me!” And he spoke in isiXhosa, which is Southern African dialect, and he said, “Sondela kum mania mamam.” “Come to me, my mother’s child.” There was so much noise. You could almost want to stop the movie… So that the ululating and screaming and power…!
Amrita Dhar
Hm.
John Kani
When we opened in Burkina Faso, I was invited. It happened on a stadium because no hall could accommodate the number of people and children.
Amrita Dhar
Hm.
John Kani
We opened in Accra. We had to stand in front of the people and talk about the Black Panther. It became a movement, a recognition of who we are. And that has always been my work.
Even when we did The Lion King, we opened on an open veldt. Everybody was given a blanket. There was about 400, with children and all, in the evening. And when Mufasa says to Simba, “Simba, look up in the sky,” the entire 400 people sitting down looked up.
Amrita Dhar
[laughs] Yes.
John Kani
It was a clear night in Johannesburg, and a carpet of stars were displaying the magnificence of the Creator.
So, when we talk about Shakespeare, he’s no longer, as you said, just an English writer. Two, he’s no better than the other writers, the writers in Africa, in, in Spanish, in South America, in India, in Asia. It’s just that he has been made, he’s been popularized, there has been a lot of money put into popularizing and marketing this brand of English speaking and culture to the entire world, that this is who you need to know, you need to have done, to be fully acknowledged as a civilized person. During the fifties, I remember my fathers and my uncles, every time they made a speech, it was not acceptable until you quoted the Bard!
Amrita Dhar
[laughs]
John Kani
“As Shakespeare says, ‘If music be the food of love, play on.’” Everybody who made a speech, had to quote Shakespeare! And the speech was at a funeral for crying out loud! But it was a measure of your being civilized.
So, what we did was to take that, and take all that myth about it and use English as the language to communicate.
Amrita Dhar
Yes.
John Kani
It’s a tool for communication. I won the 2021, the Pragnell Shakespeare Birthday Award for my contribution by making Shakespeare accessible throughout the world. I’ve been given an OBE for my contribution to the arts by King Charles III. All those things just are understood within my understanding of Shakespeare.
Amrita Dhar
In relation to what you just said, I wanted to ask, where is Shakespeare in the curriculum as far as you’re aware right now—either in schools or in theatre institutions…?
John Kani
Yes, it’s still there. There was a time in 1998, there was a movement to remove Shakespeare in the syllabus. There was an uproar of our middle class, and of course, the entire white academic, that this would narrow the education of our children. The children need to be exposed to various different cultures, and Shakespeare plays a critical role in giving them the opportunity to see the world much broader, because any Shakespeare play can be related immediately to an African kingdom. Because we are descendants of great African kingdoms. So, when you talk about Macbeth, we talk about the man who would be king in KwaZulu-Natal, who went to a witch doctor who told him that “You need to kill everybody body to be king.” You talk about Richard III… I mean, all Shakespeare’s plays, we are able to say, “Like that story that my grandmother used to tell me.” That’s what it is about.
For me then, when I did Othello in 1987… Incidentally, tomorrow I’m seeing my son performing Othello in Cape Town, he’s playing Othello, and nobody’s going to arrest him this tomorrow evening, I was arrested.
Amrita Dhar
Yes.
John Kani
The point I’m making is that I always have this idea in my mind, people are sitting in a village somewhere remote in in Afghanistan, in India, in Pakistan, somewhere in Africa, and this thing drops, and it’s Othello, just the play. They have never heard. And there’s a young little boy who comes from the city who can read, and he’s going to read this play for the elders, and they’re listening. What do they get out of it?
Amrita Dhar
Hm.
John Kani
When we did Titus Andronicus at the Market Theatre… Every year, the miners from different little tribes around the country… There’s a guy there who loves theatre. He’d take them for shopping and touring around Johannesburg. And then in the evening, would bring them to the Market Theatre to see a play, normally mostly protest play. It’s about “The white will go to hell.” “I’m a man, I’m a woman, I’m in the struggle.” But this time they saw—I was a bit concerned—Titus Andronicus. Directed by Greg Doran, who was then the Artistic Director of the Royal Shakespeare Company. Starring Anthony Sher as Titus. And this young actor played Aaron. Remember, Aaron has a child with the Queen.
Amrita Dhar
Yes.
John Kani
And they want to kill the child because the child’s not white.
Amrita Dhar
Yes.
John Kani
And he holds it; he says, “Is this not a baby?” There were tears in the audience.
Amrita Dhar
Yes.
John Kani
When I did Othello, as I walked down the aisle and Iago says to me, “Isn’t that Cassio with your wife?” an elderly lady said, “Shut up! He’s lying.” To Iago, “He’s lying. Your wife is not sleeping with that young man. He’s just jealous.” People talk back.
Amrita Dhar
Mm hm.
John Kani
I remember the actor playing Iago said, “This is pantomime! I’m not doing this!” I said, “Yes, you are. This is what our work is about. It’s about engaging.”
Amrita Dhar
Kunene and the King…
John Kani
I was sitting there and thinking, I’m going to do King Lear, but not now. I went to Belgrade to do a movie [laughs]. And while I was sitting there, I had time, and I thought, “Right, we are about to celebrate 25 years of our democracy. I want to know how far we began and how close we are. Have we achieved non-racialism, non-sexism? Have we achieved economic freedom, economic empowerment?
And I had an idea that there’s a white liberal—because actors are normally very liberal, and they purport to say, “I don’t see colour,” especially South African white actors. I say, “How do you brush your teeth? Because I see myself every time I look in the mirror!” So, my idea was to bring them into one space where they need each other.
So, I was thinking about, am I going to kill this white actor? I found he’s dying of some terminal disease. “Oh, he’s got liver cancer. How do I bring in the Black man? Oh, he’s a retired nurse. He’s a male nurse, retired, and he was in the Oncology Section recommended by the oncologist who’s treating the white actor, to go and look after him.”
What is their common thing? The white actor is about to play King Lear in Cape Town. He’s not aware that he might not make it, because he’s had so many remissions, after remission after remission. So, he truly believes he will do the play. And it’s the ultimate role as an actor, the ultimate, to play King Lear.
So, I was doing this exercise for me to prepare me in my mind as I’m planning to do King Lear. But then, as I read the play again and again and again, I was struck by King Lear’s mind. I was struck by, as an African, wanting to stage-manage after death. It reminded me of an elderly guy who lived in Soweto, a very, very heavy, rich, big, Black businessman who bought the grave, cemented it, written in the tombstone without the date of death, and also the coffin in silver casket, did everything because he wanted to know what’s going to happen. So, I felt that it was wrong for Lear to do that. It was wrong. So that’s why when we begin the play, he’s telling me about King Lear because he thinks I don’t know Shakespeare. And I tell him, “No, no, I studied Shakespeare, but in isiXhosa.”
So we then do the “Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears.” “Friends” in isiXhosa, “Zihlobo,” does not necessarily mean someone you ever knew, and you have a liking of. It means a blood-brother.
Amrita Dhar
Hm.
John Kani
When we say “countrymen,” you know, it means people working in the country, but in isiXhosa, it means “landowners.” Dignified. When it says, “lend me your ears,” it says, “give a gift of your listening to me.”
Amrita Dhar
Right.
John Kani
So that was that in Mdledle’s translation. So each word was carefully selected and assembled in the puzzle in order to subliminally send the message of that struggle for liberation. So when actors then do a play, they have to understand and get into the writer’s mind as to why these words were selected. Because in South Africa, theatre was, we, we wrote in code. Because if we wrote what exactly we wanted to say, we would have been killed or shot, arrested or left the country. So, each line was a code.
Amrita Dhar
Yes.
John Kani
Like in Sizwe Banzi, I asked Sizwe—there’s an endorsement on the passbook, which is like a passport—I said, “You know what this endorsement means?” And he’s 58. He says, “I can’t read.” “Is it his fault? Or has the state failed him?” So, that statement was as pregnant as the way when Shakespeare says in Hamlet, “To be, or not to be, that is the question” [III.1.64].
When I did Hamlet, I played Claudius, and we had a discussion. And I asked the question. “Claudius is the brother of Hamlet, Hamlet senior. Hamlet senior is married to Gertrude, the Queen, and they have a son. As soon as the father dies—poisoned, of course, by the brother—the brother moves into the bedroom. Where was his family?” That’s why I kept saying in Kunene and the King, “Couldn’t he take another wife? And then have a son from him?” He says “No, he had only three daughters.” “Now, surely he could marry, because my President has seven wives, so he’s got many sons.” “He had only three daughters.” [laughs] You know, so that’s me trying to understand Shakespeare from my point of view, informed by my culture, and translating this English in writing it in isiXhosa, but in the pages written in English. So, the idioms and the phrases and the subtext is in isiXhosa. So, it may sound at certain areas not grammatically or English correct. That’s not what I intended to, because my audience have to decipher the code and understand what we’re talking about.
Amrita Dhar
Part of what has been of appeal to me—and I don’t know isiXhosa at all—is that I understand that the play is written by an author of a multilingual imagination. For instance, when… There are these two characters. This is a play of just two characters.
John Kani
Yes.
Amrita Dhar
There is a white actor, there is the Black nurse, they’re both very fluent in Shakespeare. Jack Morris is the name of the white actor. And he says, “five beats, unstressed syllable followed by a stressed one,” quote-unquote “explaining” this iambic pentameter. And immediately, Lunga says, “I’m not stressed. Maybe you are stressed.”
John Kani
[laughs] “Maybe you are stressed.”
Amrita Dhar
Yes! To me, that is a fantastic in-joke. Because what that is indicating to me is that Lunga Kunene is operating on multiple registers.
John Kani
Yes.
Amrita Dhar
And Lunga Kunene wants me—even though I don’t, again, know isiXhosa—Lunga Kunene wants me to know that he is working in multiple registers.
John Kani
My first plays I wrote, I wrote them purely because I was still young, they were English plays, and I knew that the audience would read it, them as English. But as soon as I got more experience, there were smaller voices in my ear that said what you’re saying. The impact of this multicultural being that makes me a notch above the so-called white single-culture person: I am able to place myself in any given situation. I could go to New Delhi, to Bombay, and I would be understanding the language, and the nuances of the language, and understanding that am I being talked to—though it’s in broken English, am I being helped by the person trying to speak to me—to understand much more than what I came for, to make a movie and premiere in Bombay.
Amrita Dhar
Yes.
John Kani
In that small communication, something is given to me.
I’m in South America, was in Colombia, and somebody—we were talking with young actors and I was speaking at the university—and those, those Colombians that were of African origin. And they said, “Our history says we moved quite early, I think before the fourth or the fifth century, when the earth was one and there was no parting of the Atlantic ocean, we wandered across and ended up here.” I thought they were going to say they survived a slave ship and that’s why they ended up in South of America. But somehow I got the sense it’s a little difficult if you’re as dark as me. Some of them couldn’t speak English but speak Spanish. But the people who would try to translate, I could see that they are struggling with a truth they need to say, but there are witnesses around and onlookers.
Sometimes I get furious with my people when they speak good English, but away from the truth. They so want to fit in.
Today if I write a play, any theatre would be happy to say “We’re producing it.” Kunene and the King is going to open next year in America. If I wasn’t John Kani with a Hollywood reputation, a Tony Award, J. F. Kennedy Award, this gold medal and all, that play wouldn’t survive. It wouldn’t have been to the Royal Shakespeare Company. But I carry that. I then need to exploit this popularity and acceptance by the cultural constituency in also finding a moment of saying, “I’m actually like my brother who you wouldn’t want to talk to.”
Amrita Dhar
Yes.
John Kani
“I’m actually like my sister, who you think is a maid. I am all people who have to prove themselves, that they’re human.”
Amrita Dhar
Yes.
John Kani
It’s a technique we develop so that we do not become too English in writing. The first time I was in America, I couldn’t believe when I was in LA to go to the grand red-carpet opening. And yet, a friend of mine took me down towards lower parts of LA where the park has been invaded by cardboard houses. I said “They can’t…. These are the biggest economy in the world. This is the epitome what we call democracy and equality! They can’t have this. It’s wrong what I’m seeing.” Yes. I’m not accepting it in South Africa, and we are Third World, or maybe half Third World, half whatever. But the point is, there’s a huge lie going on.
Amrita Dhar
Yes.
John Kani
And people, for safety and acceptance and assimilating, buy into the lie. And when you are deep in the lie, you are now become his master’s voice by speaking for the lie and not even aware, not even aware that actually you sold your soul.
Amrita Dhar
You’re talking to something that is at the heart of how this project started. There is still some kind of understanding that colonialism truly ended, that the days of Empire are over. We are in a post-colonial time, after colonial. Now it is about, on one hand, truth and reconciliation. On the other hand, about reconstruction. And yet, what you saw in LA, in one of the most wealthy parts of this country, what I see here on a daily basis, is that Empire is well and present.
John Kani
Of course. For as long as we look up to writers like Shakespeare, the great writers, or Albert Camus and revolutionaries all over the world, and not see the beginning in an uncompromising way, we will then continue to perpetuate colonialism. What had happened is that it became embarrassing to be seen coming into Africa and dig the gold and put it on boats loaded by Black slaves and workers. And the white man goes away with it. We’ve now as white people trained our servants and given them a level of importance. They now dig it and send it to us on their own. Therefore, we cannot be blamed by Africa’s wars and conflict. By the, the whole issues that happened in Asia. We cannot be blamed by that because we’re not actually doing it anymore. But their economy is rooted in them sending it, everything to us. We starve while we drop rice in the sea to control the price.
Amrita Dhar
Mm hm.
John Kani
Artists are like a thermometer. If the artist simply thinks, “I won a Tony Award, I’m in the movies, I’m making money, I’m now finally famous,” that’s then the exploitation of the art. That’s fine. There’s nothing wrong in exploiting your business and making it work. But please do go back to self!
Amrita Dhar
Why do you feel your sense of ownership in and with Shakespeare the way you do, do you think?
John Kani
I, I don’t have this awe about what the world sells me in an advertising, branding campaign of who Shakespeare is. He’s just a bloody good storyteller. And I love, and I’m a sucker for a story. “Once upon a time…” I sit down and listen. That is the genius of Shakespeare. Each one of his plays, while all the madness is happening, it’s simply “Once upon a time.”
Amrita Dhar
Yes.
John Kani
And Shakespeare always drives his plays by one individual, at the most two. And he brings in sixty people around to bombard and drive and batter these two people right to the end. And that is the gift of being an African storyteller.
Amrita Dhar
Oh, yes.
John Kani
And that’s the only thing I identify with him. He’s a great storyteller.
When I did Shylock—it was a production for school children—he was a good man. He was a good man, but the people around him could not see the goodness in him, blinded by his origin. He’s a Jew. He’s Black. He is Palestinian. He is Israeli. They put so much impediments and hung up garbage around him. He was a money lender. He was the bank. You borrowed money, pay it back. Portia becoming the lawyer and trying to say to him, “Cut only one pound.” That’s Shakespeare’s beautiful trick. “Only one pound was in the contract. It’s not mentioned, blood.”
When I wanted my country back, I wanted to take it and kill all them white people. But that’s not what the script says. That would not have been Shakespeare. Shakespeare would have said, “Get your country back. But there are people living in it now. Let’s deal, how are you going to handle your pound of flesh?” He’s incredible in that.
And there are many like Zakes Mda, Athol Fugard, Wole Soyinka. These are all great storytellers in Africa. They’re great. Some of their plays are much better and more beautiful and powerful than some of the 37 plays that Shakespeare wrote.
But Shakespeare brought new words into the English language, which were created on stage. And Shakespeare also created these plays standing on stage, working with actors. You can feel the urgency and the breath and the movement of actors.
Amrita Dhar
Yes.
John Kani
The play has a heartbeat. It moves.
Amrita Dhar
Yes.
John Kani
And that is exactly the beauty of Shakespeare is that he did not write it by sitting in front of a PC. He recorded human incidents. He recorded them. And they are alive. And when the play is working in Shakespeare, it is happening. And you as an audience are invited to witness an event. That is his specialty, is to create an event. That doesn’t make you sit back and say, “I paid my Broadway price tickets.” It says “Something’s happening this evening.”
I saw Midsummer Night’s Dream by a troupe of dancers with—from New Delhi, India—at the Royal Shakespeare Company. They were swinging on ropes and jumping and going that way and doing this… And it took me time. I thought, “Midsummer Night’s Dream. There’s magic in the air. It’s midnight. So many things can happen.” Because I come from a culture where there are witches.
I come from that world where my grandfather had three wives and could not spell polygamy. He couldn’t. And Grandma One taught me about being who I am. Grandma Two introduced education and religion into the Kani clan. And Grandma Three gave us the respect of women. And as you know, in the African culture, that the women at a certain age become the Matriarch. And Matriarch means head of the clan. So, when Mrs. Smith talks to Mrs. Jones about women’s liberation and all those feminism things, the Africans had gone through that ages ago [laughs] because my mom runs my family. My wife runs this house.
So, that’s the genius of Shakespeare is that simple thread of a story. And that’s the genius of the man. But not more than any other African writer that I know.
Amrita Dhar
Mm hm.
John Kani
Other Indian, Asian that I know. But it’s just that he came to us through this imperialist colonialism. And when we looked at it and saw it as literature, we felt that this could be used to open up to our next generation, that “What you are going through, someone, somewhere had gone through it.” I love, I love when Othello talks about “This is the only witchcraft…” [sic] [I.3.195]. In my production, I used the bones, like he’s throwing bones, that I did. When Desdemona says, “I saw Othello’s visage in his mind,” she’s avoiding to say: “in his Black face.”
Amrita Dhar
Mm hm.
John Kani
I love Othello when, when Shakespeare talk about the “men whose heads grow beneath their shoulders” [I.3.168]. People think there were people like that. No. If you look at the vulture, and you’re a storyteller, the vulture’s neck is lower than the shoulders.
When South African government created the homelands and the Bantustan in order to dupe the world that there’s been change in South Africa… Now we are “post-colonial, post-Apartheid.” We are a democracy. So, we should now refer only to things that happened this morning in the news headline.
Amrita Dhar
[laughs]
John Kani
We can no longer now speak of yesterday because “You’re holding us back. Can you move on? You got your Mandela now. He’s President, he’s even dead. Can you move on? Leave us with the money and the economy. Leave you in your place where you are.”
How can I not speak the truth? How can I not speak? I’ll be betraying myself. That’s why I’m an actor. And that is why I love Shakespeare.
Amrita Dhar
You’ve talked about your work as an actor being political, being towards liberation, being towards creating an intellectual mindscape for people. Maybe specifically for your people, but you have succeeded in doing that for many people across the world. And I wanted to ask you: after all the struggle, given where we are, where do you see your work now? Where do you live with Shakespeare specifically, perhaps, in your work now?
John Kani
There is the biggest mistake of assuming the cessation of hostility equals peace. You cannot wipe out the history we’ve come through: colonialism, exploitation, dehumanizing. We still have people like me who are in their 80s, who still carry the pain and the memories of the past. You have to find a way to say, “I will not make my grand exit without leaving the library with something that the future generation will read and say, ‘Lest we forget.’” Yes, there has been incredible progress judged by those that are in the Department of Judging Progress. Not consulting the person who’s standing at the ground saying, “I’m still where you left me.” The world is moving on, but it’s not moving on with everybody. So, theatre has to find a way and say, “Who am I talking to? Are you present? Can you hear me? Do you have time? Can we talk?”
We’re also faced with a situation where the moral pendulum is not even swinging, it’s fallen off the table. I’ve seen on television peoples whipping, in India, whipping Muslims in the streets, because they’re Muslims. There’s something I never thought in my entire life I’ll ever witness. I’ve seen people applauding the mass raping and gang raping of young children and girls. I have seen people in camps in the DRC, in Sudan, in Mali, in all over Africa… What is happening to us? We’ve lost a greater battle, which is our soul, our love for humanity, our understanding of purpose of existence.
Amrita Dhar
What are you working on right now?
John Kani
I don’t work on things. I get visited. I get visitations. [laughs] I don’t work on things. Ever. Of all the 16 plays I’ve written, most of them have not been published because it’s work I did within the community and was very, very successful. And that’s it. I, I just feel this moment of pregnancy and having to want to push it out and cannot hold back, cannot hold back. I love Shakespeare because his work happened. He never walked into a rehearsal room at the Globe or wherever he was working and suddenly said, “Now here’s the script, let’s study the play.” Oh no! It was a collaborative, mad creation and tearing of pieces and standing up. When theatre gives me that moment of creation, that moment of birth, then we have an incredible piece of work.
Amrita Dhar
Is there anything that you are being visited by right now?
John Kani
All the ghosts of the past… I have still to deal with the ghost of the present. If I could write a play that would make people say, “Oh my God, now I see what he’s saying. I’ll go home tonight and I’ll switch off the TV. I’ll sit down with my wife and the children. We’re going to have a conversation.” Something’s happening that we need to concern ourselves with. I haven’t found it yet, but I can see it. The artist in me has to take it and interpret it as a work of art—other than if I do it immediately because I want the next one, it becomes a piece of writing. My work is not about writing. I want you to witness the event that’s been torturing me. Or exciting me. Or even make people applaud. But it’s an event happening.
Amrita Dhar
Thank you.
John Kani
So. There’s hope. Don’t you ever lose that. There’s hope. And that’s why whenever I see a Shakespeare play or a very good play, I wake up saying, “Ah, there’s hope. There’s hope. There’s hope.”
Amrita Dhar
Thank you.
John Kani
Juxtaposed with despair and frightenings, but there is hope. And the hope for the next generation, it’s in the arts.
Conclusion to Part Two
Amrita Dhar
If you enjoyed this conversation, please subscribe to this podcast, spread the word, and leave a review. Do take a look also at our project website at shakespearepostcolonies.osu.edu for materials supplementing this conversation and for further project details. Thank you for listening, and until next time, for the Shakespeare in the “Post”Colonies Project, I am Amrita Dhar.