John Kani attracts heavyweights to his birthday celebrations and award ceremony

By Edward Tsumele, CITYLIFE/ARTS Editor

Multi-award winning playwright and legendary actor John Kani has influence across he arts and politics. And here we are not talking about modern day influencers prowling social media doing fun but often things with no substance, even silly to get followers.

Here we are talking of influence as a result of hard work, talent and dedication to creativity and the craft of acting and writing. This fact of Kani’s immense influence across the board of social structures was proven on Wednesday, August 30, 2023, at a ceremony to honour him by the Department of Sport, Arts and Culture at the Market Theatre. He was awarded the Van Toeka AF award on his 80th birthday.

It was also not a coincidence that the venue at the Market Theatre in which the awards took place, attended by heavyweights in the arts and politics is also called the John Kani Theatre, the biggest venue at the Market Theatre.

Seated a row in front of mine, and directly in front of me were Professor Barney Pityana and poet and sculptor Professor Pitika Ntuli. On the same row on the far left sat Professor Malcolm Purkey, the former head of the Drama Department at Wits and former artistic director of the Market Theatre.
ON the same row, a few seats away on the right side, sat fomer President Thabo Mbeki, Premier of Gauteng, Panyaza Lesufi, Minister of Sport, Arts and Culture Zizi Kodwa, Kani and Chairperson of the Market Theatre Foundation, Phil Molefe.

These are a few heavyweights that attended this event in person, held on Kani’s 80th Birthday. Several others that are were elsewhere around South Africa around the world, who could not attended in person, such as Albie James, Mannie Manim, playwright, novelist and painter Professor Zakes Mda and actress Sandra Prinsloo, congratulated Kani for both his 80th milestone and his award via video link.
Something must be side about Prinsloo and Kani’s art practice and intersections through. Kani and Prinsloo found themselves at the centre of a row and hatred in the apartheid years when they acted a kissing scne in the play Miss Julie, that saw white conservatives go ballistic and even liberal whites’ tolerance tested.

For example some audience members are said to have walked out of the Market Theatre during that performance as they could not stomach a handsome black man and a pretty white woman entangled in a case, acting oir not acting. It was during a period in South Africa when mainly white society did not accept the idea of whites and blacks falling in and out of love, as if it was an unforgivable crime, but not a personal choice people make when their souls converge and their feelings for each other become strong to resist.
This however was not Kani’s only collision with a racist society. During the awards ceremony’s told us of his several brushes with ther apartheid security ppolice. For example in the middle of a night while driving home, he was waylaid by people he believed were security police who assaulted him an stabbed him, leaving him for dead in the bush where they had dragged him.

“I lied in hospital’s ICU unity for several days, and my wife Nandi di not even know for days where I was because a good hearted white doctor that I never got to know had hidden me in a ward for people with infectious diseases, hiding me away from the security police who were looking for me. I was bruised all over my face when I left the hospital, heading to Zambia where I had to shoot a film.

The producers seeing my bruises said not to worry as they said they were going to write my facial condition into the script as If I fell of a truck that injured me,”Kani told the packed theatre that broke into a laughter.
The audience was also entertained by snippets of movies, theatre and TYV roles that Kani was involved in over the years, such as his two seminal works Nothing but The Truth and Missing that he wrote capturing life in post apartheid South Africa. Other productions whose snippets were show on screen include The Lion King and Black Panther.

But it is the snippets that were acted on stage by a really talented cast that included his son, Atandwa Kani, who also beautifully handled the programme directing laced with intelligent jokes and the rendering of heart felt poetic expression and congratulatory messages to his father, that got the audience to alsmo seat on the edges of their seats. Snippet from Nothing but the Truth, The Island and Sizwe Banzi is Dead in particular were well directed and well-acted, something often difficult to achieve on stage as often sampling poignant scenes from a play and act them requires a lot of real talent on the part of the director and actors. But the pieces that Kani himself (Nothing but the Truth) also took part in were cohesive and comprehensible, almost as If the whole plays were performed.

Kani also too advantage of the evening to implore Kodwa to work with the arts sector to industrialise the industry and treat the sector as any other business sector that adds value to the country’s Gross Domestic Product.
“When I was in your office recently, I was seizing you to get to know what kind of a person you are. Minister I am asking you to work with me to industrialise the sector. Not me as a person, but the arts constituency. I would like to see a relationship established between your department and the sector to industrialise the sector. Yes, I would like you to support me but keep your distance because often I do not like to be told what to do (when it comes to creating works),” Kani said. Kani here was explaining the need for government support while also exercising the arms-length principle of not dictating what artists must create with the financial support that they may get from government.

Kani’s comment about government support comes against the backdrop of general sense of unhappiness within the arts and creative sector when it comes to how arts funding agencies such as the National Arts Council handle issues of funding. Another issue that is currently putting the creative sector on a collision course with those who wield power in general and legislators in particular is the Copyright Amendment Bill, which if signed in its current form, will leave the creators of works worse off. Only two weeks ago artists marched to the legislators around the country creating awareness about their unhappiness about the bill.
However at Kani’s birth day celebrations and award ceremony on Wednesday, it was an occasion that inside of politics colliding with the arts, politics and the arts instead converged for a common purpose, and that is to honour one of the country’s most prominent and prolific writer and hard-working actors Bonisile John Kani, who received the Van Toeka AF Award in its 5th edition.