John Kani

Biography:

John Kani was born on 30 August 1942 in New Brighton, Port Elizabeth, in South Africa’s Eastern Cape. In 1975, after performing in the United States in Sizwe Banzi Is Dead—an anti-apartheid play he co-wrote with Athol Fugard—he returned home. Shortly afterward, he was ambushed and brutally beaten by police while traveling to see his father. The attack cost him his left eye, and he has worn a prosthetic (a glass eye) ever since.

His son, Atandwa Kani, is also an actor. Atandwa made his American television debut in the CW series Life Is Wild and portrayed the younger version of Kani’s character, King T’Chaka, in Black Panther.

Kani joined The Serpent Players in Port Elizabeth in 1965—a theatre group named for rehearsing in the former snake pit of a zoo. He helped develop many original plays that were performed enthusiastically even though they were never formally published.

He later co-wrote and performed in the acclaimed plays Sizwe Banzi Is Dead and The Island with Athol Fugard and Winston Ntshona in the early 1970s. He also earned an Olivier Award nomination for his role in My Children! My Africa!.

Kani’s work has been staged around the world. In 1975, he and Ntshona won a Tony Award for their performances in Sizwe Banzi Is Dead and The Island, presented in repertory at the Edison Theatre in New York.

In 1987, Kani played the title role in Othello during apartheid-era South Africa, famously remarking that at least he could kiss Desdemona without leaving a “smudge” on her face—a pointed reference to casting and racial politics of the time.

His first play as a solo playwright, Nothing but the Truth (2002), premiered at Johannesburg’s Market Theatre. Set in post-apartheid South Africa, it explored tensions between Black South Africans who stayed to resist the regime and those who returned only after apartheid’s fall. The play earned the 2003 Fleur du Cap Awards for Best Actor and Best New South African Play, and the same year Kani received a special Obie Award for his significant contributions to American theatre.

Kani serves as executive trustee of the John Kani Theatre Foundation, founded the John Kani Theatre Laboratory, and chairs South Africa’s National Arts Council. He played King T’Chaka in Marvel’s Captain America: Civil War (2016) and Black Panther (2018). Because Kani is a native Xhosa speaker, Chadwick Boseman adopted the language for T’Challa and learned full scenes in Xhosa for authenticity.

In 2019, Kani appeared in Netflix’s Murder Mystery as Colonel Ulenga and provided the voice of Rafiki in Disney’s photorealistic remake of The Lion King. That same year, his play Kunene and the King, produced by the Royal Shakespeare Company and the Fugard Theatre, was staged in Stratford-upon-Avon before moving to Cape Town, with Kani acting alongside Antony Sher.

Kani has been widely honored throughout his career. On 20 February 2010, he received the SAFTA Lifetime Achievement Award. His additional accolades include the Avanti Hall of Fame Award, the M-Net Plum Award, a Clio Award in New York, the Hiroshima Peace Culture Foundation Award (2000), and the Olive Schreiner Prize (2005). In 2004, he was ranked 51st in the list of the Top 100 Great South Africans.

He has received numerous honorary doctorates: from the University of Cape Town (2006), Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University (2013), the University of the Witwatersrand (2020), and was named a Da Vinci Laureate by The Da Vinci Institute in 2021.

In 2016, he was awarded the Order of Ikhamanga in Silver for his outstanding contributions to theatre and the struggle for a non-racial, non-sexist, democratic South Africa. The main theatre at Johannesburg’s Market Theatre complex has been renamed The John Kani Theatre in his honor.

In 2023, Kani received an Honorary OBE from the British government for his contributions to drama.