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      John Kani was born in New Brighton, Port Elizabeth, in 1943. He has spent a lifetime in the theatre, first as an actor and later as playwright and director. His work has been lauded all over the world. At the time of this inter­view in November 2016, he was the director of the Market Theatre Laboratory, which he started with Barney Simon in 1989.

      Ruda: Did you grow up politically aware, John, or did something happen to push you in that direction?

      John: No, my mum and dad were normal people. My dad was a policeman, from the war. My dad was six feet eight inches tall, and two metres wide. That was my image of him when I was young. And he was a very strong man. There were rules at home. Things were right or wrong. Not political or non-political, not illegal or legal, but right or wrong. My mother worked as a maid at the Empilweni TB Hospital, and at the Livingstone Hospital. And there were eleven of us at home – talk about family planning! My dad invested in the children. He used to say, “I am putting my money into you. One of you might work.” But the environment in my township [New Brigh­ton, Port Elizabeth] was heavily politicised. In those days the Eastern Cape was regarded as the powder keg of the struggle. Everything would start there.

      So that was our environment: at home, strict religion, Christian; outside, in the [liberation] movement. Those were the two sides of my life. But my life was also ordinary, like other children’s. I completed high school and was ready to go to university, but that did not work out, because my eldest uncle was arrested and got five years on Robben Island. So my father said to me, “Sorry, I can’t send you to university.” I had already enrolled to become an attorney. I was going to be an attorney, oh my God . . .

      Ruda: Were you going to Fort Hare?

      John: I was going to Fort Hare. And I thought, I’ll become a human rights lawyer; I am going to use this. But at the same time the ANC [African National Congress] was recruiting [trainees for the movement], my list was up and I was ready to go. And then my father came home that night, so drunk. He fell down in the front doorway – there was only one door to get out. I thought he was going to wake up, so I could take him to his room and leave. Quarter past three, I heard the hooter. Papap! I knew it was time to go, but I couldn’t lift my father. I tried pushing out the burglar bars in all the rooms. I was begging him, “Dadda, please go to bed.” My mother was shouting, “Come to bed, Fanie!” Finally I got out, but that was it. I had missed the train.

      Ruda: So your father literally, physically, blocked your path.

      John: Physically blocked my way. So I didn’t go into exile to train for the ANC. I was so hurt, miserable.

      Ruda: How old were you?

      John: I was about eighteen, nineteen. I didn’t know what I was going to do next. Then I heard of a drama group called the Serpent Players, who were doing a play called Antigone. They were looking for someone. I was part of the drama group at my high school, in matric. So I went there. And that was the first time I met [playwright] Athol Fugard.

      Ruda: Your partnership with him and [actor] Winston Ntshona was the next step, right? Sizwe Banzi is Dead and The Island came out of that.

      John: Yes, in 1965 I met the boertjie, with his little beard and smoking a pipe. I thought this cannot be the famous Fugard. This must be a caretaker. Fugard must be inside, looking suave and intelligent.

      Ruda: Distinguished.

      John: And distinguished. But one of my friends said to me, “John, this is Athol. Athol, this is John.” You don’t know what that meant to a young man who was angry. For the first time I was introduced to a white man on a first-name basis. He didn’t say to me, “John, this is Mr Fugard, Mr Fugard, this is John.” And Athol said, “Sit down.” And thus began this incredible relationship, at a very difficult time. A relationship we couldn’t talk about in the militant township – that we were working with a white person and we had become friends with a white person. Even my younger brother, who was shot in 1985, kept saying to me, “Careful, the word is going around, you are mixing with the enemy.” I said, “You don’t understand; the guy knows what I want to know.”

      Ruda: Tell me about the role of protest theatre in those days. You said you did not even have scripts . . . and that it was difficult, and dangerous.

      John: We started by doing normal theatre, things like Antigone.

      Ruda: The classics.

      John: The classics. Coriolanus by Shakespeare, The Bacchae by Euripides, we did Waiting for Godot. But no one came to the theatre. So one day I thought, is it us who are irrelevant, or are we giving people stuff they don’t want?

      And then there was a moment . . . One of the members of the Serpent Players, Norman Ntshinga, was arrested, but before his trial, two [other] men were sentenced to fifteen years. One of them took his coat off and gave it to Mabel [Norman’s wife] to take to his wife: “Tell her I have got fifteen years, tell her she must wait for me.” He was about sixty-eight.

      So Mabel took the coat back to this lady’s house. She was sixty-­five. She said, “Other husbands get life on Robben Island, other husbands get hanged in Pretoria. Mine got fifteen years. I will wait.” Out of that experience we created, in improvisation structure, a play called The Coat. What would happen to the coat?

      That was the beginning of a theatre that asked the relevant questions. Theatre that was about the situation, not just in our country but in our own township, and in that house.

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