Ismail Mahomed: Saw Kani as a revolutionary on stage in struggle days

IN the ‘70s, Sidney Poitier was an idol to many of us who grew up in the south of Johannesburg. Poitier’s roles in some of the most important and controversial movies of the time addressed issues of racial inequality and racial prejudice in the US.

As youngsters we cheered his roles in To Sir with Love and Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner. Hardly a school year would go by without To Sir with Love being screened in the makeshift school hall.

We followed Poitier’s career with enthusiasm, but we were ecstatic when we found a South African idol whose performances on stage could hold us in equal awe. More than just his presence on stage, John Kani’s political gravitas resonated even more strongly with us.

When he was on stage it was clearly evident that his roles were being performed with a deep conviction. This was a man who was portraying the political realities that people in our communities lived every day.

We were in search of our own Sidney Poitier and to our impressionable minds, Kani stood out as an articulate thinker, an honest critic and a caring humanitarian. His presence on stage was huge, whether he played in an improvised play or performed in a classical text.

We saw him as more than just an actor. We saw him as a revolutionary on the stage.

His strongest weapon was the way in which he used character and language to build bridges.

In the early ‘70s, when I first saw Kani and Winston Ntshona perform Sizwe Bansi is Dead in a community hall I knew immediately that some day this play would become a classic. I applauded their courage to use theatre to address the apartheid regime’s restrictive pass laws.

Again seated in a community hall, when I saw Kani and Ntshona in The Island, I signed an unwritten manifesto with my school mates: “John Kani is our man. We will see anything in which he performs”. We watched the playbills at the Market Theatre with eagerness to find our man on its stages.

There are many memorable moments of seeing Kani on the Market Theatre’s stage. Perhaps, the one time that I will not forget is when I had to walk past security police whose presence in Mary Fitzgerald Square outside the Market Theatre was so obvious when Kani performed in Miss Julie.

As much as the security police were there to harass the Market Theatre, they were also there to harass the audiences who flocked to see Kani kiss a white woman on stage. It was a different time in South Africa.

Several white audience members who had read about the controversial kiss in the media bought tickets to the show, only to stand up to walk out of the theatre at that very moment. We were a schizophrenic society.

The Market Theatre became our therapist couch. Its plays reflected the madness of our society. It gave us moments of catharsis. It allowed us to find pathways to challenge the madness of our political times.

While Kani’s passion for theatre is reflected through the roles that he plays, his greatest passion will be the legacy that he has endowed to a successor generation. When Kani attained fame and recognition, he used the attention that he was receiving to sharpen the spotlight on black aspiring actors who longed for a place to study the craft of theatre.

Together with Barney Simon, a founding member of the Market Theatre, Kani launched the Market Theatre Laboratory. Today, a large number of actors can testify that they cut their professional teeth at the Market Theatre Laboratory.

Kani is now a multi-award-winning actor both nationally and internationally. From the determined man who started his career in the dustbowls of the Eastern Cape, he has carved a career that places him as one of the most respectable and iconic theatre personalities of our time.

He has been awarded honorary doctorates and various other accolades that celebrate the actor and the humanitarian aspect of his leadership role. In 2005, he was awarded the Order of Ikhamanga by the South African government for “excellent contributions to theatre and, through this, the struggle for a non-racial, non-sexist and democratic South Africa”.

A year ago, the main auditorium at the Market Theatre was named after him. The John Kani Theatre is more than just a way of saying thank you to a man whose performances and contributions gave the Market Theatre much of its glory.

This week at the Artscape Theatre in Cape, a season of performances is being presented to honour this South African theatre icon. Port Elizabeth can be justly proud of this international theatre icon.

After all, it is in Port Elizabeth where Kani started his illustrious career.