A biography for John Kanihasn’t been written yet.
“I used to wonder, when my grandmother would tell me what the wolf said to the jackal, how these animals can talk. And, she would say, 'in my stories, animals talk. Shut up and listen.'”
“Acting became a powerful tool for change. You had to tell stories that were important to you.”
“When western culture developed, we became detached from nature, detached from our relationship with the animals. We saw animals perhaps as only the rhino horn, the elephant's tusk, we saw it as making money.”
“Inkaba' is about a feud between two South African families. They have been fighting for years, from one generation to the next. It's like those typical feuds you have in rural KwaZulu-Natal where, after a while, you do not even know why you are fighting.”
“Any older actor knows the last great mountain to climb is to play King Lear and now, if I ever play Lear, I will have done the pre-preparation because I had to go into the play and read it over and over again.”
“In Australia, I almost became a counsellor. At the end of each performance there would be a queue of sobbing people backstage. They all wanted to explain why they left South Africa.”
“In South Africa, it is different. When you are born not even your father knows what is going to happen in your life.”
“I have been on the Urban Brew board for many years and assisted with the artistic evaluation of the various shows that were pitched to the production company.”
“I had to look at white people as fellow South Africans and fellow partners in building a new South Africa.”
“When the situation politically became intolerable within South Africa, we used the arts as a weapon for change.”
“You can give me any of Shakespeare's plays and I'll tell you a parallel African folktale.”
“Forgiving is OK. Forgetting, never.”
“When I was asked to write a concept for a telenovela, I didn't underestimate my non-experience in the field.”
“It is a troubled soul that forces the human being to act. It is some kind of gangrene within you, inside of you, that eats your soul, that forces you to save your soul.”
“I must concentrate all my efforts in the attainment of freedom for my people.”
“I remember the words of my grandmother who died at 102. I remember my great mother, Grand Brika, who died at the age of 106. They talked to us all the time. And my grandmother even lied to me. She said there was royalty. She said that my great-great-great grandfather was the king of the outer Thembu.”
“The government harasses everything. The government must keep a constant surveillance of all activities by black people in order to maintain their reign over them, especially when they are in a minority.”
“In South Africa in 1987, apartheid was still going strong. Some of the most brutal race laws had been relaxed, but they hadn't yet been repealed. There was still a lot of tension.”
“I come from a long line of storytellers.”
“'iNkaba' has made me famous in the living rooms of the people of my country. It was almost like being famous all over again. People stop me in the street and shopping malls to take pictures.”