From New Brighton rehearsal rooms to international stages and Hollywood screens, Dr John Kani’s six-decade career will be celebrated in a new exhibition opening at the Apartheid Museum this August.
One of Nelson Mandela Bay’s most celebrated cultural exports is being honoured with an exhibition tracing a remarkable career spanning more than 60 years.
John Kani: A Living Legend will be on display at the Apartheid Museum in Johannesburg from 30 August to 30 November 2026, bringing together images, text, artefacts and film documenting the actor, playwright and theatre pioneer’s contribution to South African arts and society.
For Nelson Mandela Bay, however, Kani’s story begins much closer to home.
From New Brighton to the world stage
Born in New Brighton, Gqeberha, in 1943, Kani began experimenting with acting while still at school.
A defining moment came in 1965 when he encountered the Serpent Players, the New Brighton amateur theatre group that would become an important force in South African theatre.
The group, which collaborated with playwright Athol Fugard, increasingly moved away from simply performing established classics and began drawing on the lived experiences of its members under apartheid.
The arrest of fellow Serpent Players actor Norman Ntshinga in 1965, shortly before the group was due to perform Sophocles’ Antigone, would become particularly significant.
Kani, Winston Ntshona and Fugard later workshopped The Island, a play that helped take their work from the Eastern Cape to international audiences.
When Kani and Ntshona arrived in England in 1973, their performances helped propel both actors to global recognition and cemented their place in the development of South African protest theatre.
Six decades of telling South African stories
Kani’s influence would eventually stretch far beyond his performances.
During South Africa’s transition to democracy, he took on leadership roles across several cultural institutions, including the Market Theatre Lab and the National Arts Council, where he served as founding chairman from 1996 to 2004.
For more than 25 years, he has also helped guide the Apartheid Museum as chairman of its Board of Trustees.
His work as a playwright continued alongside those leadership roles, providing a platform through which he could examine democracy, reconciliation and the inequalities that persisted after apartheid.
Kani has also been a vocal advocate for building strong South African creative industries capable of telling the country’s own stories.
Speaking to American Repertory Theatre artistic director Robert Woodruff in 2004, Kani said South Africa needed vibrant film, television and theatre industries so that local creatives did not have to see Hollywood as the only place where their dreams and stories could be realised.
It is an idea that has accompanied much of his work as a mentor and arts leader, with Kani helping to create opportunities for generations of South African performers.
From theatre to Hollywood
Kani’s career has also introduced him to entirely new generations of audiences.
His extensive stage and screen career eventually took the New Brighton-born actor to major international productions, including Disney’s The Lion King, where he voiced Rafiki.
At the film’s 2019 world premiere in Los Angeles, Kani appeared alongside his son, actor Atandwa Kani, and his wife Mandi.
Despite the scale of his international success, his story remains deeply connected to the Eastern Cape theatre movement from which he emerged.
The new exhibition revisits those different chapters of his life and career, exploring the ideas that have shaped Kani both on and off stage.
A Living Legend
For the Apartheid Museum, the exhibition is also an opportunity to recognise Kani’s contribution to an institution whose work has run parallel to many of the questions explored throughout his artistic career.
Through photographs, artefacts, film and written material, John Kani: A Living Legend will document a career in which performance, playwriting, mentorship and social justice have repeatedly intersected.
It is also the story of an Eastern Cape performer who began his journey in the rehearsal rooms of New Brighton and ultimately helped shape the way South African stories were presented to audiences around the world.
John Kani: A Living Legend runs at the Apartheid Museum in Johannesburg from 30 August to 30 November 2026.
The Apartheid Museum is open Wednesday to Sunday and on public holidays from 9am to 5pm.
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