Tribute to master storyteller

ATHOL FUGARD: MY BROTHER AND COMRADE - KANI

- John Kani

It was in 1965 when everything looked so very bleak in my life in New Brighton, Port Elizabeth. The Eastern Cape was a wasteland of pain and suffering. All the people we knew were in detention, in exile or had been killed. As young men we were standing by eagerly to be secretly shuttled out of the country to join uMkhonto weSizwe to train to be the soldiers that would liberate South Africa.

A friend of mine, Fats Bokholan, told me about a group of actors called the Serpent Players Drama Group who were performing plays in the township.

He asked whether I would like to join the group. He told me that they were doing a play called Antigone by Sophocles.