Actor

John
Kani

John Kani is a South African actor, playwright, director, and cultural activist. He received the 1975 Tony Award for his performances in The Island and Sizwe Banzi Is Dead, which he co-wrote with Athol Fugard and Winston Ntshona. A longtime member of Johannesburg’s Market Theatre, his stage credits include Driving Miss Daisy, Othello, Miss Julie, My Children! My Africa! (Vita Award), and Nothing But the Truth (Fleur du Cap Award for Best Actor and Best New South African Play). He wrote and starred in Kunene and the King for the Royal Shakespeare Company, receiving the Pragnell Shakespeare Birthday Award. His film and television work includes The Grass Is Singing, “Master Harold”…and the Boys, An African Dream, Saturday Night at the Palace, Sarafina!, The Ghost and the Darkness, Final Solution, The Lion King (2019) and Mufasa: The Lion King as “Rafiki,” and portraying “King T’Chaka” in Captain America: Civil War and Black Panther. In 2005, he was awarded South Africa’s Order of Ikhamanga in Silver. He is the founder of the John Kani Performing Arts Academy. In 2023, he was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE). In 2025, the World Wildlife Fund awarded him the Living Planet Award for his work in nature conservation and climate change.