E-Mail This Article to a Friend Truth teller Tony winner John Kani brings his play to the ART

South African actor, playwright, and "cultural activist" (as he calls himself) John Kani arrived in Boston this week to head the cast of his drama Nothing But the Truth, which caps the American Repertory Theatre’s splendid South African Festival. "I was very fortunate to be in favor of all political movements. The parties saw my contributions as an act of speaking for all, not one political affiliation. We were all ANC anyway," Kani says, referring to the apartheid-defying African National Congress.

As he speaks over the phone from South Africa, the proper cadences of Kani’s rich, low baritone reflect the British education he received in the schools of his native Port Elizabeth, on his country’s south coast. "I grew up as a very English child. Port Elizabeth is where the English settlers first landed in 1820, so their first objective was to educate the natives. They needed the natives . . . to help them bring out the wealth of this new-found colony and send it back to enrich the Empire"

Kani was slated to study law after high school, but politics intervened. "I did not go to university because my eldest brother was arrested and sent to Robben Island for five years just when I was supposed to begin. It was that devastation that accidentally drew me to theater.

"I come from a long line of storytellers. [South African playwright] Athol Fugard was in Port Elizabeth with a group called Serpent Theater in 1965. Because the group was very small, we would create the stories, perform them, tell them ourselves. It was a very pleasant surprise when I won the Tony Award in 1975; it proved that not only could I tell the story, I could also act." Kani made his award-winning New York debut in Sizwe Banzi Is Dead and The Island, a powerful double bill he had written with Fugard and Winston Ntshona. But when he spoke out after his return from the United States in 1976, he was jailed, and his release from solitary confinement came only after massive protests around the world.

"The ’80s became the most intense time of the struggle, internationally and internally. That’s when the majority of the black people realized that the only way was to take it to violence by any means necessary. The police knew I was a political activist walking around. I decided through my work I would use the stage to further the aims of the liberation of South Africa. Being black in South Africa, you had no choice. Your country was taken. The colonialists had . . . oppressed the indigenous people. When the National Party took over in 1961, it worsened apartheid for black people. They held it together until 1994."

Nothing But the Truth, which is set after the end of apartheid (and is dedicated to Kani’s younger brother, "a poet for the struggle" who was murdered by government forces in 1985), is "a story of two brothers, of sibling rivalry, of family secrets, of truth and reconciliation, of exile and of the perplexities of our freedoms and democracy," according to Kani’s program notes for the work, which won him Fleur de Cap Awards for best actor and best new South African play in 2002. After Nelson Mandela saw the play, he told Kani, "It deals with major issues of today, but you have cushioned it fully as a family drama. Thank you for telling the story."

Now 60, Kani has stepped down from managing Johannesburg’s Market Theatre, which he co-founded, to spend more time with his family. Recently honored with a Presidential Award for Contribution to South African Arts and Culture and now holding the post of Chairman of the Apartheid Museum, he hopes to go on telling "stories that are about building South Africa and healing our land, our country."

Nothing But the Truth is presented by the American Repertory Theatre at the Loeb Drama Center, 64 Brattle Street in Harvard Square, January 21 through 30. Tickets are $35 to $72; $12 for students. Call (617) 547-8300, or visit www.amrep.org