John Kanis speech at Sex Actually
October 11, 2011
Good evening.
The advantage of not being young is that I get the opportunity to close occasions. Today I come here as a patron of Drama for Life.
This is not the first time the abbreviation DFL is used. In the 60ies when we realized that our youth was dying, we all had given up the hope that apartheid will ever be defeated. But then we, the artists, began a new DFL, which we called “Drama for Liberation”. We took it upon ourselves to take the struggle right to the edge of the cliff. We felt that if we did a play or wrote a play that was not banned or we were not arrested, it was not strong enough. All this led to what we today call “protest theatre”.
When I saw this engaging, thought-provoking performance of young dancers on stage today (Siwela Sonke performance “I should have asked, but I didn’t”), one eye was not watching the dancers, but YOU. I was looking at this young people in the audience thinking to myself: Is this silence distance or is it a serious discourse and engaging? What I love about dance is that it is not telling me anything, it is making it very hard for me to understand what the hell it is they are doing. The role of a university is not only to produce those graduates with honours and PhDs, it is to incubate the youth or the ideas of tomorrow. A university serves as a platform for expression, as a platform to hear yourself speak and to listen to others speak and to rediscover who you are.
I have young daughters. The thing that frightens me most is when I go home and they are not at home. The image is in my mind about rape, murder, hijack, kidnapping. I have inherited my father’s worries about me – I worry about my children. And I always thought that I will not be like my father. When I think about you, it frightens me –especially when we have coined new phrases that have never been part of the South African dictionary of humanity, like something called “corrective rape” or “intolerance about sexual preferences”, as if this is the first time a man loves a man since the birth of our culture. Then I ask myself: What is a homosexual man? It is a man who is drawn or attracted to another male and they are in love. If this phrase exists in my language, it means it must be older than me. Therefore you cannot say it is a new thing. I meet young girls trying to explain why they have these feelings for other females and then somebody says: This is new in the African culture. I can tell you: Lesbianism is as old as the African culture, so you cannot be surprised in 2011! I just want us to understand that there is nothing new! We can deny these things, we can even deny these things with intelligence, philosophies and cultural references, these things are an integral part of who we are. People are talking about coming out, coming out of the closet. The problem is: We Africans deny the existence of the closet.
Driving around, looking at the programme, witnessing something of the great work, I have just to say “Thank you!” Thank you to the Wits management staff, the coordinator of the festival, the curators, the Warren Nebes and everybody. Especially thank you to you young people who have taken their own destiny in your own hands. You are saying: “We are going to be the directors of our lives as our destiny is in our hands.” You are starring in the history you are writing about your lives.
I’m just going to ask one favour before I sit down: Help me to understand what you are on about. I’m 68 years old. When you say SEX ACTUALLY my mind rumbles, because my mind immediately coins figures and images of explicit sex and I’m asking whether my young children are calling me to come and watch them engage in sex. Help me understand! It’s not my duty anymore to say to my children: “Let’s sit down and talk about the bees and the flowers!” It is too late. So please come up with a language that makes me understand. When my mother did my washing, her greatest fear was that she could find cigarettes and little pieces of something in my pocket. The other day I was helping my wife to do the laundry when out of the pockets of one of my son’s trousers a condom fell out. I said to my wife: “Praise the lord! Praise the lord! It’s working!”
I’m asking you to join me in celebrating that we are winning. We are winning the war against Aids. We are on the battle field, but we are winning. It’s no longer Aids Awareness, we know now. It’s no longer safer sex or protection from STDs, we know now. It is important that we acknowledge these successes. The Minister of Police, Safety and Security gave his report of the crime stats yesterday. He said hijackings have come down by 3.2 per cent, murders have come down by 2.1 per cent, house-breakings have come down etc., but they had one concern: that rape has increased. And I just felt cold in my heart. South Africa is the most dangerous place for a woman to live in. Please, I address to you young people. When you see a woman standing in front of you, before you open your mouth, remember that your mother was exactly that age at one stage when a man stood in front of her. So before you do anything, imagine that she is your mother and ask yourself: Would you lift your hand on her?
This has been an incredible journey, across Johannesburg, across South Africa, across the streets. In ten days Drama for Life has managed to capture the imagination not only of young people. Sometimes I come to a point where I feel so fed up and so disappointed and I think: “It’s time to get the hell out of this country!” Because I can. And when I’m just about to lose faith in this country, something happens that makes me change my mind. Drama for Life has given me a reason to wake up in the morning and work harder, harder, even harder. I want you to understand these victories, these little battles that you are winning. If we can go on like this, maybe in five years we can say: This battle is won! There’s gonna be a time my good friend, Warren, when I’m gonna take my pills for high blood or my pills against the little aches elderly people have, and I’m gonna say to my wife: “Can you give me my ARVs, too? I’m not feeling well today”. I’m not gonna hide. I’m gonna say: “Hey, I’m HIV-positive, so what’s your problem with that? Am I dying or what?” That’s how the conversation must be.
I ask you to celebrate this great event, because we are winning! The war against Aids is continuing, but we are winning. Now we reached the stage where we need to get together for the final battle. But don’t leave me behind as an elder. Keep me informed, tell me what happened today. Tell me about school, about lectures, about people you met in the street, about Patrick, who was your old childhood love and then you met him again and you thought “Tata, he took my breath!” Let me be part of that conversation, so that I can say: “Have you checked Patrick out?” Don’t think I’m stiff. I’m not the stiff kind of Dad. I’m the hip father! Drama for Life opens these opportunities for you young people to go out into the world, to connect with other young people, to teach people in the villages, in the streets, in the communities. Please don’t let the parents behind, because when you leave us behind, we will remain with an attitude of negativity, because we think you don’t know what you are doing out there. I didn’t always have gray hair. So it’s not a generation gap, we all live together.
Drama for Life is the only hope we have to educate our people, to motivate our people, to inspire our people.