Kan has a wide circle of friends in South Africa. He began building up his contacts in the mid-1980s, when the white-run government's apartheid policies had made the South African government an international pariah. The ROC was almost the only country on friendly terms with South Africa back then.
甘居正在南非的人脈豐厚，奠基在一九八○年代中期，南非的白人政府時代，當時南非因採「種族隔離」政策而受到國際社會的孤立，中華民國幾乎可說是南非唯一的朋友。