By Nehru Odeh
Internationally acclaimed South African playwright, novelist, director and actor Athol Fugard is dead. He was aged 92. Fugard is known for political plays such as “Sizwe Banzi is Dead” and “The Island.”
The celebrated writer died on Saturday News24 reported
A major political dissident playwright of the 20th century, Fugard wrote more than 30 dramas including “Statements After an Arrest Under the Immorality Act” (in 1972) and “Master Harold” … and the Boys (1982).
Both of those drew upon the time in the 1950s when he could only find employment as a clerk in one of the courts where black South Africans were charged (and inevitably convicted) of breaches of the “pass laws”, designed to control the movements of a racially segregated population under the apartheid system.
There, he witnessed hourly the dehumanization of those who had chosen the “wrong” streets or people.
According to the Guardian UK, Fugard’s cultural and political impact was rivalled elsewhere only by the dramas of Václav Havel in what was then Soviet-controlled Czechoslovakia. Havel was jailed and, when released, abandoned theatre to become the first president of the Czech Republic.
Fugard – despite setting up two theatre companies in the segregated black townships and courageously refusing to play to the state-mandated “whites only” audiences – avoided prison, due to being white and therefore not a primary target of the racist government.
The worst direct personal persecutions Fugard suffered were the removal of his passport and the occasional banning of plays and burning of books. He was always conscious, though, of benefiting from the immoral hierarchy his writing decried.
“It is a very sad day for South Africa. Athol Fugard was one of the country’s greatest playwrights, who managed to capture everyday stories of people in our country in every play,” Western Cape Cultural Affairs and Sports MEC Ricardo Mackenzie said.
“He had a unique way of turning the pain of the past into a story of hope for the future. His contribution to the arts is immeasurable.”
Among Fugard’s greatest works is his 1980 novel Tsotsi, which was later adapted into an Oscar-winning film of the same name, starring Presley Chweneyagae, Terry Pheto, Rapulana Seiphemo, and Nambitha Mpumlwana, among others.
“His penetrating, sharp wit has left an indelible mark on our shared cultural heritage, and his acute understanding of our country’s political and cultural make-up is unmatched,” Western Cape Premier Alan Winde said.
“He will be sorely missed. My thoughts are with his family and loved ones. May his legacy live on in our theatres and beyond.”
Renowned actor John Kani, who starred in several of Fugard’s plays, added his voice to the growing number of tributes while in the United States.
“I am saddened by the news of the passing of my dear friend,” he said.
Born in 1932, Fugard was the only child of Harold, from an immigrant family of Irish descent, and Elizabeth, whose Potgieter clan were among the early Afrikaans settlers of Dutch stock.
A jazz pianist turned shopkeeper, Harold moved his family in 1935 to Port Elizabeth, an urban industrial town that remained Fugard’s main home and most regular dramatic setting for the next nine decades.
During his childhood, the family ran a hotel and cafe in Port Elizabeth where “Hally” (as the young Athol was known) grew up. There, as a teenager in the late 1940s, an incident occurred that would lie at the heart of his psychology and creativity.
In published extracts from his notebooks, Fugard explained how Sam Semela, a black employee in the family businesses, became “the most significant – the only – friend of my boyhood years”. But, after a “rare quarrel”, Hally pulled racial rank and spat in Semela’s face.
While confiding to his journal that he would never be able to “deal with the shame that overwhelmed me the second after”, Fugard made literary recompense with “Master Harold” … and the Boys.
Its title acknowledging a racist hierarchy between white people and their servants that is overturned by a devastatingly apologetic depiction of how the demon of superiority can rise even in the mind of someone who claims to be a liberal one of the dedicatees of the published play is “Sam”, with whom Fugard had been reconciled.
Public admission of this shaming story was typical of Fugard’s personal honesty, but can also be seen as an attempt to forestall any “saint” or “saviour” interpretation of his work.
The contemporary pejorative term “white saviour”, with its implication of credit stolen and virtue claimed, was not yet widely used, but, once it was, Fugard faced retrospective accusation.
Fugard is survived by his wife, Dr Paula Fourie, and the rest of their family.