Remembering Athol Fugard and How His Plays Saved South Africa
It was with heavy hearts that the world bid farewell to 92-year-old Harold “Athol” Fugard on 8 March 2025. Apart from being known as one of South Africa’s greatest playwrights, novelists, actors and directors, he was also one of the fighting hands against apartheid. Fugard received over 12 awards in his life for the production of over 30 plays, each delving into the emotional and psychological consequence of white supremacy on Black South Africans.
Athol Fugard once said: “Theatre is like music. The important thing is the rhythm. If you can catch the rhythm correctly, then you can express what you want to say.” This was why he dedicated his life to playwriting: To express and reveal what mere words sometimes could not.
Fugard’s Early Plays
Fugard was born in Middelburg in 1932. Eventually, he moved to Johannesburg to find work in 1958. Working as a clerk in the Native Commissioners’ Court, he became “keenly aware of the injustices of apartheid.” Soon, he found himself in the middle of Sophiatown, a township that turned into a black settlement under apartheid. Consequently, it was here that he connected to the Black South Africans around him and listened to their stories. He based each of his plays on lived experiences of his newly found friends.
His first two plays were “Nongogo” (1959), a slang word for prostitute, and “No Good Friday” (1958), delving into the lives of small-town gangsters roaming the streets. These gangsters, known as “Tsotsis”, titled his first novel and eventually the film that won him an Oscar.
However, it was his play, “The Blood Knot” (1961), that skyrocketed his career as an anti-apartheid playwright in South Africa. After the Sharpville Massacre in 1960, Fugard was inspired to write a play about two half-brothers, one of whom looked more white than the other. The play interrogated the struggles between them and how society treated them differently based on the colour of their skin. Fugard starred in this play alongside actor Zakes Mokae, together making history as the first white and black actor to share a stage.
Fugard was eventually approached by actors to form a play company called Serpent Players. The government caught wind of the kind of plays he was writing and frequently harassed him and other members of the company for defiance against apartheid.
Fugard said this did not slow him down, because he “just couldn’t see [him]self writing about any other place or any other time.”
Fugard’s Internationally Renowned Plays
He then went on to write “Sizwe Banzi is Dead” (1972) and “The Island” (1973), which were both shown to the world’s stage. The former delved into the issue of the passbook (“dompas”) in apartheid whilst the latter looked at the prison that held Nelson Mandela captive. In the end, Mandela himself said “The Island” was so important in reflecting the struggle for democracy and how people manage to survive in the face of adversity.
Fugard worked alongside John Kani and Winston Ntshona to bring his plays to life as he relied on their lived experiences to inform his plays. He often said that ethnicity didn’t matter, what mattered was who you were and how you connected with each other.
Another of Fugard’s later plays was “Master Harold and The Boys” (1982). The play reflected on a moment in Fugard’s childhood that he regretted until the day of his death: Spitting in the face of his childhood friend who worked for his family. However, it was this incident that made Fugard aware of the evil and unjust ways of apartheid “that maimed and mutilated people; destroyed them.”
Showcasing his plays to an international audience meant the world was made aware of what was happening in South Africa. Art became a medium of defiance and had an overt political function.
Fugard’s Later Plays
Thereafter, Fugard wrote “The Train Driver” (2010), one of his post-apartheid plays. Two actors, one black and one white, took on several different roles in this play. It was set in a cemetery for people whose names were not known when they died. In the play, a white train driver witnesses a mixed-race woman commit suicide by standing in front of his train with her children. He is tormented throughout the play by what he witnessed, struggling to overcome the tragedy, yet somehow still surviving. The train driver represents white South Africans’ collective guilt about apartheid.
Another later play was “The Painted Rocks at Revolver Creek” (2015) which explores South Africa both before and after apartheid.
Fugard wanted his plays to bear witness to the happenings and consequences of apartheid on humanity. Subsequently, he wanted his work to explain the human condition, what it means to be human and why we should continue to be human.
He said: “The actor and the stage. The actor on the stage. Around him is space, to be filled and defined by movement and gesture. Around him is also silence, to be filled with meaning, using words and sounds.”
Athol Fugard certainly left a mark in South African history. In fact, South Africa might not be where it is today if it weren’t for his instincts and wisdom. Through his plays, which showcase what is means to be part of the human race, the world will remember him as the man who wasn’t afraid to speak up through theatre.
Images: Sourced
For more arts and culture articles, click here.
Read our Summer’s End print magazine here.
Follow us on Instagram.
