South African anti-apartheid playwright Athol Fugard dies aged 92

Athol Fugard, the South African playwright whose work explored the racial oppressions of apartheid, died on Saturday at the age of 92.

Throughout six decades, Fugard produced more than 30 plays, to great public and critical acclaim.

“South Africa has lost one of its greatest literary and theatrical icons, whose work shaped the cultural and social landscape of our nation”, the South African Minister of Sport, Arts, and Culture said in a statement. "Athol Fugard was a fearless storyteller who laid bare the harsh realities of apartheid through his plays, giving a voice to those silenced by oppression.”

Born in 1932 in Middelburg, Cape Province, Athol Fugard was the only child from a father of Irish and English descent and an Afrikaner mother, who ran a teashop and became the main breadwinner of the family. Athol Fugard was 16 when South Africa introduced the apartheid regime in 1948.

“I think at a fairly early age I became suspicious of what the system was trying to do to me”, he told Interview Magazine in 1990. “I knew the way it was trying to pull me. I became conscious of what attitudes it was trying to implant in me and what prejudices it was trying to pass on to me.”

A target of government persecution

Fugard moved to Johannesburg in early adulthood and worked as a clerk in a court that sentenced Black people who broke racial law. The experience opened his eyes to the realities of apartheid and ignited his desire to write.

His first major play, “The Blood Knot”, premiered in 1961. Set in South Africa, it confronts two brothers who share the same Black mother but have different fathers: one of them can pass as a white man whilst the other is dark-skinned. Following the initial success of the play, it was banned in South Africa and the government made it illegal for interracial casts to play in front of interracial audiences.

That did not hinder Fugard’s determination. He continued to work with multiracial casts and refused to play for white-only audiences.

In the 1960s, he created The Serpent Players, a theatre workshop for Black comedians that launched the careers of future South African stars John Kani and Winston Ntshona.

Many of Fugard’s co-workers were jailed for their theatrical activities. Due to his race, Fugard avoided prison, but his dissidence still made him the target of government surveillance and persecution.

In 1967, after “The Blood Knot” was broadcast on British television, Fugard’s passport was confiscated, and he was unable to leave the country for several years.

A sense of shame

As his career progressed, Fugard’s work found always greater critical acclaim. Six of his plays landed in Broadway, including "’Master Harold’...and the Boys", his first drama to premiere outside of South Africa.

It is said to be his most autobiographical work. The play is set in a teashop, and centres on the relationship between white owners and their Black servants. In the climax of the play, Hally, the son of the owners, spits in the face of Sam, one of his parent’s Black employees. The scene is derived from a real-life incident that took place in the Fugard family’s teashop.

"The young Athol Fugard did in fact spit in the face of a Black man to his eternal shame. Even as I sit here now, I can remember that moment in my childhood when it happened”, Fugard told South African television in 1992. This sense of shame stayed with him throughout his life and infused his writing.

Throughout his career, Fugard drew from his own experience and privilege to denounce the racial hierarchy instituted by the South African regime in stories that found resonance in audiences around the world.

For his work, he was inducted into the American Theatre Hall of Fame in 2001 and received the Tony Award for lifetime achievement in 2011.

He is survived by his wife Paula Faurie and his children Lisa, Halle and Lannigan.