Athol Fugard: The Writer Under Apartheid
(Extracts from Kader Asmal’s Sechaba Article)
“Without white South Africa realizing what it has done – and on the basis of that realization having the courage to ask for forgiveness – there can really be no significant movement.” – Athol Fugard (11 June 1932 – 8 March 2025)
Nothing in South Africa is non-political. Race touches, blights and destroys every aspect of life.
For the black people of South Africa, whose oppression has been long and harsh, the expression of their fear, pain, hope and determination through the arts has been a lifeline. For these 28 (now 58) million, whose political rights (were) denied them, culture has been one of the few forms of creativity, protest and self-affirmation open to them.
In this ‘other’ South Africa, families and communities were broken up by the demand for labour on the farms, on the mines and in the towns of white South Africa. Cultural traditions suffered. Some survived, adapted to the harsh conditions of township life and work with its all-male compounds and its soulless housing. Others were deformed by deliberately preserved for white audiences as examples of ‘native art’.
European culture, imported with white supremacy, elevated the written word and the individual artist to the detriment of the more oral and communal African style, and made ‘literature’ virtually synonymous with ‘English literature’. Church and secular education confirmed thi
