Remembering Athol Fugard, Whose Plays Exposed Apartheid's Cruelty

Wall Street Journal

10-03-2025

All great playwrights make their mark upon the world through their distinctive gifts. But few could claim to have an impact on the political and social structures of their countries. The South African playwright and actor Athol Fugard, who died on March 8 at age 92, is the extraordinarily rare artist for whom one could make such lofty assertions.
Mr. Fugard wrote more than 30 plays, beginning in the late 1950s, when the cruel social divisions of apartheid were at their height. Despite facing governmental oppression and attempts to suppress his work, Mr. Fugard took as his primary subject the destructive effects apartheid had on the 'coloured' (mixed race) and black populations of the country, but also the moral rot that it inculcated in the country's white population, perhaps most famously in his masterwork, ''Master Harold' . . . and the Boys,' first seen on Broadway in 1982 and subsequently revived there in 2003—notably after apartheid had finally been dismantled.