A great South African playwright

Athol Fugard, who died at age 92, was widely acclaimed as one of the best playwrights in South Africa.

Son of an Afrikaner mother, she was better known for her political works that defy the racist system of apartheid.

The performance of the tribute to Fugard, the Minister of Arts and Culture of South Africa, Gayton McKenzie, acclaimed him as “an intrepid narrator who exposed the harsh realities of apartheid through his works.”

“We were cursed with apartheid, but blessed with great artists that shone in their impact and helped us guide us.

Fugard wrote more than 30 plays in a race that covered 70 years, leaving his mark with the blood knot in 1961.

It was the first work in South Africa with a black and white actor, Fugard himself, acting in a front of a multirracial audience, before the apartheid regime introduced laws that prohibit mixed cast and the public.

Blood Knot catapulted Fugard on the international stage, with the work shown in the United States and adapted for British television.

The apartheid regime then confiscated his passport, but strengthened Fugard’s determination to continue breaking racial barriers and exposing the injustices of apartheid.

He went to work with snake players, a group of black actors, and acted in the black municipalities, despite the harassment of the security forces of the apartheid regime.

Fugard’s famous works included Boesman and Lena, who analyzed the difficult circumstances of a mixed couple. After being released in 1969, it became a film in 2000 starring Danny Glover and Angela Bassett.

His novel, Tsotsi, became a movie, winning the Oscar 2006 for the best foreign language film.

The Prime Minister of the Province of the Western Cape South Africa, Alan Winde, said that Fugard had a “penetrating and acute ingenuity”, and his “acute understanding of political and cultural makeup of our country is unmatched.”

“We will miss him,” Winde added.

Other known plays include Sizwe Banzi Is Dead and the Island, who co-wrote with actors John Kani and Winston NTSHONA, in a powerful condemnation of life on Robben Island, where the Anti-Apartheid Nelson Mandela icon was imprisoned.

In a simple tribute in X, Kani published: “I am deeply saddened by the death of my dear friend Athol Fugard. May his soul rest in eternal peace. Elder” “

Fugard won several awards for his work and received an honor of life for life in the prestigious Tony Awards in 2011, while Time magazine described it in 1985 as the best active playwright in the English -speaking world.

“Apartheid defined me, that’s true … but I’m proud of the work that came out of it, which bears my name,” Fugard told the AFP news agency in 1995.

Fugard feared that the end of apartheid in 1994 could leave it with little to do, but still found enough material to write.

In a BBC interview in 2010, he said he shared the vision of the late Archbishop Desmond Tutu that “we have lost the way” as a nation.

“I think that current society in South Africa needs the surveillance of writers, as much as the old one did.

“It is a responsibility that young writers, playwrights must really wake up and understand that responsibility is yours, as well as mine and a large number of other writers in previous years.”

Additional reports of the Elettra Neysmith of the BBC.