Johannesburg: Internationally acclaimed South African playwright, director, and actor, Athol Fugard, died at his home on Sunday after a long illness. Athol Fugard was 92.
According to Ethiopian News Agency, the writer exposed the realities of apartheid in plays such as ‘The Blood Knot’ and “‘Master Harold’…and the Boys’, and refused to play for segregated audiences. Particularly, the anti-apartheid figure leaves behind a powerful legacy of works like ‘Master Harold and the Boys’ and ‘Sizwe Banzi Is Dead” that have shaped theatre in the country.
The South African government confirmed his death saying the country had ‘lost one of its greatest literary and theatrical icons’. President Cyril Ramaphosa described him as ‘the moral conscience of a generation’. ‘Beyond the impressive body of work that he has left behind, Athol Fugard will be remembered for being an outlier amongst the millions of white South Africans who blithely turned a blind eye to the injustices being perpetrated in their name,’ he said.
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, it was learned.