South African playwright Athol Fugard, 92, died on March 8. Perhaps South Africa’s most famed author, many of his plays and books dealt with apartheid, politics, and race. A great many of them turned up on Broadway and in films: Boesman and Lena, A Lesson from Aloes, The Road to Mecca, "Master Harold"...and the boys (how I hate that punctuation), Blood Knot, Tsotsi. “All of my life had been spent in the shadow of apartheid,” Fugard said. “And when South Africa went through its extraordinary change in 1994, it was like having spent a lifetime in a boxing ring with an opponent and suddenly finding yourself in that boxing ring with nobody else . . . What I quickly discovered is that our so-called new South Africa has as much material for a story-teller as the old one.” Of course, being a white person under apartheid is a whole lot different than being black; I also wonder how he dealt with being named Athol—I mean, how would you call to him across a crowded room?
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