Athol Fugard: the great South African playwright who captured what it means to be human

Posted on 10 March 2025 • Arts, Arts and social sciences

I was shocked to learn that the famous South African writer Athol Fugard had passed away. I had known his age to be 92 but somehow I never expected him to die. He was always a survivor, says Dennis Walder, Emeritus Professor of Literature at The Open University.

When I think about Fugard, the first thing that comes to mind is the first time I interviewed him in Port Elizabeth (today’s Gqeberha) in South Africa. It was for the first of three books I’ve written on his plays. I had just seen his play Boesman and Lena in London. It absolutely knocked me out with its emotional power.

Boesman and Lena are two mixed-race people who are outcasts and are wandering the mud flats of a river trying to work out where they’ve been and where they come from. They argue and fight and then out of the darkness comes a black man. He tries to tell them his story but they don’t speak the same language.

The black man dies next to their fire. Before they wander off into the darkness there’s a moment when Lena decides to dance and sing a song. It’s a transcendent moment in the bleakness, but it’s only a moment. It gave you a sense that even when people are at their lowest, there is the possibility of some kind of transcendence.

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Picture credit: Kilyan Sockalingum from Unsplash