LETTER: Athol Fugard avoided politics

I refer to your article on the passing of Athol Fugard (“Theatre of Defiance — Fugard and the struggle for equality”, March 12).

Whenever his supposed political activism was put to Fugard he would be quite emphatic: he was not a political writer but a storyteller. His stories exposed the social realities and painful effects of discrimination, prejudice and simple racism and were set in SA, but their message was without exception universal. That is why he achieved international recognition as a playwright.

While Fugard’s stories clearly exposed a lack of morality and expressed a commonly held sense of outrage that apartheid denied free association, opportunity and social equality, he never needed a political medium. His stories spoke more effectively for him.

Your article’s thrust was to co-opt the Fugard name and fame onto the ANC. Occurring no less than four times, it exaggerated both the role of the ANC and implies that Fugard’s role was equal to that of an ANC “freedom fighter”.

It’s as though the only medium through which Fugard could have expressed a quest for a free SA was through the ANC. Yet he was not an ANC member. Nor was he a member of the PAC, nor of the UDM or the Black Sash, or any other organisation whose collective will, and bravery, brought about the end of the apartheid regime.

Rod Lloyd
Newlands, Cape Town

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