Some problems of a playwright from South Africa - Athol Fugard Issue - Transcript

I said there were two personal agendas involved in writing the play. The other one involved an act of celebration. The word "celebration" is what I would like to end with. I wanted to celebrate the youth of South Africa, black and white. They have been an extraordinary inspiration to me. I know as a South African just how hard it is to take on a fight, and to try and escape the terrible twisting of your mind and soul caused by that society and the sting of apartheid. That is changing fast now. We will never go back to the bad old days. But until recently I saw succeeding waves of young South Africans, white South Africans, having to confront that terrible system. I have been moved to see the many young men and women who, with an innate instinct for decency and justice which every human being is born with (no human being is born evil--there are no chromosomes, there's no DNA that defines evil), fight free of that system. And then the appalling dilemma, which I have had to use my imagination to comprehend, of young black South Africans. There again I have had the most unbelievably inspiring encounters over the years, with young men and women who have had every reason to hate, to resent, to be hell-bent on destruction, and who instead turn out to be individuals of love and tolerance and forgiveness. I know how unbelievably moved New York was, and how extraordinary your reception of Nelson Mandela was, when he arrived in your city. I give him as an example of that quality I am talking about. How that man, having had twenty-seven years of his life taken away from him, could come out and forgive, and then sit down and talk to, and listen to--provided that they in turn did some listening on their side--the very people who had taken away the best years of his life! I think we'd be hard pressed to find a more extraordinary example than Nelson Mandela of just how generous and forgiving the human soul can be. And he's not alone in that. That preparedness to forgive, to understand, is part of the South African situation. And I wanted to celebrate it, and have it be the final word on which I end my talk.

That is why this perception of myself as a political writer disturbs me. An attitude like that closes off an individual to an important thing I have tried to do. I became conscious, as I was thinking about talking to you today and as I was looking back over my plays, that in addition to all the judgments, the condemnations, the angers, the outrages, the whatever else I have expressed, I've tried to celebrate the human spirit--its capacity to create, its capacity to endure, its capacity to forgive, its capacity to love, even though every conceivable barrier is set up to thwart the act of loving. Yes, I would like to leave you with that as a final word on my side about my work and my dilemmas. I am prepared now to answer any questions you might have.

Some of the reviewers that I have read say you are the greatest evangelist of the century.

That makes it just as difficult.