STIAS is deeply saddened to hear of the death of legendary South Africa author, playwright, actor and director Athol Fugard on 8 March 2025 in Stellenbosch. Fugard was Artist-in-Residence at STIAS and was in residence annually between 2012 and 2015 as a permanent fellow.
Fugard is widely regarded as South Africa’s greatest playwright and was acclaimed as “the greatest active playwright in the English-speaking world” by Time magazine in 1985. Fugard is best known for his penetrating political plays opposing the system of apartheid, some of which have been adapted to film. The film of his novel Tsotsi won an Academy Award in 2005.
Refusing to play to all-white audiences, he formed multiracial groups like the Circle Players and later the Serpent Players in Port Elizabeth in the 1950s and 60s.
In 1961 Fugard and Zakes Mokae starred in the single-performance world première of the play The Blood Knot in Johannesburg. The 1964 production of The Blood Knot at the Cricket Theatre in New York City is regarded as having launched his international career.
In addition to Blood Knot, his most well-known plays include Boesman and Lena, Hello and Goodbye, The Island, Sizwe Banzi is Dead, Master Harold and the Boys, My children, My Africa and The Road to Mecca.
His work at STIAS included writing his first Afrikaans play Die Laaste Karretjiegraf which he wrote in honour of his Afrikaner mother. It was performed at the Fugard Theatre in 2013. (The Fugard Theatre in Cape Town [2010 to 2020] was named to honour both the work and the man.)
He also completed The painted rocks at Revolver Creek at STIAS in 2014/15.
In his STIAS seminar in 2015, he said: “At the heart of it all is a face and a human story, never an idea. I only put words to paper if I have a story to tell.”
“Every play generates expectations and demands,” he continued. “I’m not a political playwright. I’m a storyteller but it’s impossible to tell a South African story honestly and with humility, and not have political resonance. We take politics to bed with us, take it to our dreams.”
“I simply tell stories about South African people. I go where my unpredictable imagination wants me to go.”
Former STIAS Director Hendrik Geyer observed that “Not only did Athol insist on ‘tell[ing] a South African story honestly and with humility’, he was humility personified”. Hendrik recalls that responding to the invitation that STIAS sent him in July 2011, he was excited to share his recent discovery of the Master’s thesis of Adriana Steyn about the ‘Karretjie people’ and the prospect of developing this into a play – a long-held obligation towards his mother who had shared in his youth some intimate details about them. At that time Athol wrote: ‘Please believe me that I would be the first to understand if you were to tell me that my project is not suitable for a Donald Gordon Fellowship. If, however, you think it is suitable, then I will be thrilled to be among the distinguished group of thinkers and artists who have worked at STIAS.’ Can you imagine that STIAS would turn down such a wonderful opportunity!”.
STIAS will remember him by his eloquent entry in the Visitors’ Book which read: “A defining moment, I’ve waited 80 years to discover where I belonged. Now I know.”
Fugard published over 30 plays, two novels, a memoir and short stories, and received countless awards including The Order of Ikhamanga in Silver from the South African government, a Tony Award for Lifetime Achievement, a Fleur du Cap lifetime achievement award and being the first African winner in 2014 of the Praemium Imperiale arts prize from the Japan Art Association. He held honorary degrees from Yale University, Rhodes University, the University of Cape Town, Georgetown University, Wittenberg University, the University of the Witwatersrand, Brown University, Princeton University, Nelson Mandela University and Stellenbosch University. He was also a fellow of the British Royal Society of Literature and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He taught as an adjunct professor of playwriting, acting and directing in the Department of Theatre and Dance at the University of California, San Diego and at Indiana University in 2000 to 2001.
In a tribute President Cyril Ramaphosa described Fugard as “an extraordinary storyteller in extraordinary times, and the moral conscience of a generation”.
Your children, Your Africa salute you, Mr Fugard. Rest in peace!
In 2012 Fugard was in residence with fellow writer Ivan Vladislavic (author of, among others, The Folly and The Restless Supermarket).
Extract from the STIAS Visitors’ Book.