Athol was always there. There were other South African playwrights, of course, such as Pieter-Dirk Uys, who pilloried the absurdities of apartheid, and the prolific and commercially successful Gibson Kente or theatrical storytellers such as Gcina Mhlophe. But year after year, for as long as I can remember, Athol wrote the plays that, earlier and more consistently than anyone else, expressed in the public arena the suffering caused by apartheid’s full-frontal attack on what it means to be a human being.
We were never close but, over many decades, we’d run into each other from time to time in Cape Town or in London. Once, as we stood together in a crowded theatre foyer, he shared his view that all South Africans, everyone, whatever power they wielded or how much cash they’d piled up in their bank account, they were all – we were all – thoroughly fucked up (“opbefok” in his words) by apartheid. If you were born there you couldn’t escape the damage living within racism did to your sensibility, to your soul.
