Writers: What To Do In The Face of Immorality

 Let's take Athol Fugard (Wikipedia), who recently died, as an example. It seems even more appropriate while Elon Musk, another South African, goes about destroying America.

Athol Fugard obituary (The Guardian)

Apartheid in South Africa cut both ways. The white Afrikaner playwright Athol Fugard, who has died aged 92, was not allowed inside a black township in his home country for many years, so was heavily reliant on black actors keeping him informed on how life was – and wasn’t – for them and their families.

His collaboration with two of them, John Kani and Winston Ntshona, from the township of New Brighton near Fugard’s home in Port Elizabeth, in the early 1970s, resulted in three extraordinary plays; they dealt with the injustices and absurdities of the apartheid era in profoundly moving dramas of great eloquence and dignity of spirit.

Appreciation: Playwright Athol Fugard bore witness to apartheid  (Los Angeles Times)

W.H. Auden, meditating on the role of the artist in a poem by W.B. Yeats, concluded that poetry “makes nothing happen.” While generally true, the precept doesn’t hold in the case of playwright Athol Fugard, whose body of work helped transform the history of his nation.

Remembering The South African Playwright Who Defied Apartheid : Fresh Air (NPR) 

Athol Fugard spoke truth to apartheid South Africa (The Economist)

sch 3/13