1. However, see Black Theatre in South Africa, International Defence and Aid fact paper on Southern Africa, 2 (June 1976); Rente, G. and others, South African People's Plays, (African Writers Series, 1981)Google Scholar; McLaren, Robert, ‘Theatre and Cultural Struggle in South Africa: aspects of theatre on the Witwatersrand between 1958 and 1976’, (unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Leeds, 1979)Google Scholar; Mshengu, , ‘After Soweto; People's Theatre and the Political Struggle in South Africa’ in Theatre Quarterly, 9, No. 33 (1979), 31–8Google Scholar. See also feature on theatre in South Africa in Theatre Quarterly, 7, No. 28 (1977) and all issues of S'ketsh', the South African people's theatre magazine – address: New Classic Publications, P.O. Box 5417, Benoni South 1502, South Africa.

2. Fugard's plays have provoked another common response: ‘Athol Fugard is not a political writer’ or Fugard's work is not ‘protest writing’, as if not being these things is a literary virtue. Underlying this response is a characteristic nervousness about political art which needs to be challenged but which it is not, however, the aim of this essay to do.

3. The two sections that follow – Culture and politics in South Africa and Indigenous theatre traditions in South Africa – are brief and concentrated and at times assert that which ought to be argued. For a fuller treatment of these topics I can only refer the reader to my unpublished dissertation, ‘Theatre and Cultural Struggle in South Africa’, (see Note 1 above) upon which these sections are based.

4. E.g. Wolpe, Harold, ‘Class, Race and the Occupational Structure’, in Institute of Commonwealth Studies, No. 18: South Africa, Vol. 5 (1973–1974), 105–20Google Scholar; and ‘Capitalism and cheap Labour power in South Africa: From segregation to apartheid’, in Economy and Society, Vol. 1 (1972), 425–56CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and No Sizwe, , One Azania, One Nation (London, 1979)Google Scholar. See also works by Martin Legassik and Frederick Johnstone in the context of South Africa and Eugene D. Genovese in the context of Afro-American studies.

5. ‘“Rule” is expressed in directly political forms and in times of crisis by direct or effective coercion. But the more normal situation is a complex interlocking of political, social and cultural forces, and “hegemony”, according to different interpretations, is either this or the active social and cultural forces which are its necessary elements.’ – Williams, Raymond, Marxism and Literature (London, 1977) p. 108Google Scholar. See also Gramsci, Antonio, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, edited and translated by Hoare, Q. and Smith, G. N. (London, 1971), p. 12Google Scholar. Re intellectuals, see Gramsci, (1971), pp. 5–23Google Scholar. For a short study of Gramsci's writings see Joll, James, Gramsci (Glasgow, 1977).Google Scholar

6. This ideology was expressed in classic form by the English-speaking mining magnate, Oppenheimer, H. F. in ‘Towards Racial Harmony’, Optima, supplement to 6, No. 3 (09 1956).Google Scholar

7. Biko, Stephen Bantu, I Write What I Like (London, 1979), p. 41.Google Scholar

8. For Hottentot and Bushman forms see Schapera, I., The Khoisan Peoples of South Africa (London, 1930)Google Scholar and Doke, C. M., ‘Games, Plays and Dances of the Khomani Bushmen’, in Bantu Studies, 10 (1936)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For that of ‘Bantu-speaking’ peoples see Kunene, D. P., Heroic Poetry of the Basotho (Oxford, 1971)Google Scholar, Scheub, Harold, ‘The Technique of the Expansible Image in Xhosa Ntsomi-performances’, in Research in African Literatures, 1, No. 2 (1970)Google Scholar, The Bantu-speaking Tribes of South Africa, edited by Schapera, I. (Cape Town, 1953)Google Scholar. For descriptions of dramatic and musical entertainment and ritual suggesting developed, more specifically dramatic forms, see descriptions by Delagorgue and Gardiner of celebrations at the court of Dingane, the Zulu king, summarized in Krige, E. J., The Social System of the Zulus (Pietermaritzburg, 1965), pp. 342–4Google Scholar. H. I. E. Dhlomo and Credo V. Mutwa have also advanced claims that such developed forms existed in pre-colonial Southern Africa. For these see Dhlomo, H. I. E., ‘Drama and the African’, in South African Outlook, 66 (1936)Google Scholar, ‘African Drama and Poetry’ in the same journal, 69 (1939)Google Scholar, Mutwa, Credo V., ‘On the Theatre of Africa’, in S'ketsh' (Summer 1973)Google Scholar and ‘Umlinganiso … The Living Imitation’, S'ketsh' (Summer 1974/1975)Google Scholar. See also Mutwa's Unosilimela in Kente, G., South African People's Plays (African Writer's Series, 1981).Google Scholar

9. For information on, but not interpretation of, these plays see Gerard, Albert S., Four African Literatures (Berkeley, 1971).Google Scholar

10. See Gerard. Re The Pass T. J. Couzens writes: ‘The frustration of this privileged-class-which-is-not-a-privileged-class of blacks is reflected in H. I. E. Dhlomo's unpublished play The Pass, where the hero's exemption certificate is not accepted by the police and he lands in jail – it is a play where the corruption of the pass system is also exposed.’ From ‘The Social Ethos of Black Writing in South Africa 1920–50’, in Aspects of South African Literature, edited Heywood, Christopher (London, 1976).Google Scholar

11. Roux, E., Time Longer Than Rope, second edition (Madison, 1964), p. 312.Google Scholar

12. Bloom, H., King Kong (London, 1961), pp. 7–8.Google Scholar

13. Programme note to African Music and Drama Association's ‘Three One-Act Plays’ (1961).

14. Programme note to Union Artists' King Kong (1959).

15. Sipho Sepamla in S'ketsh' (Winter 1979), p. 18.

16. ‘Black Theatre in South Africa’, International Defence and Aid fact paper on Southern Africa, 2 (June 1976).

17. I was deeply involved in the work of Experimental Theatre Workshop '71. The assessment of this group is therefore better left to an independent observer. However, I feel I should make it clear that right from the beginning we were quite aware of the need to base our theatre work in the languages and culture of the majority, and in fact we virtually pioneered the use of ‘tsotsitaal’ and other urban dialects as legitimate languages of the theatre. By about 1976, too, we were advancing beyond racial protest towards a socialist consciousness, and this determined both the structure of our organization and the nature of its work.

18. The Necessity of Art (Harmondsworth, 1978), p. 210.Google Scholar

19. According to Nkosi, Lewis (South African Information and Analysis, 05, 1968Google Scholar, Paris, and an interview with myself in 1979), No-Good Friday was also a collaborative play, although Fugard to my knowledge does not acknowledge it as such.

20. Crossroads is an ‘illegal’ squatter settlement near Cape Town which in the last few years has put up a heroic resistance against forced removal, in the process developing some effective agitational theatre.

21. South African Information and Analysis, May 1968.

22. Both Nkosi (interview, 1979) and Bloke Modisane, who acted in the play, report (Modisane, in Blame Me on History (London, 1963), pp. 290–1)Google Scholar that when regulations at the white Brian Brooke Theatre in Johannesburg would not permit Fugard's performance in No-Good Friday as the white priest, Father Higgins, the cast preferred to cancel the performances. Fugard argued that the show should go on with Nkosi in the role, as it was ‘a big break’. In the end Fugard had his way and the play was performed with an all black cast.

23. For instance, in his interview with Benson, Mary in Theatre Quarterly, 7, No. 28 (1977), 77–83.Google Scholar

24. See his defence of this about-face in the Benson interview and in the introduction to Boesman and Lena and other Plays (Oxford, 1978).Google Scholar

25. Fugard's equation of ‘a man alone’ and ‘being alone’ is another aspect of his work one might explore. Male chauvinism is a dominant aspect of South African writing in general and yet another lesson we and Athol Fugard need to learn.

26. ‘Satire in Nigeria’ in Protest and Conflict in African Literature, edited by Pieterse, Cosmo and Munro, Donald (London 1969), p. 69.Google Scholar

27. The socialist artist in South Africa does not have to declare his/her socialism. There are many ways of fighting the socialist cause in art and literature in South Africa without offering the state the opportunity to crush one.