(Re)living moments with Athol Fugard (1932–2025)

Athol Fugard was 92 when he died, yet, for many of us, his death still felt unexpected, a shock.In the tributes that circulated directly afterwards, Janice Honeyman spoke about her shock at realising that theatre-makers like herself had lost a vital compass in Fugard's "incredible honesty" 1 as well as penetrating psychological insight into what makes us who we are.For Dennis Walder, a leading Fugard scholar who has interviewed Fugard and published widely on his plays over several decades, it was his sense that Fugard has always been a survivor. 2However, what perhaps best explains this reaction is that, as David Attwell wrote in a personal communication (10 March 2025) on the day the news broke, Fugard had become "part of the fabric of our lives".At the same time, for those born after the 1990s, the two early plays written in collaboration with John Kani and Winston Ntshona, Sizwe Bansi is Dead (1973) and The Island (1973), as well as Boesman and Lena (1969), Master Harold and the Boys (1982), and My Children, My Africa (1989), serve as cultural