Athol Fugard and the Problematics of the Liberal Critique

Athol Fugard and the Problematics of the Liberal Critique JEANNE COLLERAN National reconciliation could be effected. I thought, on condition that there is no whiteout of memory - provided, I said, that we break open the silences, that we get all the repressed unsaid things out in the open. BTeyten BreytenbachI Effecting reconciliation: such has been the subject of Athol Fugard's writing during the past decade and by extension its political project. His most recent drama reflects, as his work has always done, a moment in South African history : the crucial present moment of apartheid's dismantling, of the political process currently underway which seeks reconciliation and attempts coalition even as it allows for the continued enfranchisement of the white minority. Despite the enonnOllS differences between what motivated the former Nationalist government to hegin the rapprochement and what has always moved Fugard to write, in the perverse workings out of the recent changes in South Africa, the desire for enfranchisement and for reconciliation are shared desires, evident both in the political rhetoric which de KIerk employed and in the theatrical language Fugard devised. For those of us who have admired and followed Athol Fugard's career in the theatre, it seems anathema to find any commonality in his hopes for the future of South Africa and those expressed by the former Nationalist government . Accustomed to thinking of Fugard as an oppositional writer, we find it discomfiting to find him in another capacity. But just as South African history has shifted, so has Fugard's position along the continuum of social, political, and cultural debate, moving from an adversarial stance to a more conciliatory one. This change has involved neither .cquiesence nor complicity on the playwright 's part; in regard to the de Klerk government, for example, Fugard asserted as ever a "deep skepticism and plain downright distrust of anything coming from the government.,,2 And during the time that the Nationalist government advised citizens that the "time has now come to forget the past' (69), Modern Drama, 38 (1995) 389 390 lEANNE COLLERAN Fugard insisted vehemently that South Africans come to "grips with the violence in Ollf past."3 It is therefore erroneous to confuse the Nationalist. government's rhetoric with Fugard's language or to confiate their social goals. Fugard's denunciation of apartheid is made on ethical grounds; the government dismantled a policy which had become politically "unworkable."4 For Fugard, reconciliation is a moral mandate; for the government it was a pragmatic necessity. Yet the discomfort persists, if not because the views expressed are identical, then because there is nonetheless significant overlap. While I will elaborate further on the historical circumstances which have contributed to this overlap, at least a beginning point, broadly specified, is this: Fugard's politics have remained largely constant over the past thirty years. They have not been modified as much as they have been moved: the context for them has changed, and thus today the liberal anti-government Fugard of the 1950S and 1960s, even were he still to define himself so, is at most a centrist voice, and, to many, a conservative one. Put bluntly: Fugard has never abandoned the liberal view, but the Left to which he formerly belonged has abandoned both liberalism and him. Obliquely, Fugard has acknowledged his reconfigured place in the sphere of South African politics: Just when there was the temptation to start thinking, "Okay, it's the home stretch now," my COllntry throws the biggest drama of my entire life [the release of Nelson Mandela] right in my face. and says "No man! Wait a minute! You've got another guess coming; we've only just started!" ... The past was simple: I was ready to stand and" be counted as a dissident voice. The future will be infinitely more complex - rich, and provoca~ live. There was some disturbing talk recently of cullural commissars and the "correct thing" for artists to say - it sounded a little like the oJd South Africa but from a different perspective. So I guess I'll go on as before, the outsider.s In the United States, where his plays are performed more than they are anywhere else in the world...