DRAMA AND THE RHYTHMS OF SOCIAL REALITY: A SOCIOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVE ON ATHOL FUGARD'S SIZWE BANSI IS DEAD (original) (raw)
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2017
In their creative works, African writers usually deal with issues concerning their various societies. They talk and discuss social, political, economic and many other problems that affect their immediate societies. For many dramatists, exploring different techniques to discuss issues of utmost importance to them is a big problem. The reason is that the techniques define the success or otherwise of the play they write as far as literary style is concerned. Athol Fugard and his co-writers Winston Ntsona and John Kani lived and wrote the play Sizwe Bansi is Dead during the era of apartheid in South Africa. They witnessed many of the injustices that happened during the apartheid era. In steering their play to a conclusion that leaves their readers and theatre audience feeling extremely satisfied that they had enjoyed the play, Fugard and his co-writers adopt techniques in drama to create a virtual realism that sends the audience wondering whether or not they were in the centre of the ...
Apartheid Laws and the Oppressed in South Africa: An Example of Athol Fugard's Sizwe Bansi is Dead
2018
The situation that is obtainable in South Africa judging from the historical and socio-political perspective is one in which the black majority lived under the oppressive apartheid regime designed, manipulated and controlled by the white minority. Racial discrimination, an inherent effect of the apartheid policy of the white minority has reduced the blacks to a state of the underprivileged in their fatherland. Racial discrimination in this respect means the state of feeling estranged or separated from one's environment, culturally, socially, economically, politically and otherwise. Its effects on the sociological well being of the individual cannot be overemphasized. The dramatic works of Athol Fugard, a South Africa playwright, have had close sympathy for the situation of the life of blacks in South Africa. The major literary themes of his plays include racial segregation, oppression, deprivation and subjugation. These and the inherent effects of the apartheid laws on the oppre...
Protest without Placards: Themes and Techniques in Athol Fugard’s Anti-Apartheid Plays
This paper examines Athol Fugard’s creative exploitation of the means of drama in garnished protest against South Africa’s apartheid. The focus is on his three plays: “Sizwe Banzi is Dead," "The Island," and "Statements after an Arrest under the Immorality Act,” in the collection entitled Statements: Three Plays. The paper explores Fugard’s unique introspection into human emotions, his themes on the depersonalising system, and his furtive techniques arising from his social context of creative censor.
Mythotypes and Sociological Imports in the Apartheid World of Sizwe Bansi is Dead
Oppression of man by man has been a common phenomenon from time immemorial. This subjugation has mostly been subtle, insidious and debilitating, especially of the oppressed and the common people. This paper examines the apartheid South African world in Sizwe Bansi is Dead, and exposes tacit, discreet but mythically destructive avenues that Athol Fugard, Wiston Ntshona and John Kani opine oppressors have always archetypically drawn from. The paper allows that freedom is possible if the oppressed are introspective, creative, focussed, and do not get themselves lost in the ‘dangerous dreams’ of their oppressors. They must, like Styles, Sizwe and Buntu in the examined text, be able to create, archetypically too, like their oppressors, new songs, new myths and new weaponry and strategies to unchain themselves. Keywords: South Africa, Athol Fugard, apartheid, mythic, archetypal, freedom, oppression.