Political Death and Neo-racism: Styles in Sizwe Bansi is Dead (original) (raw)
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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...
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Man's inhumanity to man is perpetrated through diverse agencies. Twentieth-century South African apartheid was based on racial divides. To fight this discrimination, the Blacks went into struggle against the ruling Whites. To Athol Fugard et al., in Sizwe Bansi Is Dead, a community that cannot fight openly because of fear of arrests, tortures and deaths, assumes other levels of skirmishes. These encoded initiations and symbols are usually understood by initiates of the struggle. Examining some textual initiatory events and symbolisms utilized in the struggle, this paper posits that the oppressed create fighting tools against repressive policies established by either the state or individuals. These, most times, ensure that freedom is attained.
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