In 1988 Athol Fugard was in London, directing his play A Place With the Pigs at the National Theatre. I was its executive director at the time, and asked him what he thought about the theatre world’s boycott of apartheid South Africa.
He felt it had achieved nothing, other than to do the work of the censor. In his view, banning ideas is what fascist governments have sought to do throughout history.
While he understood the motives of playwrights such as Arthur Miller, Edward Albee and Harold Pinter, he felt that all their cultural boycott achieved was to deprive South Africans of ideas, and in particular ideas that might influence attitudes and minds.
Athol was not concerned that his was a minority view among even South African writers. It was what he strongly believed.
