The Play ‘Fences’ A Powerful Depiction of the Struggles of Black Life In America… and South Africa

Fences probably assumes a range of charged resonances for South African audiences. Aptly, the first professionally staged play that August Wilson watched was South African playwright Athol Fugard’s Sizwe Bansi Is Dead, which exposes the humiliating injustice of apartheid South Africa’s pass laws, a system that rigidly controlled the movements of black people and their right to work.

The parallels between apartheid as an oppressive system of white minority rule and the US before civil rights are striking. Troy Maxson’s ample personality strains against such a structure of shrunken opportunities for his roiling energy. So, his frustration turns back on itself, poisoning his manhood and steadily damaging his family relationships.

In post-apartheid South Africa, the perspective should, of course, be different. The country’s constitution explicitly outlaws racial discrimination, while the US – in theory, at least – has progressed beyond overtly discriminatory practices. Nonetheless, deeply seared memories and the consequent wounding remain.

The same principle would apply to the persisting traumatic inheritances of apartheid. Many communities in South Africa continue feeling the remorseless grip of the past in their endurance of disadvantage and alienation. They are still on the wrong side of the fence, while canny (or corrupt) others have expediently fixed the boundaries of privilege.

Although Wilson insists on representing the concrete elements of African American history, he equally embraces the universality of theatre as a medium for distilling human concerns:

Love, honor, duty, betrayal belong and pertain to every culture and every race.

In its closing scene, Fences reaches towards healing through forgiveness and a glimmering hope for a freer future. These impulses will speak to many post-apartheid South Africans too.