Sizwe Bansi Is Dead & The Island

by Athol Fugard, John Kani, Winston Ntshona

Genres: Plays, Drama, Africa, South Africa, Theatre, Fiction, School

79 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1976

About the author

Athol Fugard was a South African playwright, novelist, actor, and director widely regarded as South Africa's greatest playwright. Acclaimed in 1985 as "the greatest active playwright in the English-speaking world" by Time, he published more than thirty plays. He was best known for his political and penetrating plays opposing the system of apartheid, some of which have been adapted to film. His novel Tsotsi was adapted as a film of the same name, which won an Academy Award in 2005. It was directed by Gavin Hood.
Fugard also served as an adjunct professor of playwriting, acting and directing in the Department of Theatre and Dance at the University of California, San Diego.
Fugard received many awards, honours, and honorary degrees, including the Order of Ikhamanga in Silver from the government of South Africa in 2005 "for his excellent contribution and achievements in the theatre". He was also an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. Fugard was honoured in Cape Town with the opening in 2010 of the Fugard Theatre in District Six. He received a Tony Award for lifetime achievement in 2011.

Reviews

[Sam · Rating 5 out of 5]

Denoucing with sarcasm and symbolism, oh, how I like that!

[Illiterate · Rating 3 out of 5]

Anti-apartheid plays depicting the state’s bureaucratic and punitive apparatuses. Still important.

[Michael · Rating 3 out of 5]

It seems like I can only bring myself to read magazine articles and plays these days. I can't pay attention any longer than that.

A strikingly simple play set in an industrail hub of South Africa, this play deals with identity in a world controlled by bureaucracies and institutional racism. Fugard makes Apartheid look like Big Brother from 1984. Of course I'm oversimplifying and the story deals more with personal identity than cultural or national identity - and this theme is easily translated to a world where we pick internet monikers and stage names through which we express ourselves. What's in a name? Would I be me without my name?

I'm going to see the play performed at the Brooklyn Academy of Music tonight, so maybe the live setting will shed some more light of this well-constructed, but maybe simplistic play.

[Phillip · Rating 5 out of 5]

At first I did not really care for this play, at least compared to the other Fugard play I've read, which I liked a lot. However, in the class I am sitting in on, we started discussing and watching a video version, and that really illuminated aspects of the play I hadn't initially considered. The conflict, embodied in spatial settings as well as attitudes, between the possibilities of dreams and the reality of apartheid gives the play a dynamic framework, making its anti-apartheid stance all the more violent. Not only does the play react to the harsh realities of apartheid oppression, it shows the emptiness of the few dreams apartheid allowed. But, this play also shows those dreams as psychical spaces for resistance to apartheid and its dehumanizing system of passbooks and restrictions.

[Tess · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sizwe- 4/5

Island- 3.9/5

[Jill · Rating 3 out of 5]

Read for school. Another powerful account of apartheid. Definitely a must read!

[Vansa · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’ve never read anything by Athol Fugard. This is an incredibly powerful work, written with John Kani and Winston Ntshona. In apartheid South Africa, all non-white citizens were required to have an identity book, called a Pass Card, that heavily restricted movement around the country. The repressive government wanted to restrict migration to cities, after having gutted agriculture by the unlawful seizure of land in the countryside. Athol Fugard worked as a law clerk at the Native Commissioner’s Court, in Johannesburg, and saw the effects of this firsthand, with Black citizens disproportionately being convicted for purported violations of this requirement, apart from the unbelievable unfairness ofplacing race-based restrictions on the movement of citizens in a country. This play explores this, throughthe story of one man, Sizwe Bansi, who moves from his home in Qonce (then known as King Williams Town) to Port Elizabeth , in search of employment. His adventures (or misadventures, such as they are) in trying to navigate the complicated systems of the city form the plot, along with a lot of pointed asides about the surrealism of the situation where a citizen could be jailed for not carrying a little piece of paper, issued by people who hailed from a different country and who had ,for all practical purposes,stolen the land. It’s amazing to me that the playwrights mange to infuse the play with humour-the opening anecdote of a very important visit to a Ford factory, for instance, which is hilariously described, with all the pretensions of the white manager being punctured when he discovers his relative unimportance. Ultimately joyful, Sizwe Bansi is dead does not let you forget the darkness and thehorrific oppression at the core of the play.

[charles · Rating 3 out of 5]

identity-formation, individuation, individualism. a sequence of 'i's, the calling card of the civilised west. sizwe bansi is dead is a scathing indictment of the 'i' - note: the same 'i' for 'indexicality' - as nothing more than a manmade ontological playing field where the stability of the 'i'-class coasts on the intertwined packages of blood, sinew and flesh beneath it. for it is not enough to merely dehumanise: the inhuman must desire the human. so, a question: if we cease to need an 'i' to simply be - as a series of organs, as a species that propagates itself for survival, as mere matter prior to identity - is this suicide, or resistance?

[Cameron Krogh Stone · Rating 3 out of 5]

NOTE: This review focuses solely on Sizwe Bansi.

A curious apartheid play where a black man without a valid work permit is saved by assuming a dead man's identity - one who's permit is valid.

It's sweet and lighthearted manner effectively conveys a sad truth; in order to sustain oneself and one's family during apartheid, countless non-whites had to find any way possible to stay in the areas where there was work to be had. This posed a constant risk to their lives and freedom (or as much of it as they could be said to have had under the oppressive regime).

[Karen S · Rating 4 out of 5]

These have been on my 'mental list' for some time...finally read them Funny but sad--how to survive harsh apartheid, with a little humor and a lot of insight. (Also, a quick read)

[Xoliswa]

I want to download the book

[Jessi Johnson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Made me cry

[Evan Stein · Rating 3 out of 5]

Really great, I only wish there was more

[Neel Bapatla · Rating 5 out of 5]

Few works have better informed my understanding of politics like these two plays. I often refrain from demanding people read certain authors, but I think more Americans should read Fugard.

[Ali · Rating 3 out of 5]

نمایش نامه ی اثول فوگارد را باید خواند، نه به این دلیل که شاهکار اند، که نیستند، بلکه به این دلیل که فوگارد یک نمایش نامه نویس از آفریقای جنوبی ست و مسایلی که مطرح می کند با آنچه در مورد وضعیت سیاهان در آمریکا و توسط نویسندگان آمریکایی خوانده ایم، بسیار متفاوت اند. بی تردید یکی از علل مهم این تفاوت آن است که فوگارد اهل یک کشور آفریقایی ست که توسط یک اقلیت سفیدپوست اداره می شده، پس ابتدا به ساکن با وضعیت یک اقلیت سیاه پوست در کشوری مانند آمریکا متفاوت است

سلام، خداحافظ توسط و سی زوئه بانسی مرده است را محمود کیانوش به فارسی برگردانده، و هر دو نمایش نامه را رکن الدین خسروی برای صحنه کارگردانی کرده.

[Fiction Development]

Always an interesting read. Find my review here http://fictioningdevelopment.org/2014...

[Jeremy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Only read Sizwe Bansi

[Murimi Kinyua · Rating 4 out of 5]

Athol Fugard is an excellent playwright. I particularly like how he juxtaposes death and life with the apartheid situation in Southern Africa in "Sizwe Bansi is Dead".

[Daniel · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm sure it pops more in performance. Plotless, but in a cool way? Tough look at apartheid.