Christmas eve—on the road from Cape Town—at the Riversdale Petrol Station a truckload of coloured trippers going to Port Elizabeth and a few coloured musicians from the location and the odd carload of whites passing late along the road, all at the café.

Carols and Boere-musiek and ‘Heppy-heppy!’ ‘We’er all the same, hey!’ and a lot of other Christmas sentiments. It was 1 a.m.

This same petrol station about five years ago when I was waiting, late at night, for a lift. Moths—thousands of them—around the lamp in the room where I sat with the night attendant.

Veld sound—pebbles rubbed together—a small, clean, rounded sound.

Pre-dawn at Knysna. The cocks crowing, calling and answering each other in all quarters of the town. Breeze from the sea moving through the big oaks in the main street. Stars reflected on wet corrugated iron roofs.

Dawn on the road. First it was a black silhouette having no depth, running beside us, unfolding and changing as shapes loomed, humped against the paling sky.

At a moment there was depth and difference—the cold shapes that lie between black and smoke-grey, and the depth of the koppie unhurried on the horizon and the impatience of tree and house and rock and river, rushing past.

Then, taking a bend in the road, facing east now, light and colour, the sore red of the soil where the road had cut through the groin of a hill.

Port Elizabeth: Back in the Bird Street flat.

Dependence—Dad. Nothing left in his life—the limits of it shrunk to his corporeal possession of the world. Twenty-four hours a day of nothing.

With his cards, playing patience. Glenda: ‘You play patience a lot, don’t you, Dad!’ Dad: ‘Yes. Anything to pass the time, darling. Anything at all.’

Dependence. Relationship with my mother.

Hate–Love. Where is my life? What is left—tell me. What is left?

And myself, charming away the pain, the truth of the pain, the impatience, the revolt, with words, mouthing clichés about ‘You’ve got so far’ etc., ‘right thinking’, ‘courage’. Hiding from the fact, the reality behind verbiage.

Story (contd)—The Kid. Boston—clever and a coward—he could read. Die Aap—strength. Butcher—sadist.

Cripple in Mom’s café in St George’s Park—twisted, shrivelled legs. Pulled himself along by his hands—wearing leather gloves. On his head an umbrella—small, two-foot diameter—attached by a circle of thin metal rods to a band round his forehead. Earns his living pulling out weeds in the park nursery.

January 1961

Story (contd)—The reality of what you recognise and admit to exist. Conscious = present—drifting impulse, motive and purpose. Subconscious deeper morality.

The even darker regions where the images live.

Tsotsi—progression is an admission of an ever deeper dimension to his living.

Tsotsi—a freedom (1) to choose his victim. (2) Not to have a victim.

About the Author

Athol Fugard is one of the world’s greatest living dramatists. His career spans fifty years of playwriting, stage and film acting, and directing. He has worked in South Africa, on and off Broadway and in London. His best known plays include The Blood Knot, Boesman and Lena, Sizwe Banzi is Dead, Master Harold … and the Boys, Sorrows and Rejoicings and most recently Exits and Entrances. Among the films in which he has appeared are Gandhi, The Killing Fields, Meetings with Remarkable Men and Marigolds in August.