Contextualizing womanism: Representations of black women in the plays of Athol Fugard and Zakes Mda

The dramatic writing of South African playwrights Athol Fugard and Zakes Mda, encompasses a broad range of pieces that reveal and engage the socio-economic and political conditions created by apartheid public policy and practice and their effect on individuals and society. Their plays capture collective experiences shaped and influenced by race-based, male-centered, capitalist policies that diminished the private lives and spaces of African women. Using the framework of African Womanist theories, this dissertation rereads selected plays of Fugard and Mda with a focus on issues of gender, in particular, and race and class, in general, and the challenges of African women in South African society. The study identifies three thematic and issue clusters---voice, power and value---as the principal points of entry for the exploration and analysis of the representations of black women in the plays of Fugard and Mda. The content analysis of the plays focuses on how the playwrights treat the issues of (1) voice and voicelessness, (2) power and powerlessness, and (3) the value and devaluation of women of color.;Specifically, the study examines issues such as (1) abandonment of women by men and its effect on women, wives, and mothers due to apartheid policies, (2) economic empowerment of women during apartheid through .shebeens., prostitution, and domestic work, and (3) the overall will to survive and resist as a woman in a space that dictates social status based on race. Both Fugard and Mda engage these issues in their theatrical writing, however, the critical scholarship on these aspects of their work is not substantial. This study also draws on and makes references to the dramatic work of selected black South African women playwrights in order to enable a more complex and expanded understanding of South African theatre in general and the ways issues of race, class, and gender are discussed in a broad context.