For you in the West to hear the phrase 'All men are created equal' is to draw a yawn. For us, it's a miracle. We're starting out at rock bottom, man. But South Africa does have soul.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the significant difference in perception of equality based on cultural and social contexts.
Athol Fugard's quote highlights the disparity in the understanding of equality between the West and South Africa, where the notion of 'all men are created equal' feels miraculous for those who have faced severe oppression and inequality. It reflects the struggle for recognition and justice in a society starting from a position of deep disadvantage, while also affirming the enduring spirit and resilience of South African identity.
In practice
In a speech about social justice, this quote can be used to illustrate the ongoing struggle for equality.
What I quickly discovered is that our so-called new South Africa has as much material for a story-teller as the old one. The landscape hasn't really changed. Who is in power now is different to who was in power then, but the squatter camps grow like cancer, the rich get richer, the poor get poorer.
For most of my writing life, I've refused to allow myself to believe that writing was a significant form of action. I always felt very uneasy about the fact that all I did was write in a situation as desperate as apartheid South Africa. Whether I was correct or not is a different issue.
You'll see that the strong, the affirmative, the positive voice in any of the plays I've written is that of a woman. My men are, well, not quite worthless, but they are certainly weak, and that reflects the reality I grew up with and what I think has in a sense shaped me.
I can't think of a single one of my plays that does not represent a coincidence between an external and an internal event. Something outside of me, outside even my own life, something I read in a newspaper or witness on the street, something I see or hear, fascinates me. I see it for its dramatic potential.
As fascinated as I was by words on paper, it was matched by my fascination with words in people's mouths. The spoken word. And that is the world of theatre.
Nothing incites to money-crimes like great poverty or great wealth.
She thought it was part of the hardship of her life that there was laid upon her the burthen of larger wants than others seemed to feel β that she had to endure this wide hopeless yearning for that something, whatever it was, that was greatest and best on this earth.
I can well imagine an athiest's last words: "White, white! L-L-Love! My God!" - and the deathbed leap of faith. Whereas the agnostic, if he stays true to his reasonable self, if he stays beholden to dry, yeastless factuality, might try to explain the warm light bathing him by saying "Possibly a f-f-failing oxygenation of the b-b-brain," and, to the very end, lack imagination and miss the better story.
Men have been obliged to make for themselves a notion of what religion is, long before the science of religions started its methodical comparisons.
No one ever lacks a good reason for suicide.
Men owe us what we imagine they will give us. We must forgive them this debt.
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