Given South Africa’s history of civically and socially promoted racism, Hally’s comments that Sam has “never been a slave” and that “we”-meaning, presumably, “enlightened” white South Africans like Hally-“freed ancestors… long before the Americans,” reveal a blind, even pitiful, ignorance. Even before apartheid, however, racial segregation of a less codified and officially sanctioned form had been the norm in South Africa since Dutch colonial rule began there in the latter part of the 17th century. Eventually, black South Africans were even deprived of their South African citizenship. Under apartheid, South Africans were divided into four official racial groups (“black,” “white,” “coloured,” and “Indian”), with different neighborhoods, beaches, parks, and public services provided to each depending on their racial caste, which was, essentially a hierarchy with socially privileged white South Africans at the top and oppressed black South Africans at the bottom. In 1950, South Africa, including Port Elizabeth where “Master Harold” is set, was two years into a decades-long governmentally sanctioned system of racial segregation and oppression known by its Afrikaans name of apartheid (literally “apart-hood”).

The racial tension among the characters is, in turn, informed by the play’s setting and context.

“Master Harold”… and the boys is a play whose story is wedded to the complex racial relationships among its three characters, the two middle aged black workers, Sam and Willie, and Hally or “Master Harold,” their boss’s son, a white teenager on the verge of manhood.

The sheer audacity