Pakistan, March 14 -- Athol Fugard, the South African playwright whose work explored the racial oppressions of apartheid, died at the age of 92.

Throughout six decades, Fugard produced more than 30 plays, to great public and critical acclaim.

Born in 1932 in Middelburg, Cape Province, Athol Fugard was the only child from a father of Irish and English descent and an Afrikaner mother, who ran a teashop and became the main breadwinner of the family. Athol Fugard was 16 when South Africa introduced the apartheid regime in 1948.

His first major play, "The Blood Knot", premiered in 1961. Set in South Africa, it confronts two brothers who share the same Black mother but have different fathers: one of them can pass as a white man whilst the ot...