IN: Harold Athol Lanigan Fugard OIS (born 11 June 1932) is a South African playwright, novelist, actor, and director who writes in South African English. He is best known for his political plays opposing the system of apartheid and for the 2005 Academy Award-winning film of his novel Tsotsi, directed by Gavin Hood. Fugard is an adjunct professor of playwriting, acting and directing in the Department of Theatre and Dance at the University of California, San Diego. For the academic year 2000-2001, he was the IU Class of 1963 Wells Scholar Professor at Indiana University, in Bloomington, Indiana.

Fugard was born as Harold Athol Lanigan Fugard, in Middelburg, Eastern Cape, South Africa, on 11 June 1932. His mother, Marrie ( Potgieter), an Afrikaner, operated first a general store and then a lodging house; his father, Harold Fugard, was a disabled former jazz pianist of Irish, English and French Huguenot descent. In 1935, his family moved to Port Elizabeth. In 1938, he began attending primary school at Marist Brothers College. After being awarded a scholarship, he enrolled at a local technical college for secondary education and then studied Philosophy and Social Anthropology at the University of Cape Town, but he dropped out of the university in 1953, a few months before final examinations. He left home, hitchhiked to North Africa with a friend, and then spent the next two years working in east Asia on a steamer ship, the SS Graigaur, where he began writing, an experience "celebrated" in his 1999 autobiographical play The Captain's Tiger: a memoir for the stage.  In September 1956, he married Sheila Meiring, a University of Cape Town Drama School student whom he had met the previous year. Now known as Sheila Fugard, she is a novelist and poet. The couple have since divorced. Their daughter, Lisa Fugard, is also a novelist.  The Fugards moved to Johannesburg in 1958, where he worked as a clerk in a Native Commissioners' Court, which "made him keenly aware of the injustices of apartheid." He was good friends with prominent local anti-apartheid figures, which had a profound impact on Fugard, whose plays' political impetus brought him into conflict with the national government; to avoid prosecution, he had his plays produced and published outside South Africa. A former alcoholic, Athol Fugard has been teetotal since the early 1980s.  For several years Fugard lived in San Diego, California, where he taught as an adjunct professor of playwriting, acting, and directing in the Department of Theatre and Dance at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD). In 2012, Fugard relocated to South Africa, where he now lives permanently. In 2016, in New York City Hall, Fugard was married to South African writer and academic Paula Fourie. Fugard and Fourie presently live in the Cape Winelands region of South Africa.
QUESTION: Did he face any injustices?
IN: Tenacious D is an American rock duo that was formed in Los Angeles, California in 1994. Composed of lead vocalist and guitarist Jack Black and lead guitarist and vocalist Kyle Gass, the band has released three albums - Tenacious D (2001), The Pick of Destiny (2006) and Rize of the Fenix (2012). Tenacious D's studio releases, and (as of 2006) its live performances, feature a full band lineup, including such musicians as guitarist John Konesky and bassist John Spiker. Drummer Dave Grohl (Foo Fighters, Nirvana) has played on every studio album.

Jack Black and Kyle Gass initially met in Los Angeles in 1985, both members of the theatre troupe, The Actors' Gang. Black admits the duo did not see eye to eye due to animosity between the two, as Gass was the main musician for the Actor's Gang and felt threatened by Black. The Actor's Gang travelled to Edinburgh, Scotland for the Edinburgh Fringe in 1989. They were performing Tim Robbins' and Adam Simon's play Carnage. The two became friends during the trip, and eventually became best friends, with Black regularly visiting Gass' Cochran Avenue studio apartment, in the deal that Gass would teach Black to play guitar in return for food, mainly from fast-food chain Jack in the Box.  Between 1989 and 1994, the two would work at The Actor's Gang together, and would collaborate in productions. Gass and Black wrote their first song in 1994 after Black had been dumped by a girlfriend, this song was scrapped aside from the pair playing it at later Tenacious D concerts as a joke and referencing it in interviews. Their second song came about when Black was listening to Metallica's "One" in 1994 and told Gass that it was the "best song in the world". Gass told Black that they couldn't write the best song in the world but Black put a twist on it and said they could write a tribute. Gass played an A minor chord at his apartment and the two spent three full days crafting the song, when it was done Gass mentioned "they knew they had something". The song made the duo realise their comedic potential.  At their first concert, at Al's Bar (now an apartment complex), the band performed the live debut of "Tribute", their only song at the time, and the duo also gave the audience the chance to vote for their name. Black and Gass gave them the choice between "Pets or Meat", "Balboa's Biblical Theatre" and "The Axe Lords Featuring Gorgazon's Mischief" (Gass' personal favorite). "Tenacious D"--a basketball term used by commentators to describe robust defensive positioning in basketball --did not get the majority of votes, however, but according to Black "we forced it through". The venue had become a hotbed for upcoming bands due to the success of Nirvana and the Red Hot Chili Peppers, so much so that in attendance was David Cross who later cast Jack Black in his sketch comedy television series, Mr. Show.  In 1995, the band supported the band, Tool, during their Californian leg. Black attended UCLA with director Jason Bloom, therefore, when Bloom was made the director of 1996's Bio-Dome, Black and Gass were invited to perform a short song in the film. The two wrote the song, "5 Needs", and this was their first on-screen appearance as Tenacious D. Black and Gass also performed their song "Jesus Ranch" in the 1998 film, Bongwater. Tenacious D recorded their songs "Tribute", "Kyle Quit the Band", "Krishna" and "History" and released them in a demo tape called Tenacious Demo, in the mid-1990s with Andrew Gross, distributing it to various record companies until HBO offered them a TV show based upon the tape and Black's work on Mr. Show.
QUESTION:
what were his beginnings?