The actor and singer Sam Williams has died after a long illness, the Arts and Culture Ministry said on Wednesday.
Arts and Culture Minister Pallo Jordan expressed his condolences to Williams’s family.
”We are very thankful for the life of an African composer, singer, playwright, director and actor whose work expressed the resilience of the human spirit under one of the most brutal systems in the world,” Jordan said.
Williams, who died last Wednesday, began his career when he founded a musical group, the Boston Brothers, and was active as a playwright and composer in the 1960s and 1970s.
He appeared in the first multiracial TV sitcom, Oh! George, and in a one-man show based on a Kafka short story, Report to an Academy.
Foreign talent scouts cast him alongside international stars in such films as Game for Vultures, Whispering Death, Victor/Victoria, Shaka Zulu and Funeral for an Assassin.
”Through the contribution he made, he opened the doors of opportunity for African talent on the global stage. We, as a nation, were truly blessed to have had a man of his calibre among our leading artists,” Jordan said.
Williams will be buried on Saturday at Eldorado in Kliptown in Gauteng. — Sapa