Creating a ‘deplorable impression’: the Dryden Society’s 1969 tour of South Africa and the making of End of the Dialogue

ABSTRACT In July 1969, the Dryden Society, a University of Cambridge performing arts group, arrived in South Africa for a three month tour. Prior to its departure from the United Kingdom, the group’s decision to break the cultural boycott, imposed in response to apartheid, had already caused significant protest. This article discusses the nature of the campaign to stop the tour, as well as highlighting how the British government became involved. The article also demonstrates how, despite having no official support, the tour should be viewed within the prism of British cultural diplomacy, something the British representatives in South Africa were trying to expand at the time. Additionally, the article also draws attention to the ulterior motives of several members of the touring party, who used the tour as cover to clandestinely film the conditions in which South Africa’s black majority lived on behalf of the Pan-Africanist Congress. This was later used to make the critically acclaimed documentary film End of the Dialogue (known in South Africa by its Zulu name of Phela-ndaba) which drew greater international attention to the plight of black South Africans living under apartheid.