South African Plays

In theatre class lately, we have been talking about African theatre, and one of our units was on South Africa. I found it interesting that after apartheid was ended, there was a dryspell of theatric material. It seems as though every playwright in South Africa had been writing out against apartheid, and now that it was over, they had a lack of material to write with. I guess my question is this: How much can an piece of art: be it a painting, a book, or a play, affect a culture's ideas and understandings?