Fear and Laughing in South Africa

Few people could show the South African Parliament what not to do with a banana and a condom — and get a standing ovation. But political satirist and provocateur Pieter-Dirk Uys did just that with a special parliamentary performance of his one-man show Foreign Aids earlier this year. And at London’s Tricycle Theatre this week, audiences are responding as enthusiastically to the play, in which Uys transforms himself into a handful of characters — or caricatures — to expose the hypocrisy and ignorance surrounding Africa’s AIDS crisis.

His onstage incarnations include Dr. Thaboo MacBeki — any resemblance to South African President Thabo Mbeki is entirely intentional — who exclaims: “My mind is made up! Do not confuse me with facts.” There’s also ex-stripper Bambi Kellerman, who believes that “racism is easier to catch than AIDS.” In between characters, Uys tells sobering stories from the AIDS frontline: of schools that refuse to install condom-dispensing machines because they don’t want to encourage sex; of the urban legend that raping a virgin cures the disease.

The son of a German-Jewish mother and an Afrikaans father, Uys, 56, began his career as a playwright in the early 1970s but found his work banned. Undeterred, he donned a frowzy dress and created his famous alter ego, Evita Bezuidenhout, the saccharine-sweet wife of a conservative politician — and used her character to lampoon apartheid’s absurdities in farces like Adapt or Dye and Skating on Thin Uys. His Evita not only escaped the censors — she soon had the nation eating out of her well-manicured hand.

After the end of apartheid, Uys found plenty to satirize in the new “designer democracy.” In 1995, he was back onstage with You ANC Nothing Yet, followed by Truth Omissions in 1996. “I had to be careful to offend everybody equally,” he explains with a twinkle in his eye. Still, times had changed in South Africa, and two years ago Uys decided to hang up his wigs in his home town of Darling, 100 km north of Cape Town. “I felt the moral high ground had been leveled,” he says. But then, concerned by the “AIDS is from Venus and HIV is from Mars” stance of the government, Uys found himself on the road again, this time visiting impoverished schools with a free and very frank show about safe sex called For Facts’ Sake.

Foreign Aids is not just a consciousness raiser. It’s also a fund raiser for charities close to Uys’ heart, like Wola Nani, a refuge for HIV-positive teenage mothers. Next year, he plans to add a further 400 schools to the 160 he has already visited. Before then, he will take Foreign Aids to the Netherlands and possibly to New York. His comic treatment of a deadly serious subject has not escaped criticism, but Uys is unrepentant. “If just one child remembers something that will save his life, that’s got to be worth it.”

Q&A

Q: I assume you’re referring to President Thabo Mbeki’s controversial stance on AIDS?
A: You know, 99% of the world knows that HIV leads to AIDS. We’re governed by the 1% who doesn’t. If we don’t confront AIDS, 70% of our people will die. In the old South Africa we killed people, now we’re letting them die. What’s worse? And even when they try to get it right, they get it wrong. Last year the Department of Health gave out 44 million free condoms with instructions in 11 languages stapled to them! That’s 44 million death warrants!

Q: You’re a white, middle-aged, gay man telling predominantly black schoolchildren about safe sex. Why do they listen to you?
A: Firstly, I’m not a parent. I’m not a teacher or a preacher. I’m an entertainer with a box of tricks. Secondly, I chat with them as equals, using words they understand. When 10-year-old boys are becoming fathers and nine-year-old girls are selling their bodies for food, you can’t say to them: “Sex is for adults. Do your homework!” We all have to play a game of blind man’s buff with our eyes open. We’re all just people who are terrified of dying from love.