:00:00. > :00:15.Now on BBC News it is time for HARDtalk. Welcome to HARDtalk.
:00:16. > :00:22.Leaders who routinely abused their power can't stand to be laughed at.
:00:23. > :00:34.Satire is a potent political weapon. That is a truth that my guest today
:00:35. > :00:39.has exploited for 40 years. Pieter-Dirk Uys starve himself as
:00:40. > :00:48.the most famous white woman in South Africa, thank to his character
:00:49. > :00:53.Evita. He uses her to lampoon Jacob Zuma and the ANC. Are there dangers
:00:54. > :01:22.in playing South Africa's recent history for laughs?
:01:23. > :01:32.Pieter-Dirk, welcome. You have made a career and a life out of humour.
:01:33. > :01:40.Subversive humour. Would you say you are fundamentally driven by anger or
:01:41. > :01:45.is it something else? I think anger is a very important motivation after
:01:46. > :01:50.all these years and especially in the beginning when I was very quiet
:01:51. > :01:59.and very scared of opinion because most of it was illegal. The balance
:02:00. > :02:03.of 49% anger and 51% entertainment. Another word, sympathy. When you
:02:04. > :02:08.target people, and we will talk about the targets you have picked
:02:09. > :02:13.upon whether it be wiped or more recently black, the leaders of your
:02:14. > :02:18.country, is there any sympathy at all with the new? There has to be
:02:19. > :02:27.some compassion, even if they are not on my side. There are some I'd
:02:28. > :02:33.don't. I just find them offensive. They become one line gags. Like that
:02:34. > :02:38.neo-Nazi leader, he deserves just one line. Are there some people you
:02:39. > :02:43.won't laugh at because it is not funny or too serious? I find things
:02:44. > :02:47.for people to laugh out by commenting on them by doing them as
:02:48. > :02:56.characters. I sometimes find it... For example, the Minister of health,
:02:57. > :03:02.during the time when we'd were in denials about AIDS. That was absurd
:03:03. > :03:09.and as obscene but to do her with one of her weeds and to talk like
:03:10. > :03:27.that, I feel uncomfortable. I do not feel right doing that. You come from
:03:28. > :03:31.It seems to me something important must have happened to you to turn
:03:32. > :03:34.you into that young subversive, a young man who actually wanted
:03:35. > :03:37.to mock the system that you were actually, that your family
:03:38. > :03:41.One of your cousins had been a National Party prime minister...
:03:42. > :03:44.The first National Party prime minister, Dr DF Malan, yeah.
:03:45. > :03:47.It was the theatre - it was eventually going
:03:48. > :03:50.to university, having been through the white education,
:03:51. > :03:52.white school, Afrikaans Calvinist Church - God was white.
:03:53. > :03:56.My mother, she committed suicide, which I think was a very important
:03:57. > :04:02.You ended up in theatre, acting and working alongside
:04:03. > :04:11.Which must have been another way in which you started questioning
:04:12. > :04:16.Yes, this definitely happened at the UCT drama department,
:04:17. > :04:20.The UCT was allowed token people of colour.
:04:21. > :04:23.That is the University of Cape Town?
:04:24. > :04:28.We had two - a black man and a young mixed-race coloured man,
:04:29. > :04:33.And there we did scenes together, as brothers, scenes together
:04:34. > :04:42.as all these dramas, and touched, and shouted, and called names.
:04:43. > :04:46.And it was Ibsen, and Brecht, and when we left the drama school
:04:47. > :04:49.we couldn't go anywhere together - it was against the law.
:04:50. > :04:52.We couldn't have a drink, we couldn't go and drink tea,
:04:53. > :04:57.Now, sex made a big difference for me, because I broke the law
:04:58. > :05:01.of actually having sex with somebody who was not only a male but also
:05:02. > :05:04.somebody who was not white, so I broke the law in two places.
:05:05. > :05:06.And I think through that instinctive survival,
:05:07. > :05:12.It took me many years to be able to answer that question.
:05:13. > :05:15.Well, that is a fundamental question and it leads me then
:05:16. > :05:18.to the discussion of this wonderful creation of yours,
:05:19. > :05:22.which has in a sense defined your career,
:05:23. > :05:25.and that is this marvellous lady, Evita Bezuidenhout.
:05:26. > :05:29.And I even managed to pronounce it almost correctly.
:05:30. > :05:35.She is this sort of wonderful Afrikaans woman, obviously creation
:05:36. > :05:43.I think one of the things I enjoyed doing at drama school was make-up,
:05:44. > :05:50.Then, when I started writing plays, the plays were banned
:05:51. > :05:57.by the censor board, and I had to find another
:05:58. > :06:00.way of earning money, so my cat could be fed,
:06:01. > :06:03.and then I thought PW Botha, who gave me the first title
:06:04. > :06:06.to my one-man show - "South Africa, you must adapt
:06:07. > :06:08.or die," and Adapt Or Die was the first show.
:06:09. > :06:11.Six months before that I had a little column
:06:12. > :06:14.in a Sunday newspaper, which a friend of mine gave me,
:06:15. > :06:23."Give us a hundred words every week on your look at where
:06:24. > :06:26.we are in the politics," and I thought one of the things
:06:27. > :06:29.I wanted to do is I wanted to have a female voice.
:06:30. > :06:32.I'm going to create this Afrikaans lady, who at a party
:06:33. > :06:35.in Pretoria can say, "Scotty, have you heard what's happening?"
:06:36. > :06:38.During the information scandal - this was during the late
:06:39. > :06:42.Then when I did my first one-man show, Adapt Or Die,
:06:43. > :06:44.I thought I would do this woman called Evita.
:06:45. > :06:49.In fact, the editor said to me, "Why is it possible that you can say
:06:50. > :06:51.things in your column through her mouth that
:06:52. > :06:53.I'm not allowed to put on the front page?"
:06:54. > :06:56.She had a husband who was a National Party MP.
:06:57. > :07:00.I think she took a bizarre job as the sort of ambassador to one
:07:01. > :07:03.Yes, the black homeland of Bapetikosweti -
:07:04. > :07:10.And all of this was in essence poking fun at this horrible -
:07:11. > :07:13.but also in some ways laughable - system of organised racism
:07:14. > :07:22.Yes, but knowing that my white audience didn't actually
:07:23. > :07:24.think that they were doing anything wrong -
:07:25. > :07:29.They were so frightened of the black terror,
:07:30. > :07:32.of being massacred by black people, that they thought apartheid
:07:33. > :07:35.was the only way to survive, so the hypocrisy behind
:07:36. > :07:38.the Christian, relatively well-educated and probably quite
:07:39. > :07:41.decent society that were allowing these things to happen,
:07:42. > :07:44.that was the basis to Evita, because Evita would condemn
:07:45. > :07:52.Did you, even from those early days in the 80s,
:07:53. > :07:55.find that you were building a black audience for Evita?
:07:56. > :07:58.Yes, we were building a black audience illegally,
:07:59. > :08:00.because it wasn't allowed to have black and white people
:08:01. > :08:05.The first place I worked in was the Space Theatre
:08:06. > :08:08.in Cape Town, which was an unracial theatre, meaning we had broke
:08:09. > :08:11.the laws - many laws - and then the Market Theatre
:08:12. > :08:14.in Johannesburg, where eventually the government eventually gave up
:08:15. > :08:17.on that law and allowed black and white people to sit
:08:18. > :08:22.White people would be sitting there when the lights were on,
:08:23. > :08:25.and then as the lights went down the black people,
:08:26. > :08:28.Not in the foyer, they would slip in.
:08:29. > :08:31.And I would just say to them, "Don't laugh, don't smile,
:08:32. > :08:35.because we will see the whites of your teeth, and you'll be
:08:36. > :08:37.arrested," so the sense of humour was terribly important
:08:38. > :08:40.against the reality of me as a white Afrikaner making fun of apartheid,
:08:41. > :08:45.knowing that if I had been a black South African I would not be alive.
:08:46. > :08:49.We know that some very prominent leaders of the anti-apartheid
:08:50. > :08:55.movement were watching those videos, because it later turned out that
:08:56. > :08:57.Nelson Mandela himself, in Robben Island, had been
:08:58. > :09:02.And let's get our first look now at Evita herself,
:09:03. > :09:05.and in the most iconic circumstances - perhaps one of the most memorable
:09:06. > :09:08.times of your life - actually interviewing Mandela just
:09:09. > :09:11.months after he was released in 1994.
:09:12. > :09:14.Let's play this little video clip, and give everybody an idea
:09:15. > :09:20.We were very scared in the old days, as you'll probably remember.
:09:21. > :09:23.Afrikaners like me were frightened that when black South Africans
:09:24. > :09:25.would take control of South Africa, all the old symbols,
:09:26. > :09:28.the old paintings, the old Stinkwood furniture, would be removed,
:09:29. > :09:31.and we are so happy to see that everything is still here.
:09:32. > :09:45.Minorities are entitled to be concerned about the type of changes
:09:46. > :09:47.that have taken place in our country.
:09:48. > :09:50.The task of the government and the ANC leadership would be
:09:51. > :09:53.to assure the whites that change would not mean a reversal
:09:54. > :09:56.of the position where blacks will now oppress the white minority
:09:57. > :10:01.and the other minorities, and I think that we have
:10:02. > :10:06.succeeded, we are succeeding, in addressing their fears.
:10:07. > :10:12.I mean, what is beautiful about that is that Mandela
:10:13. > :10:18.appears to be taking you so seriously as Evita.
:10:19. > :10:27.When we sat down, I was ready with everything,
:10:28. > :10:33.which is frightening when a film crew waits.
:10:34. > :10:36.It is like waiting for the death warrant, the death
:10:37. > :10:38.sentence, to happen, and we could hear his voice
:10:39. > :10:43.He walked in, he came round, he saw Evita, and he said,
:10:44. > :10:48.He sat down, and I just said to him, "President Mandela, thank
:10:49. > :10:51.you so much for allowing us this 30 minutes to do
:10:52. > :10:55.He said, "No, Pieter, I want to be on Evita's show
:10:56. > :10:58.because I've got important things to say and nobody watches the news."
:10:59. > :11:01.and he actually used this programme to give a New Year message
:11:02. > :11:05.to the people of South Africa in which he said, "I want to talk
:11:06. > :11:08.to the police, and say to you, I am on your side."
:11:09. > :11:11.three or four policemen were dying every day,
:11:12. > :11:14.because three armies had to become one, so he used this nonsense
:11:15. > :11:16.programme to actually reach the policemen who didn't watch
:11:17. > :11:19.the news because their colleagues died on the news.
:11:20. > :11:22.But the thing is even as we are talking about Mandela
:11:23. > :11:26.You clearly loved the man, and revered him, to a certain
:11:27. > :11:30.extent, and I just wonder whether that was sort of the moment,
:11:31. > :11:32.the liberation moment, when Mandela walked out of prison
:11:33. > :11:35.and, you know, the ANC triumph in the election
:11:36. > :11:37.and liberation has happened, the moment your satire really
:11:38. > :11:40.died because, you know, you had been poking fun
:11:41. > :11:42.at the oppressors, and the oppressors were finished?
:11:43. > :11:45.I was bereft of Bothas - I had no more Bothas left -
:11:46. > :11:50.Eventually, the ANC found me, after two years of really truly
:11:51. > :11:53.celebrating the fact that the party I had voted for was the government,
:11:54. > :11:56.and I suddenly realised, hang on, things are going wrong here.
:11:57. > :11:59.There is an arrogant happening and it became very similar
:12:00. > :12:15.It took me a long time to find his voice.
:12:16. > :12:18.You know, it is a cross between Donald Duck and a
:12:19. > :12:21.But Evita would say, with this wonderful audience at some
:12:22. > :12:23.of his fundraisers for his foundation -
:12:24. > :12:27.And she would say," Oh, President Mandela, so wonderful
:12:28. > :12:30.to see you here, and, oh, my goodness, I never knew
:12:31. > :12:33.why you were in jail - I thought you'd stolen a car!"
:12:34. > :12:36.He was a great audience, and a few years before he really
:12:37. > :12:40.left the world I had coffee with him, and it was the most
:12:41. > :12:46.I sat and entertained him for half an hour, and he just needed popcorn.
:12:47. > :12:49.The biggest criticism of you actually I think probably
:12:50. > :12:51.comes from people inside the white community, leftists -
:12:52. > :12:54.committed leftists, anti-apartheid strugglers - who look
:12:55. > :12:57.at your work and can say, "You know what, yeah,
:12:58. > :13:00.he sort of gently mocked the leadership of the National Party,
:13:01. > :13:03.and the Afrikaner elite, but he didn't ever
:13:04. > :13:09.I agree with that criticism, and that is why I say to many people
:13:10. > :13:12.I am not a satirist, because I do not kill,
:13:13. > :13:15.I do not destroy, and we had a very brilliant satirist called
:13:16. > :13:23.I think in fact Robert Kirby was one of those people.
:13:24. > :13:28.And he criticised me with such brilliance that it
:13:29. > :13:32.I loved his venom, but he was brutal.
:13:33. > :13:37.It didn't fit in with the need to keep the balance.
:13:38. > :13:40.Again, let me just say that I also made fun of the white
:13:41. > :13:44.liberals, and they also found that uncomfortable.
:13:45. > :13:47.I'm just actually looking at a quote from Kirby, who said, you know,
:13:48. > :13:50.the problem is that you turn these guys like Botha into
:13:51. > :13:52.something avuncular, a bit lovable, instead of -
:13:53. > :13:57.and this is the key point of his - instead of the horrible lethal
:13:58. > :14:10.I did not turn them into the Hitlers, I didn't turn
:14:11. > :14:13.I turned them into the idiots that they were.
:14:14. > :14:17.The obscenity of what we took for granted - the Group Areas Act,
:14:18. > :14:20.the Population Registration Act, where every year Helen Suzman
:14:21. > :14:23.would ask the question, how many South Africans were reclassified?
:14:24. > :14:28.So every time that came out 125 coloureds became white,
:14:29. > :14:30.seven whites became Indian, three Indians became Malay,
:14:31. > :14:33.four Malay became Chinese - the obscenity of that
:14:34. > :14:35.nonsense made people laugh, but then they would stop
:14:36. > :14:45.laughing when they realise that this was not a joke.
:14:46. > :14:48.Here is something sensitive, and you have alluded to it
:14:49. > :14:51.in this interview already - how you as a white Afrikaner man,
:14:52. > :14:54.albeit playing a woman, begin to be really quite sharp
:14:55. > :14:56.with the black post-liberation leadership without opening yourself
:14:57. > :15:07.Very interesting question, and very difficult to answer it
:15:08. > :15:14.just with one answer because there are four or five.
:15:15. > :15:18.But I'll tell you the most important thing for me is my total discomfort
:15:19. > :15:23.I did fight it without actually realising that I was fighting it.
:15:24. > :15:25.Evita is now a member of the African National Congress.
:15:26. > :15:28.I have to put her into the armpit of power.
:15:29. > :15:32.She did join, because her black grandchildren - her daughter married
:15:33. > :15:37.Do white South Africans like this rubbish that you are creating?
:15:38. > :15:40.They do, and now this is the important thing -
:15:41. > :15:46.rubbish is a very important word here, because Evita represents
:15:47. > :15:48.so much of the white South African prejudice and fear.
:15:49. > :15:51.She is - Evita - she is the Queen Mother,
:15:52. > :15:53.who is suddenly now speaking Xhosa with her grandchildren.
:15:54. > :15:56.And she says, "They're not black, they're not white -
:15:57. > :16:02.What is she going to do protect democracy?
:16:03. > :16:04.Well, let's look at modern-day Evita then.
:16:05. > :16:07.We've got a rather wonderful clip here of Evita's free speech.
:16:08. > :16:10.She does a thing every Sunday - she addresses the nation having
:16:11. > :16:14.This one, she is actually considering the mindset of Afrikaner
:16:15. > :16:17.whites in South Africa today, so let's have a listen...
:16:18. > :16:20.Are we whites never going to realise that we actually got
:16:21. > :16:30.There was no Nuremberg trial, none of us was hung like Saddam Hussein
:16:31. > :16:32.for crimes against humanity, Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela came out
:16:33. > :16:36.of 27 years in darkness and gave us light, and Eskom gave up.
:16:37. > :16:40.I mean it is absolutely ridiculous - everybody is always
:16:41. > :16:43.Stop complaining - we are the luckiest
:16:44. > :16:47.You know how blessed we whites are in the 21st
:16:48. > :17:00.I love lots of things about that, not least the caption -
:17:01. > :17:03.the most famous white woman in South Africa.
:17:04. > :17:06.Evita doesn't sort of hide her light under a bushel, does she?
:17:07. > :17:09.No, because Winnie Mandela is the most famous black woman
:17:10. > :17:12.Let's stick with this idea about the sophisticated way
:17:13. > :17:14.in which you're playing with the space you've
:17:15. > :17:18.The space you've got today in the country may well be
:17:19. > :17:28.I mean, there are lots of people concerned about the degree
:17:29. > :17:32.to which the current leadership - Jacob Zuma and the people around him
:17:33. > :17:35.- are compressing freedom of speech, making a free media more difficult.
:17:36. > :17:38.And you have taken on Zuma, but Zuma fights back.
:17:39. > :17:40.He accuses those who mock him of racism.
:17:41. > :17:44.How comfortable are you with your attacks on Zuma?
:17:45. > :17:48.Well, my attack of Zuma is a puppet - I have a little Zuma puppet based
:17:49. > :17:51.on a Zapiro cartoon, which is wonderful, with a shower
:17:52. > :17:55.head with the thing that you press and all the water comes out because,
:17:56. > :17:58.you know, he said famously that after unprotected sex with a woman
:17:59. > :18:01.who was HIV positive he had a shower, and he didn't use condoms.
:18:02. > :18:05.I do remember that, and in fact it raises the point that one
:18:06. > :18:08.of the subject upon which you have been fiercest in your critique
:18:09. > :18:11.of the post-liberation black leadership is on this issue
:18:12. > :18:17.of their response to HIV AIDS in South Africa.
:18:18. > :18:20.You really went after Thabo Mbeki when he said he didn't believe HIV
:18:21. > :18:23.AIDS could be spread by sexual intercourse, and he also
:18:24. > :18:28.was extremely slow to believe in the power of anti-retroviral drugs.
:18:29. > :18:31.Then I called apartheid the first virus, and HIV the second virus.
:18:32. > :18:34.I said, we got away with the first virus.
:18:35. > :18:36.But the second virus, really and truly, in the days
:18:37. > :18:40.when I started and I used to go to schools, as many schools
:18:41. > :18:43.as I could, because I had this fantasy that children had not been
:18:44. > :18:48.That's not true - they have sex at the age of ten.
:18:49. > :18:51.And the denials, because of my fear - it was purely selfish,
:18:52. > :18:58.Because, frankly, you could have contracted it yourself.
:18:59. > :19:05.Absolutely, and I had buried some of my best friends who died of it.
:19:06. > :19:10.Again, I am interested in the way in which this became so personal
:19:11. > :19:13.and so important to you that you sort of suspended satire
:19:14. > :19:15.and just went for plain outright profound critique.
:19:16. > :19:19.You said, "Once upon a time, not so long ago, we had an apartheid
:19:20. > :19:21.regime in South Africa that killed people.
:19:22. > :19:24.Now we have a democratic government that simply lets them die."
:19:25. > :19:32.They did not need to die if they have the information.
:19:33. > :19:35.You're saying in essence that people like Mbeki had the blood
:19:36. > :19:39.I do, and I hope everybody will remember it for a long time.
:19:40. > :19:43.My hope was also that he and his minister of health would go
:19:44. > :19:46.to The Hague, because genocide will never happen like we remember
:19:47. > :19:48.it through Auschwitz, or even through Rwanda and Burundi,
:19:49. > :19:52.but frankly if you don't tell people how to save their lives
:19:53. > :19:58.they will die, and it is the same thing.
:19:59. > :20:00.I mean this in the most non-flippant manner,
:20:01. > :20:06.What I mean is you don't just see yourself as a satirist and a comic -
:20:07. > :20:08.sometimes things are too serious for that.
:20:09. > :20:11.I think the satire is my weapon of mass distraction.
:20:12. > :20:13.People don't expect to remember what they laughed at.
:20:14. > :20:16.When I am confronting families and people who haven't got
:20:17. > :20:18.the information to understand what I'm saying, I have
:20:19. > :20:22.to simplify my attack and my humour, but when it comes to the fact
:20:23. > :20:25.that in a democracy we have a democratically elected
:20:26. > :20:27.government, as we have today, of great history -
:20:28. > :20:31.and I use the word careless, which I think is the most terrible
:20:32. > :20:33.word to use for a democratically elected government.
:20:34. > :20:36.They knew what to do but they thought, "To hell with it -
:20:37. > :20:53.Let's introduce a final clip, when we are now talking
:20:54. > :20:56.about the democratically elected government that South Africa has
:20:57. > :20:59.today, and this is you - and we have talked about the fine
:21:00. > :21:03.line you tread - this is you taking on Zuma and the inadequacies,
:21:04. > :21:05.as Auntie Evita sees it, of Zuma's political performance.
:21:06. > :21:08.This is Auntie Evita talking about Zuma responding to opposition
:21:09. > :21:12.questions in the South African parliament.
:21:13. > :21:15.I don't know if Jacob Zuma was laughing at the EFF,
:21:16. > :21:18.but every time he giggled every MP in the ANC laughed.
:21:19. > :21:21.Of course they have to laugh - if they don't laugh
:21:22. > :21:24.Now, I don't know why the president was laughing.
:21:25. > :21:28.He actually said, "I don't know how to stop this laughter," and then
:21:29. > :21:31.And I thought, laughter isn't hurtful.
:21:32. > :21:33.Although I must say drugs and corruption, rape,
:21:34. > :21:48.murder and the economy are not actually funny.
:21:49. > :21:51.So serious they are not actually funny.
:21:52. > :21:55.I just want to end this interview by having you reflect your personal
:21:56. > :21:57.journey and the country's journey over a generation and more.
:21:58. > :22:00.You say, and this is something that really struck me,
:22:01. > :22:02.apartheid won't come back under its own name,
:22:03. > :22:13.It won't be any more the segregation of colour because we've done that,
:22:14. > :22:16.but it might be the segregation of education, the segregation
:22:17. > :22:18.of language or the segregation of tradition.
:22:19. > :22:24.Is South Africa reverting back to a society of segregation?
:22:25. > :22:27.The danger of an uneducated society following a leader who says black
:22:28. > :22:29.is more important than coloured, mixed-race coloured,
:22:30. > :22:33.It started with Mbeki - he started calling black people
:22:34. > :22:36.Africans, but the rest of us where coloured, Indian or white,
:22:37. > :22:40.and I thought that was a very subtle way of dividing to rule.
:22:41. > :22:42.And I just feel it's very important for us
:22:43. > :22:45.to realise that, yes, apartheid, which I think
:22:46. > :22:48.was horrendous in every single way, won't come back as it was then,
:22:49. > :22:51.but I look at Europe today with the Muslim problem,
:22:52. > :22:54.and Evita's next onslaught is to come to the United Kingdom
:22:55. > :22:58.and to Europe and to say, "Look, I've got some laws here that you can
:22:59. > :23:02.buy from me - you just take out black and white and put in Muslim
:23:03. > :23:16.And we controlled people for 46 years, but Mandela saved our lives.
:23:17. > :23:18.I never thought we'd get away with that.
:23:19. > :23:21.I thought we would end up in the most terrible bloody
:23:22. > :23:24.revolution, and that is why today I keep on saying to people,
:23:25. > :23:30.I think we have a very badly structured government,
:23:31. > :23:32.very weak leadership, but an extraordinary society.
:23:33. > :23:35.Still a majority of black people who could have put me
:23:36. > :23:39.against a wall and shot me for what I was responsible for -
:23:40. > :23:41.which I was, as a white - but didn't.
:23:42. > :23:43.Desmond Tutu to this day, staying with us,
:23:44. > :23:47.and I keep saying to him, "Don't fly away - we need you."
:23:48. > :23:58.I give constant reminders to my audience to just
:23:59. > :24:02.Google Weimar Republic, then google Adolf Hitler in 1929.
:24:03. > :24:05.Pieter-Dirk Uys, thank you so much for being on HARDtalk.
:24:06. > :24:48.It is a fairly unusual weather pattern for