He is a master of disguise and a brilliant impersonator. Within seconds, South Africa’s most-loved satirist Pieter-Dirk Uys changes from playing an Afrikaans aunty, into Adolf Hitler and a little later into the country’s political enfant terrible Julius Malema. Right on stage, right in front of the audience’s eyes.
In a hilarious yet sharp-witted kind of way, Uys is most of all one thing: politically incorrect. No wonder he has been a thorn in the side of many government officials, especially during the racist apartheid regime.
During a career that spans more than 45 years, the internationally-acclaimed performer, author and social activist has written and performed more than 20 plays and over 30 revues and one-man shows throughout South Africa and abroad.
Today, at the age of 68, the workaholic not only continues to write, direct, act and produce, he even makes his own props and dresses.
It all began pretty much in the cradle, says Uys, who grew up in a musical family in a suburb near Cape Town. Both his parents were pianists – his mother worked as a piano teacher, while his father, a musician at heart, earned money as a civil servant in the provincial roads department. On weekends, Uys played with his toys on the dining room floor, while his parents entertained an artistic circle of well-traveled, cultured friends.
“Mozart was a friend,” Uys says jokingly. “My whole life was geared with a soundtrack in my head. Mad people hear voices, I hear music.”
Growing up in the 1940s and 1950s, just after the National Party was beginning to institute apartheid in South Africa, Uys lived in a house where politics was not discussed, despite the fact that his father’s cousin was the first Afrikaans prime minister, DF Malan. Little did Uys know back then that he would one day become an entertainer who was loathed and feared by repressive politicians.
“I didn’t decide to follow this career. It chose me,” he says.
Uys planned to become a teacher. He studied English, history and German – his maternal grandmother was a Jew from Berlin – at the University of Cape Town where, rather than spending most of his time in the library, he says he learned to smoke a cigarette and twist.
His life changed forever when he received a ticket to visit London and Germany for his 17th birthday. He discovered his love for performance when family friends took him to the theater for the first time. Uys was smitten.
At the end of the trip, he traveled to Rome to track down the apartment of Italian movie star Sophia Loren, whom he had been in love with since he was a schoolboy. He located the flat based on a magazine photo and knocked on the door. To his great disappointment, an assistant told him Loren was in Paris. Uys left behind a letter and was surprised when he received a reply from the actress a few weeks later. It was the beginning of a lifelong friendship.
“It was one of the greatest lessons in my life that a world star would take the time to write to a nobody. We became pen pals. Eventually I met her. She came to one of my shows. I wrote scripts for her. We talk to each other at least once a month,” says Uys.
With that, he dropped his teaching ambitions and signed up for drama school. When Uys got his degree, he first became a stage manager and later started writing plays.
Uys slowly managed to build a career in England although he never quite felt he belonged. He longed for South Africa, where he felt rooted even though he abhorred the apartheid regime. So, he left London to work with famous South African playwright Athol Fugard at Cape Town’s Space Theatre. It was here that he discovered the power of satire.
“I understood how it could make people angry without hurting them, but also hurt people who needed to be twitched a little bit. You don’t laugh because it’s a joke, you laugh because you’re in charge of your fear,” he says.
He also discovered his urge to be political, critical and controversial. He even broke the law by allowing black people to sit in the audience with whites. The government responded by banning the plays, raiding the theater and threatening him with arrest.
“I didn’t see the point in getting angry because anger doesn’t transfer itself into positive energy. Instead, I decided to fight them. I pissed off all the people I wanted to piss off. Humor is a great weapon of mass distraction.”
Living in a homophobic society, Uys, who is gay, also started experimenting with gender. He put on a dress on stage and played women’s roles. It was the first step towards developing what would become his most successful character, Evita Bezuidenhout.
“That’s where it started. At the time it wasn’t planned, but in retrospect there is a red line running through my career,” he says.
Uys’ alter ego is a white Afrikaner socialite and a political activist, at least in her own mind. She is a mixture of a right-wing, glamorous white woman from the American South, he says, a touch of Margaret Thatcher steel, a bit of Imelda Marcos, if only in her shoe choice, and even Hitler’s wife Eva Braun.
Evita challenges her audience through gentle humor and purposeful irritation, always maintaining a balance between entertainment and social commentary.
“She’s my most successful clown. She came at the right time, when society needed a tannie (aunt). But she must never be preachy, reflect the fear of the audience or trash all expectations.”
With grand-dame Evita as his main character, Uys’ performances soon received attention throughout the country. Building on his reputation as a playwright and actor, he put on his first one-man show in 1981, which he called Adapt or Dye.
It included impersonations of then South African President PW Botha, British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, a selection of apartheid politicians and white liberals, as well as Evita. The show became South Africa’s biggest comedy success ever.
Uys also managed to break the international cultural boycott of South Africa by performing the show overseas.
A year later, Adapt or Dye came out on video and South Africans began to make illegal copies, especially the poor. They did so with Uys’ encouragement and led to his large multiracial fan base.
“That was the greatest audience investment of my life,” he says.
Eventually, the videos made their way into prisons, including Robben Island, where Nelson Mandela was incarcerated.
“The government thought I was an idiot, a drag queen, a clown. So they thought it was safe to let the prisoners watch the shows. They didn’t realize the prisoners would through the shows learn what’s happening in the country.”
Evita lit up Mandela’s dark prison days. When Mandela was elected president in 1994, Evita became the jester he took with him wherever he went. Mandela even allowed Evita to interview him live on television.
“Mandela used humor to unify and reconcile people, to deflate fear and prejudice. He knew that loving your enemy will ruin his reputation. And making Nelson Mandela laugh was one of the best reasons to do my work,” says Uys.
For a short while, Uys feared he would run out of material in the new, democratic rainbow nation.
“I thought I would have to get another job,” he laughs.
He adjusted Evita’s persona to someone who mocked democracy to make South Africans aware that it’s not a given.
But in 1999, when Mandela handed over power to Thabo Mbeki, Uys’ honeymoon with South Africa’s ruling party, the African National Congress, came to an end, although his honeymoon with the ANC’s legacy never did.
As the country’s new president, Mbeki questioned the link between HIV and Aids and refused to make antiretroviral drugs available through the public health system. For Uys, it was the straw that broke the camel’s back. He once again became a ruthless government critic – and has made the ANC the keystone for his satire ever since.
“I’m afraid the new generation of politicians just wants cars and money. It’s grim. And the only way to change this is to realize that we, the people, are in charge. The politicians are civil servants who are supposed to be working for us,” he says.
Uys is at least delighted to still have a government that on a daily basis writes his best material. In recent years, he has written scripts that sow serious topics like greed, corruption and crime into the fluff of entertainment.
“It’s a wonderful way not to get stale, not to get angry or bitter about being so disappointed in the rainbow nation. I don’t think of it as work. I’m not doing this job for my pension. I think of it as my life. It’s also my therapy.”
At the beginning 2014, Uys’ performed Adapt of Fly, a sequel to his critically acclaimed 1980s show. Once again, he forces his audience to take a long, hard look at South Africa’s stumbling democracy, think about issues that have come full circle since they first reared their ugly heads 30 years ago and, most importantly, to laugh heartily at their fears.