Theatre: David Le Page
‘THE (previous) South African government was my faithful scriptwriter,” says Pieter-Dirk Uys in his Truth Commissions (at the Johannesburg Civic Theatre), and his brand of satire has not been left unscathed by its demise.
Much of his latest parade of personas, led as always by the inimitable Ms Bezuidenhout, is not original, and on one level this makes for slightly disappointing theatre. Yet it also reflects our progress: the new regime is not so apt at ineptness, not so unwittingly its own pawn, not such fertile ground for Uys’ brand of subversion.
But there is a deeper purpose to the familiarity of this production. It is, after all, a Truth Commission. It’s concerned with who did what to whom and how and when; it’s concerned with the past. Or what’s left of the past. For, as he is at pains to point out, Uys is no longer struggling with wilful blindness, but with wilful forgetfulness: “We can’t find anyone who existed in the past, we can’t find a past.”
What, he asks, has happened to the thugs and tyrants and torturers? The answer is that they’re still here — living among us, relishing the privileges of high office, living off the fat of the land. So when we meet again the demon pantheon of the old South Africa, the Bothas and Koornhofs and vicious kugels, the clever brutes and the brutish fools, it is not just because Uys is struggling for inspiration. It is, simply, lest we forget.
In the process, Uys reveals himself to be a master at slipping a stiletto into the soft underbelly of the feel-good truisms of the new South Africa: “The former convict is a president; the former president is not a convict.” The stern black chairman of the Truth Commission, a sternly resonant voice interrogating Uys about the different characters he presents, later turns out to be Evita Bezuidenhout’s chauffeur, as cowed and humiliated as ever by his mistress.
Jonny Pietersen, the coloured man speaking from the darkest hours of the Eighties, who rouses our sympathy talking about the death of his forcibly removed grandmother, terrifies as he reveals himself to be a policeman, even before Uys tells us that Pietersen is now a National Party organiser. And Evita speaks of apartheid as “a little mistake. We’re sorry and we won’t do it again. What more can you ask of us?”
Though for the most part, the Truth Commissions reincarnates past public figures and private archetypes, such as Ms Nowell Fine, it contains no shortage of biting contemporary comment. There is furious contempt for the man deemed to be intent on creating a “Bantu Bosnia” in KwaZulu-Natal; there are acid comments about nurses doing Zulu aerobics; there is, in the form of cellphone conversations to our sparring presidents, a heartfelt plea for patience and magnanimity.
Perhaps the final truth is that as Evita Bezuidenhout celebrates her 60th birthday, it is clear that she was a creature of her time. She thrives in her own time warp, a time warp left intact only by the fragile imperatives of “transition” and “reconciliation”. She is best left to autographing books and camping it up on M-Net, in support of Uys’ deeper talents as a dramatist.
Her sell-by date was reflected in the final applause, more affectionate than laudatory. The audience gave the impression of having enjoyed a lengthy acquaintanceship with Evita. And with no more than a sprinkling of blacks in the auditorium, it was likely that this was true of most of its members. If South Africa has changed, theatre audiences are largely unaltered.
Pieter-Dirk Uys’ Truth Commissions runs at the Johannesburg Civic Theatre until October 7