Satirist Pieter-Dirk Uys in The 15-Minute Interview. By Charl Blignaut
CB: We’re not late are we?
PDU: Nee skat. Haai, this place [Le Samovar in Hyde Park, Johannesburg] is wonderful. It reminds me of New York. Have you been to the Russian Tea House in New York?
CB: No. When do you go to New York again?
PDU: After this it’s London then Montreal then New York. This is my only visit to Gauteng this year. [Placing his cellphone on the table] Sorry, but I’m going to have to leave my Japanese secretary on, OK?
CB: What would you like to drink? You should try the poppyseed cake with shots of vodka.
PDU: Ish, no thanks. I think I’ll have a Campari and soda. I’ve been sitting in The Mixer talking to the media for two days. If I have another soda water I think I’ll kak in my broek.
CB: So what’s new, apart from the shows?
PDU: I have my first CD coming out – of my Truth Omissions show.
CB: What’s life like in Darling [a speck of a town in the Western Cape where Uys has moved and where he presents his Evita se Perron]?
PDU: Ag, dis wonderlik, man. Ek’s nou mos ‘n plattelandse meisie.
CB: Do you get the Mail & Guardian in Darling?
PDU: Nooit. But we drive the 50 minutes to Cape Town every Friday specially to buy the Mail & Guardian and to go and watch a movie and, of course, to shop at Woolies.
CB: What do you do for fun in Darling?
PDU: Ag, I work in the garden and I watch videos – and I watch the kittens try to catch birds and fail. I spend a lot of time with my animals.
CB: How many have you got?
PDU: In Darling, five cats and six dogs. In Cape Town, three cats and three dogs.
CB: What are their names?
PDU: There’s a butch Ginger cat called Small. We named him after James. And the Gemini twins Castrol and Pollux and a black and white cat called Meeps. Peeps died.
CB: And the dogs?
PDU: Oom Dolf is a 15-year-old Maltese. Poochini is die moffie oom. He’s got no teeth. Arnold is the testicles of the family and he has a wife called Baby, the Dwarf Mother Ship. And there’s Meisiekind the interior decorator.
CB: Don’t you get tired of being funny?
PDU: You don’t have to have a sense of humour, you just have to tell the truth. I mean, that deputy speaker and her driver’s license. And how’s the good doctor Zuma and what she said the other day: that more poor people get Aids because they can’t afford entertainment so they have sex a lot. Now, I mean, there’s a line I couldn’t have made up even if I tried. I bow down to a superior satirist. Or Bantu Holomisa now that he’s looking for a new political home. Wouldn’t it be fabulous if the National Party were to end up being led by a black man – called Bantu!
CB: Are you a tourist attraction in Darling?
PDU: Nee, God. You know we now have the dish [satellite] TV and people find that weirder than me. The other day I was sitting on my stoep and a car pulled up with two people. They waited and they waited and I saw they had a camera and so I smiled and I sat nicely and it turns out they were taking a photo of the dish, not me. There I sat like Dora the Droll.
CB: What are your plans for Evita se Perron?
PDU: We’re going to close in the winter, it’s too cold. But I’m extending the garden along the railway line next to the Darling sign. I’m going to call it Boerassic Park and I’m going to plant cacti and plastic flowers in it. I’ve already asked a whole lot of artists to make me sculptures. They’re making garden gnomes that will be politicians – except their race will be swopped. It’s the ultimate punishment for politicians.
CB: Have you heard the rumour that Barry Humphries [Dame Edna Everidge] will be coming to town for a show later this year?
PDU: Haai nee, dis wonderlik. I love Barry Humphries. He was one of my inspirations in the Seventies. He taught me I could say the unsayable – en in so ‘n pienk rok nogal.
CB: Tell me about some of your new characters.
PDU: [Hauls out some photos] This is Beryl Frik from Boerassic Park. She’s a lesbian nurse who can’t toyi-toyi, so the poor dear gets nowhere. And here’s Evita’s 97-year- old mother, Ouma Ossewania Poggenpoel, with her potty and her vibrator and her catfood that she eats. And this is Nowell Fine, just back from a trip to Robben Island. Ish, she’s not impressed. She hated it. She can’t stand the fact that so many people compare Robben Island with Auschwitz – after all, no one lived in Auschwitz for 20 years!
CB: Busy busy.
PDU: Ja man, ever since Nelson let us all out of jail there has been so much material. And Evita se Perron, is a chance to workshop new characters every week. It’s like I was saying last time we spoke, there’s slowly but surely a local festival circuit emerging. I mean, I can go from the George fest to Sybil Coetzee’s in Plett to PE to Grahamstown to East London to the Klein Karoo to Hermanus to Tulbagh and back to Darling, you know. There’s a circuit on which you can sharpen your pencil.
CB: What’s your take on the beer cans thrown at Miriam Makeba at the Karoo festival?
PDU: Ag man, dis net ‘n klomp dronk kak kinders. It’s just bad organisation – you don’t start selling wine at 10am, for God’s sake. It was soccer hooliganism in action. But it’s good because it forces people to discuss the issues. You know, if you use the phrase jou ma se poes then people are confronted by how they feel about the word poes. Isn’t it amazing how these blerrie Afrikaners would shoot children in the back and then watch it on TV later that night – but say poep or kak and they freak out? It’s good that people are forced to get an opinion.
CB: Hey, I saw you on the Dali Tambo show …
PDU: Ja, man. They showed a scene from Evita se Perron where Piet Koornhof and his wife Marcel came to see the show. She’s pregnant, you know. And I invited Piet on stage and he presented me with this portrait of us from way back and afterwards when I watched it I thought, hey whoa, step back! I mean, here we are in 1997 and here’s one of the most powerful politicians of the apartheid state who now has a partner of colour who’s expecting twins and he’s on stage kissing the most famous white woman in South Africa who doesn’t exist in front of the world’s cameras!
CB: His show’s funny.
PDU: I call it the Divine Brown show.
CB: Hey, have you got a spare pillow? I always wanted a Dali Tambo Show pillow …
PDU: Sweetheart, I have three. Baby had her puppies on the purple one. Meisiekind sleeps on the new black one – sy lyk soos ‘n klein wit meringue en sy le daar en kap haar koek …
CB: Will Thabo be a decent target for satire?
PDU: Ag ja, but I love Thabo – he’s very supportive of the arts, we should be grateful.
CB: But Evita is still fondest of Madiba?
PDU: You know, every time I’ve met him it’s been as Evita. After my show at the ANC rally in Bloem he called out, “Eviiitaa!” And I said, “Haai Madiba, we can’t go meeting like this. Every time I’m in a dress.” And he took my arm and said, “Don’t worry Pieter, I know you’re inside.” He loves to be entertained, he just twinkles. You know, it’s really not good for a satirist to fall in love with his subject, but I can’t help it. Call me a failed satirist, I don’t care.