Pieter-Dirk Uys — better known in his drag role Evita Bezuidenhout who plays the former ambassadress to the imaginary apartheid homeland of Bapetikosweti — has resigned as a member of the official opposition Democratic Alliance.
According to Uys, party leader Tony Leon recently phoned him expressing concern that as he was doing ”objective voter education”, how could his support of rival opposition leader Patricia de Lille of the Independent Democrats (ID) appear on her party’s website.
Leon noted that the website had reported that Uys, who has written a regular election column in South African newspapers under the name of Evita, was a ”paid-up” member of the ID.
Leon apparently made it clear that his party would demand that editors of the newspapers giving Evita space withdraw that weekly platform to propagate a party’s point of view.
Uys confirmed that he had told Leon he was, indeed, not a paid-up member of the ID but that he was ”in fact a member of the Democratic Alliance (DA) since old Progressive Federal Party (PFP) days in the 1970s.” The PFP was a forerunner of the DA.
Uys said he thanked Leon for pointing it out and he would resign from the DA and sent a letter to him to confirm this.
It read: ”Dear Tony, I have had all the over-enthusiastic references to my so-called paid-up support and membership of the Independent Democrats removed from their website forthwith.”
It continued: ”Thank you for pointing it out. Voter education must be unbiased and objective, as I intend mine to be. And so would you please regard this as my resignation as a member of the Democratic Alliance.
”I can’t possibly risk (South African President) Thabo Mbeki surfing his internet and discovering evidence of my support of the last 20 years on your website!”
ID spokesperson Brent Meersman confirmed that the party had erroneously put Uys down as a paid-up member. Leon’s spokesperson James Lorimer said: ”Our concern in this matter was that the ID said Pieter-Dirk was a member of the party which like other ID statements was somewhat removed from the truth.”
Lorimer said: ”If indeed he was a DA member, he did the correct thing to resign. As he rightly says if he is involved in voter education, he should avoid the appearance of partiality.” – I-Net Bridge