ARTicles vol. 3 i.1b: Pieter-Dirk Uys: Never a Dull Moment!

Satirist Pieter-Dirk Uys shatters the deadly official silence that still hangs over the South African AIDS crisis. Using humor to puncture state hypocrisy and speak truth to power, he has toured Foreign Aids to schools in South Africa and theatres around the world, talking frankly and freely about the seriousness of the AIDS pandemic in South Africa. Following is an excerpt from his book Erections and Elections: A Memoir of Fear and Fun. Once upon a time, not so long ago, we had an apartheid regime in South Africa that killed people. Now we have a democratic government that just lets them die. We are not sissies when it comes to viruses. We had one for over forty years, and it had no cure. Tens of thousands of South Africans died because of it. Millions had their lives violently changed forever. But eventually the virus of apartheid was neutralized. We found a cure called democracy. Why did it take so long? Was it because the propaganda was so believable? ‘Democracy is too good to share with just anyone!’ So simple. Our solution had been there all the time. And yet for so long we were not allowed to believe that it was effective. We had a president called PW Botha who repeatedly assured us that there would be no black multiracial rule. He would segregate voting so that whites stayed in charge. He was wrong. Today we have a president called Thabo Mbeki who denies the link between HIV and AIDS. He is also wrong. And the letters ‘Thabo’ can also spell the name ‘Botha’! Apartheid wasn’t funny. The hypocrisy behind the civilized Christian façade of those who benefited from it made us laugh, because the fear that it elicited was exposed as ridiculous. Laughing at fear has become my secret cure: laugh at fear and put it into perspective. It’s always going to be there, but once it has a name, it also has a place. At least the virus of apartheid was visible. It certainly had a colour. Although neither white nor black are colours of the rainbow, one was the master and the other was the servant. The culture with a capital K that was so protected by legalised racism at least stank to high heaven, in spite of the perfume of so-called civilised Christian demeanours. And the signs were everywhere: WHITES ONLY, NO DOGS OR NATIVES ALLOWED. The signs warned us: beware of the virus. If you don’t have the vaccine of a white skin, you will get it and your small dreams will die. Recently a black family from Soweto visited Clifton Beach in Cape Town. The son is fourteen. Energetic and full of fun. More comfortable speaking English to his Xhosa father than the language of his roots. He prefers Michael Jackson to the Soweto String Quartet. “Wow, Dad,” he said, “this is a cool beach. You must’ve had such fun coming here for your holidays.” His father smiled. “Yes, it’s cool. And no, I never came here when I was a boy.” “Oh, but didn’t you visit Gogo in Langa?” “Yes.” “And she never let you come to Clifton?” “No, we weren’t allowed.” “Oh? Why?” “There was a law.” “Why?” “It said this beach was for whites only.” “Oh? Why?” “Because that was the law. You got into terrible trouble if you were black and came to this white beach.” “Was there a minefield to keep you off it?” His father smiled. “No. There was a sign.” A sign? Yes, for over forty years we did nothing because of the signs. Because of the fear. We believed the urban legends. We bowed down to the paraphernalia of Boer Power. We thought they knew what they were doing. We were wrong. They didn’t have a clue, because if they did, they would have killed their opposition early on. The Struggle for South Africa started 350 years ago. Maybe the greatest weakness of the Struggle and at the same time its unique strength was that both sides passionately loved the same thing. Their country. So, contrary to predictions, we did not become another Gaza, not another Vietnam, not another Rwanda, not another Belfast. Here, at the southern tip of nowhere, the world was cheated out of a major prime-time bloodbath and camera crews waddled off into the bloody Balkan sunrise with irritation and hopes of better angles. So the news is good. South Africa is reborn with the greatest Constitution in the world. We have a Bill of Rights. We had an unforgettable Truth and Reconciliation Commission. We have been blessed with both a Nelson Mandela and a Desmond Tutu. But we also have the greatest incidence of HIV/AIDS in the world. While the First World is burying the lambs, the Third World is burying its babies. So the minefield has moved: from politics to sex. Can one do the tango in front of a firing squad again? Laughing at the fear of death? You come and then go? And what’s funny about HIV/AIDS? The whole scenario begs for laughter. Firstly, leave the virus out of it. Just look at sex. If politics is funny, sex can be a scream! I think it’s one of God’s last little jokes. To furnish men with small soft things that must get bigger and hard and stick out to fit into the dark warm places that women have? That’s sometimes like trying to get a limp piece of thread through the eye of a needle! Then we have to wobble up and down, pushing in and out, looking like small mammals trying to get rid of a flea biting us on the bum, then screaming a syllable or two – ‘Yes! Yes! Yes!’ – shuddering like a jellyfish, mumbling the name of someone else, and falling asleep! Go there with a smile and you end with a bellyache and a flopped experience. But when death is disguised as something we like – because let’s face it, sex is nice! – this is going to be more difficult than ever. During Virus No.1 we had a government with absolutely no sense of humour at all. And so it became my aim in life to make them so angry with humour, to drive them so crazy with laughter, that they had heart attacks and died. And I had some success. Now there is no PW Botha glaring out at me from the television news. There is no wagging of that finger and licking of those lips. “Apartheid is just a pigment of the imagination!” I’d mirror him on stage, although he never said something so clever. Nor did I, because I found that slogan on a toilet wall along with so many other memorable lines and phone numbers! I’d ‘do’ PW and people laughed. And when we realised that we were laughing at absolute power and were getting away with it, it made us feel stronger. Maybe it worked, because we’re still here and most of those targets aren’t. The irony is that, after the bull’s-eye target of apartheid, we are now faced with yet another government balls-up crying out for satirical stabs. Amid all the freedoms of speech, of expression, of sexual preference – for don’t forget our Constitution even protects the rights of gay couples! – we have a leadership in denial. Starting at the top with Comrade President Thabo Mvuyelwa Mbeki. A bright man who spent his life working for this job. A deeply disadvantaged member of the ANC executive, because poor Thabo was never jailed by the white supremacists. Maybe that’s why he is so bitchy towards whiteys. They didn’t put him on the Struggle T-shirts! . . . So little Thabo threw stones at police cars and the police threw them back. Maybe they just thought he was a schoolboy with a pipe. So Thabo went into exile in 1962 to spend most of his life outside South Africa. Young Mbeki went to the University of Sussex, where he studied and absorbed what best of what Britain had to offer political refugees. Then, to add to the profile of the comrade who nearly wasn’t, he went to the Soviet Union, embraced their racism – also known as communism – and studied at the University of Moscow, returning to South Africa a stranger and a confirmed Stalinist. Just one of the many returned exiles trying to fit their square peg of dreams into the round hole of reality. While Nelson Mandela dazzled the world with his genius for making friends of enemies, Thabo made enemies of friends, and when the choice for a successor to Mandela came up, there was only one left in the arena. All the other lions who had stayed and fought the Struggle from within had been eaten. The returned exiles took over the bridge and the chipmunk became king… . At first Thabo looked good for the country. He was a crafty politician, a man who knew his business, having practised it for decades. A true professional. An apparatchik. A comrade, yet a Eurocentric in African mode. And from the first day, the one man in power who wore the red AIDS ribbon, long before anyone else did. We hoped Thabo would carry the flame of awareness and care. We were wrong. I don’t even think he knows what that red ribbon signifies. Suddenly he stopped us all in mid-stride. ‘Does HIV lead to AIDS?’ Hello? Does the sun rise? And why is he asking that question with sunglasses on? ‘Is AIDS a disease, or just a syndrome?’ Can we move on to the dying people? But the leader has spoken and the sheep all bleat. The party line is drawn and cross it at your peril. The President of South Africa slowly transformed himself in the eyes of the watching world from potential superstar to suspected loony. He gathered together dissidents and naysayers from all corners of the medical spectrum. He gave them press and media attention. He stopped the wheels of awareness turning. Everyone was confused. If HIV doesn’t lead to AIDS, what does? What is HIV? If the President says it’s not a proven reality, then is there a danger? Why use condoms, if there is no AIDS? Is it a white conspiracy to brand blacks sexually promiscuous? The world shakes its head politely. Can’t criticize a black leader who still stands in the aura of Mandela. To question is to be racist. Hope it will all just go away. And so the world happily concentrates on a Bosnian holocaust and the search for Milosevic, while Thabo flies around the world making speeches about everyone else’s agendas. Back home the rainbow nation shakes in terror… . Fighting fear and political madness with humour has been my way of life since the 1970s. I always said that the previous government wrote my material for me. That’s why I didn’t pay taxes; I paid royalties. I repeat that today: the democratic government for which I voted is doing me proud. Never a dull moment. While democracy is not usually a laugh at life, our daily survival on the speed wobbles of careless government has turned South Africa into my favourite funny fair! And it’s all the fault of elections and erections!