By Peter Machen
The Centre for Jazz and Popular Music at the University of Natal in Durban on Wednesday night hosted multi-talented Pieter-Dirk Uys as he launched his latest book, Elections and Erections.
Uys described the book - which is subtitled A Memoir Of Fear And Fun - as a "celebration of survival".
The book details Uys's own experience of his sexuality and also contains accounts of his voter education and sex education campaigns that he has waged as his alter-ego, Tannie Evita Bezuidenhout.
| 'I don't want to die of love' |
In an engaging, and at times hilarious speech, Uys spoke of his tacit support of apartheid, until he went to London at the age of 27. There he saw, on British television, reflections of a South Africa that he didn't know existed. Among other things, he saw children being killed in Langa, not far from the Pinelands suburb where he lived in Cape Town.
In order to challenge the legalised racism of apartheid, Uys donned the glamorous outfits as Bezuidenhout.
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And amid the initial reveries of post-apartheid South Africa, Uys could not put down Evita's wigs, as further challenges faced the formidable "tannie". Although the virus of apartheid had been destroyed, another virus reared its malevolent head.
In the absence of anyone doing anything of substance regarding the Aids pandemic, Uys felt that he had no choice but to take himself and Evita around South Africa, educating the South African youth about the dangers of unsafe sex.
And so Evita Bezuidenhout, the former South African ambassador to Bapetikosweti, found herself talking to 400 000 children at 200 schools during 2001 and plans to visit twice that number in 2003.
Uys has also been talking to adults, from London to Grahamstown to Australia, with his show, Foreign Aids, that is based on his programme at schools. And in his travels, he noted that the once-stabilised Aids rates of the West were again ascending as sex-education programmes fell foul to conservative governments.
Talking to the assembled group of adults at the launch, Uys used snatches of profane language to prove his point that sex needs to be talked about openly.
He also, bluntly and unmelodramatically said, "I don't want to die of love".
Uys was introduced by Darius Brubeck, the head of the jazz centre, who compared him to Lenny Bruce, Mark Twain and Herman Charles Bosman. Uys was delighted with the comparisons.
After his speech, he signed books, before sitting down with local theatre practitioners for a brief, but well-earned moment of relaxation.
Elections and Erections will soon be available in all good bookstores.
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