Music Review: 'The Triplets of Belleville'

DATE June 1, 2004 ACCOUNT NUMBER N/A
TIME 12:00 Noon-1:00 PM AUDIENCE N/A
NETWORK NPR
PROGRAM Fresh Air

Interview: Pieter-Dirk Uys discusses his satirical shows touching
on controversial topics in South Africa
TERRY GROSS, host:

This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross.

South Africa satirist Pieter-Dirk Uys describes himself as a middle-aged, fat,
bald, Afrikaner Jewish drag queen from Cape Town. Apartheid used to be the
target of his humor, but, as he says, `What's the point of satire when you've
won?' He was so happy when apartheid ended in 1994 he hardly minded being put
out of business, so he took time off from political satire.

It wasn't racism or democracy that brought him back. It was a virus, HIV.
South Africa is one of the countries most hard hit by the epidemic. He says
he realized that without confronting HIV/AIDS, he would either die of it or
die of the fear of it. In his shows, he talks about the virus, and he also
goes to schools in South Africa to talk to students about safe sex. Last
month he won a special citation from the Obie Awards, the off-Broadway Theater
Awards, for his one-man show "Foreign AIDS," which he had performed in New
York. I spoke to him from London, where he was concluding a run on the West
End before heading to Dublin to perform "Foreign AIDS."

Pieter-Dirk Uys, welcome back to FRESH AIR. You know, as a satirist, what are
some of the problems you've had talking about sex and AIDS? I mean, apartheid
was pretty loaded to talk about.

Mr. PIETER-DIRK UYS (South African Satirist): Yes.

GROSS: You certainly risked talking about apartheid. But I think there's
still problems that come with talking about sex and AIDS, although they are
different problems.

Mr. UYS: It is incredibly complicated because one suddenly realizes that
apartheid was a very easy target in comparison. There were good guys and bad
guys under apartheid; black against white, good against evil. And yet the
simplicity meant that four-year-old kids could wear the T-shirt, `Down with
apartheid.' I think we were the last political T-shirt; I haven't seen one
since then.

When it comes to HIV/AIDS, it's virus vs. us. We don't really have good guys
and bad guys here. We've got frightened people. And some of us are more
frightened than others, and among those I include our president, Thabo Mbeki,
and many members of the government who are actually turning away from the
issue of HIV/AIDS.

So it is a frightening target because it is based not in health specifically
but based in sex. And there we come to the problem: How does one confront
the minefield of HIV/AIDS? How does one talk about sex to schoolkids? How do
you use the words that aren't allowed to be used at school? Teachers can't
use those words; politicians don't use those words. But I come from nowhere.
I'm just an entertainer. I've been doing crazy things. The kids think I'm
mad, and they think I'm 12 years old. And so I've found a way of talking to
them in their own language. It is a constant work in progress. There is no
answer to anything, just questions all the time.

GROSS: Are there things that you say--I know you do a lot of performances in
schools.

Mr. UYS: Yes.

GROSS: Are there things that you say and words that you use that principals
and teachers have objected to, or parents?

Mr. UYS: Well, in the beginning I stumbled into this with total instinct
leading me. I just realized I had to do something to confront my own fear.
And to be honest, as a satirist, if I'm going to reflect my country, I've got
to reflect my own fear, my own terror of a virus which could so easily become
a part of my life if I am not careful, which I'm not always.

Anyway, so I went straight to the schools and I said, `It's a one-hour show,
It's free. Words are used.' Now some of the principals came back and said,
`What are the words?' I said, `No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. You must
invite me, and I'll show you the words.' But yes or no? Well, most of them
said yes, yes to actually confront some of the negative criticisms. For the
first few months that's all I got: letters to the papers, people accusing me
of using filthy language, of abusing my freedom of speech, of being a
pedophiliac--I mean, God, words that I had to look up in the dictionary.

Then it changed. Then the young people started defending me. The kids wrote
letters, the kids started talking. Some parents started saying that this has
changed their children's lives; that the children have come home, and they've
started talking about the things that they, as parents, didn't know how to
approach. And now four years later, after 500 schools and a million young
South Africans, I regard negative criticism as just part of the fear that I'm
trying to confront with humor. So it doesn't frighten me anymore.

GROSS: Now you're gay. If you were doing this in the United States, you
know, touring schools, talking frankly about safe sex, then there would be
certain schools where teachers or principals or parents would be saying, `No,
we can't allow a gay man to come into the school and talk about sex in any way
because you know those gay people. They come to the young people to recruit
and to convert them.'

Mr. UYS: Yes. Yes.

GROSS: Do you run into that kind of view in South Africa?

Mr. UYS: I have never been confronted with that. Isn't that extraordinary?
I've never thought of it like you've just put it to me because maybe it's an
American point of view. We have a constitution which is probably the most
important thing in our democracy. It's a constitution that protects
everybody. Every single human is protected by the constitution as an equal,
meaning gays and lesbians are treated equally as married couples, as
heterosexual people are. And as a gay man, I've been liberated by Nelson
Mandela. I always say that he freed me from jail; I didn't free him. And
being gay is a job description. You know, I'm overweight, I haven't got hair,
I love Sophia Loren and I'm gay. OK, that's a job description. There's no
big deal.

GROSS: (Laughs)

Mr. UYS: So when I go to the schools, the kids know. I'm very, very open
with this. I mean, you know, I start my talk to them--without using the word
`gay,' I just make them very aware that I do cut out pictures of David Beckham
rather than pictures of Madonna. Well, then again, Madonna is quite a drag
queen, so I don't mind that.

GROSS: (Laughs)

Mr. UYS: No, I make it very clear. And, you know, nobody's ever confronted
me because I also talk about gay sex. I also talk about anal sex to the kids.
I say to the boys, `You have no right to rape the girls.' And I say to the
girls, `You have no right to rape the boys.' And then I say to the boys,
`You've got no right to rape each other.' And anybody who is forced into a
sexual compromise has the right to stand up and point out who did it, you
know? So the first 20 minutes of my talk to the kids doesn't even involve
HIV. It involves democracy, and it is focused on fear. I think that is the
main motivation. If we can laugh at our fear and make that fear less fearful,
then we can actually confront the reason behind the fear.

GROSS: Do you find that the children sometimes have the questions, but they
don't quite have the language, or do you find that most of the children really
know a lot more than the adults might suspect?

Mr. UYS: Yes, the kids are far ahead. The kids are far ahead with their
dreams. The kids I've been speaking to I call the born frees. They come
from a background which does not have apartheid as part of their fear. They
want to become the kings of their castles. I mean, that's the great
inspiration. These kids want to just go right to the gold crown. And I just
have to say to them, `You can because this is a democracy. But if you are
careless, you will get a virus. It'll slow you down. It might kill you. You
won't be able to use your 100 percent energy. So know that you're in charge
of your lives.'

They have heard about everything. I must say that in South Africa, everybody
knows about HIV/AIDS. Nobody can say, `We don't know what's going on,'
whereas here in the United Kingdom, very few people know anything. And,
frankly, in my experience in America, also, it has become a very sort of
marginalized reality. But in South Africa, they know about the virus; there
is a virus called HIV, which--well, question mark: Does it lead to AIDS? Our
president questioned that, and now the confusion has led to even more
complications.

But they know about condoms, but now the irony is they've never seen one.
They know they must use condoms, but they don't know what to do. Now I have
to take out a condom and show them. If you open it, you can actually tear it
with your nail. It's a very fragile thing; you must practice. You know, I
say, `Go and practice safe sex. Go into your room, drop your pants, put on
the condom and practice. You've got to do it properly; otherwise you make a
mistake.' And, of course, there's a huge amount of humor in sex. People
laugh. The kids love it. And when I use the words, I only use the words
once. I don't use them twice. It's not a sort of a celebration of rude swear
words. It's actually using words to combat the fear of where the minefield
is.

GROSS: Now I want to just back up a step. You said that under South Africa's
new constitution, gays have equal rights in everything, including the right to
marry and equal rights within that marriage.

Mr. UYS: Yes.

GROSS: What's it like now for you to look at America, which prides itself on
its Constitution, which prides itself on democracy, which wants to export its
democracy, knowing that in America gay people are struggling for that right to
marry whereas in South Africa they have it already. In your country...

Mr. UYS: Yes.

GROSS: ...you got it.

Mr. UYS: Well, you know, you've gone a long way since your Constitution was
created. And, unfortunately, when I think of American constitutional rights,
I think about all the Amendments. It seems to be there's always an amendment
to cancel out what was there earlier on. We haven't got to amendments yet.
I'm very worried about what is happening in the world, led by America, because
I do recognize a fear that created the atmosphere of the '80s in South Africa
under P.W. Botha and under apartheid. He said to us very clearly, `I will
protect you against the terrorists.' And we said to him, `Yes, please, take
our human rights and do what you think is fitting.' So he cut our foot for
the shoe. And it needed, the birth of our democracy thanks to Mandela and the
African National Congress, to actually bring back our human rights. They
wrote the constitution.

We have a government at the moment that is proud of what they did because they
did a very fine job. We have problems within the government with HIV/AIDS and
with Zimbabwe. But I celebrate my freedom of speech, through which I can
criticize my government and accuse my president of genocide. It is an
extraordinary contradiction in terms. But America is a very interesting
lesson on how easily we can lose the way when we are frightened. So it's back
to fear.

GROSS: My guest is South African satirist Pieter-Dirk Uys. We'll talk more
after a break. This is FRESH AIR.

(Soundbite of music)

GROSS: If you're just joining us, my guest is Pieter-Dirk Uys. He is a
satirist who lives in South Africa. He used to satirize apartheid, but now
he's been focusing a lot on the AIDS epidemic and doing political satire as
well. One of his shows is called "Foreign AIDS." Another is called
"Elections and Erections."

One of the places where politics and AIDS meet in your performances is through
Thabo Mbeki, the president of South Africa, who has said in the past that he
didn't believe that HIV caused AIDS or that they were connected in any way.
What's his latest position on that?

Mr. UYS: I wish I had answers here. He also recently said in an interview
with The Washington Post that he didn't know anybody who had HIV and didn't
know anybody who died of AIDS. It was such a shocking thing to hear from a
leader of a country in which millions of people are affected by the virus in
which we lose 600 people a day because of government carelessness, a country
in which the president's staff has died of AIDS. However, there's nothing we
can do about that here, other than just to say it is a huge problem. And in
Africa, the leader is the chief. I am very much proud of being an African,
who happens not to be black, but I'm an African, who happens not to be Zulu.
I'm an Afrikaner but still an African. And I need to follow my leader in the
structure of African tradition. And I know that Thabo Mbeki's confusion has
just confused the people to the extent that they don't know what's going on
out there.

Recently he has stopped talking about it, in fact, to the extent that during
the election campaign in April, which he delivered brilliantly with great
aplomb and great visibility and a great relaxed embrace of the people, the
media and everybody was told very clearly, `You do not ask the president about
HIV/AIDS.' Now that is like saying, `You don't ask President Bush about
Iraq.' Well, I don't know how close you are to that, but I don't think it's
there yet. And so we are not helped by a president who embraces, who leads by
putting his arms around, like, for example, Princess Diana, princess of Wales,
who in the '80s went into her a hospital and put her arms around a man who was
dying of AIDS. And she did it without a mask over her face, nor gloves on.
And I think through that, she changed millions and millions of people's terror
of this virus. She made it very clear that you can live with AIDS; don't have
to run away from it. And Thabo Mbeki doesn't so that, and I am very upset by
that.

GROSS: What about drugs? I know that there have been attempts to get
affordable drugs or free drugs to people with AIDS in South Africa. Where do
you think your country is on that now?

Mr. UYS: Well, for a long time there's been an enormous amount of promises
undelivered on the roll-out of antiretroviral drugs. The realities around
drugs are extremely complex. They are, first of all, terribly expensive; they
shouldn't be, they don't have to be. But, secondly, they're very complicated.
You can't just swallow them like a Dispirin. You have to have a certain
regime and a discipline and an education. And so, yes, one does agree that it
is complicated. Recently with the election campaign, the drugs were `rolled
out'--I use that word in inverted commas--`rolled out' in principle by the
government, who said that, `Within five years these drugs will be available.'
In five years we've lost 10 million people. So it's being used very much as
an election ploy. It is very unsatisfactory. It is, in fact, not happening;
the spin is happening.

And, again, with our new era of communication and information, people just
have to hear the word `We are doing it' to believe it, and then they switch
over to another program. So, unfortunately, it is not helping that the media
move on to other problems and don't stick to this one issue and say, `But
prove to us, where are the drugs?' My point is, yes, the drugs are important,
but why do we have to make everybody think they'll have to take the drugs? I
want to go right back to square one and say, `You don't need to get the
virus.' The whole point is it's only a virus. It's not a bomb in a train in
Madrid. It's not a terrorist act. It's a virus without a cure. It's a virus
that doesn't happen through your ear or through breathing. It is a virus that
happens through sex. As I said, it comes when we come. So you've got to
confront that, and you've got to know where the alphabet of survival is. Now
that is where the government is just looking away.

GROSS: I know after the end of apartheid, you felt a little uncomfortable
caricaturing the new leaders of the government because you thought as a white
man, it might seem racist if you were caricaturing the new, black African
leaders of your country. But in your show, I'm sure you want to talk about
President Mbeki...

Mr. UYS: Yes.

GROSS: ...who is black...

Mr. UYS: Yes.

GROSS: ...but this has nothing to do with race, what you're talking about.
This has to do with his policy on AIDS. So how do you feel about criticizing
Mbeki or caricaturing President Mbeki in your shows?

Mr. UYS: Well, first of all, starting with Nelson Mandela--I mean, to do
Nelson Mandela in a satire is like doing Mother Teresa in drag. You know, it
was quite tough.

GROSS: Right.

Mr. UYS: And I do him with enormous love. I love him so much words cannot
describe, as with Desmond Tutu. They have just been the most extraordinary
gift of guardian angelship, which is just extrdordinary, although I must do
them in the show. They have actually asked--Desmond Tutu has said to me,
(mimicking Tutu) `Why am I not in your show?' (Laughs) And of course I'll do
him. And, of course, Nelson Mandela, who enjoys my impersonation when I do,
`Ah, Pieter, where is Evita?' I have a wonderful relationship with these--and,
again, it doesn't come to--you know, color doesn't come into Nelson Mandela,
Desmond Tutu. Winnie Mandela also a great character, a great person as
opposed to a black person.

However, Thabo Mbeki--I did him originally in "Foreign AIDS" as a sort of a
send-up of a Shakespearean character, a Lord MacBeki, as in Lord Macbeth.
Thabo Mbeki does a lot of quoting from Shakespeare because he was educated in
the United Kingdom. He knows his Shakespeare, although he tends to mix things
up, which makes for good material. But now I do him as a ventriloquist's
doll. I have a little doll as Thabo Mbeki. And I do a sketch with P.W.
Botha. The leader of the apartheid regime now talks to Thabo Mbeki because,
actually, the name `Thabo' is an anagram for the name Botha. And P.W. Botha
says, `Thabo, just will you tell me, how is it possible that you've been
responsible for the deaths of more blacks than I was?'

GROSS: (Laughs)

Mr. UYS: And Thabo Mbeki says, `No, no, we are not responsible for their
deaths. We let them die by themselves. We ignore them, and they go away.'
It's a shocking thing. But because it is so theatrical, because I've got a
little ventriloquist dummy, the audience enjoys the theatrical part. And when
the P.W. character says to Thabo, `Well, what do you call this final solution?
Do you call it genocide?' And then Thabo says, `No. We call it democracy.'
Yeah, that ends the new show, and it sort of makes people sort of take a deep
breath.

And I get into trouble; of course I do. ANC party members are angry with me
for crossing the party line, for criticizing. And I say, `Excuse me, we are
in a democracy. We have freedom of speech, freedom of expression. Prove me
wrong. Prove me wrong. Answer my questions. Why are we in denial from a
presidential point of view? Answer that question. Otherwise I'll make up the
answers. I will say: Has Thabo Mbeki got AIDS? Is that why--is he in denial
because of that? Is this a genocidal way to save money so that the people who
stay behind will have an easier country to run? Is this a new apartheid?
People with money will be able to afford antiretroviral drugs, and people
without money, the majority of our people, will die. Answer the questions.'
At the moment there's no answers, so I've got to create my own theatrical
minefield and put up some balloons here.

GROSS: Do you think that President Mbeki is surprised at being the target of
the satire of somebody who was so anti-apartheid?

Mr. UYS: I hope so. I must tell you I knew him quite well when he was deputy
president...

GROSS: You did?

Mr. UYS: ...because when Nelson Mandela went away doing all the things that
he did, holding Bill Clinton's hands in those days and saying, (mimicking
Mandela) `Don't worry, Bill. You know, it's only human'--Thabo Mbeki used to
invite me to his dinners to do cabaret, 10-minute slots. And he used to say
to me, `Don't do P.W. Botha. Don't do the easy things. Do me. Do us. Show
us how to laugh at ourselves.' Thabo Mbeki was brought up on the 9 o'clock
news, on "Monty Python," on all those wonderful British alphabets of satire.
And I was dazzled by the support from this bright man. He wore the red
ribbon, the anti-AIDS ribbon. I was dazzled by the fact that he actually was
there visibly on our side.

And then something went wrong. I don't know what went wrong. Suddenly he
just changed gear and went off on his own. So if he's uncomfortable with me,
well, tough. My passion is my country. My passion is my enormous respect for
where we are, my democracy. The young people--I've been to a million kids,
and I can tell you if we can keep our kids alive, we will have the greatest
generation the world has ever seen. Americans will move to South Africa. But
we must keep them alive today because tonight they'll have a party, and sex is
a very seductive thing. And before you know it, you're doing it, and you just
think, `Oh, well, I can't get the virus because it can't happen to me.' Well,
it can. And it can happen to a president and a pop star and me and you. So I
have to focus on the broader picture and not apologize for being rude to the
leader of my land.

GROSS: Pieter-Dirk Uys is a South African satirist. He'll be back in the
second half of the show. I'm Terry Gross, and this is FRESH AIR.

(Soundbite of music)

(Announcements)

(Soundbite of music)

GROSS: Coming up, Lloyd Schwartz reviews the music from the animated film
"The Triplets of Belleville," which is now out on DVD. And we continue our
conversation with South African satirist Pieter-Dirk Uys. He'll tell us about
creating his alter-ego, Evita Bezuidenhout, the South African matron.

(Soundbite of music)

GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross, back with South African satirist
Pieter-Dirk Uys. Apartheid used to be the target of his humor, but now it's
HIV. Last month his one-man show, "Foreign AIDS," won a special citation from
the Obie Awards, the off-Broadway theater awards.

Pieter, one of the characters that you do in your show is a character that
you've been doing for years--is Evita Bezuidenhout...

Mr. UYS: Yes.

GROSS: ...who's an Afrikaner matron. She used to be married to a nationalist
member of parliament. Would you just describe her a little bit and tell us
how she has been responding to AIDS in South Africa?

Mr. UYS: Well, first of all, let me give you sort of an American picture:
Phyllis Schlafly on the one side, Nancy Reagan on the other side, Eva Braun,
Imelda Marcos, Minnie Mouse, inspired by beauty like Sophia Loren's makeup,,
inspired by incredible focus like Mrs. Clinton. But the thing about bard
Evita Bezuidenhout--she's not Dame Edna. I mean, I've always had this
comparison--people have said Evita Bezuidenhout is South Africa's answer to
Dame Edna Everage. And my answer to that is, `Well, what was the question?'
And the only similarity between Barry Humphries, the Australian satirist, and
me is that we're middle-aged men with good legs.

GROSS: (Laughs)

Mr. UYS: And Evita's a political beast, a dangerous political beast. And, of
course, during the apartheid era she was a supporter of the government; she
was an ambassador to one of the Black Homelands. Reputedly she was having
an affair with our foreign affairs minister, Pik Botha, to the extent that he
started believing it--used to send her e-mails. Now how do I explain this to
you? This man used to send e-mails to Evita Bezuidenhout and get sexy with
her, but he would `care of Pieter-Dirk Uys.' I mean, he knew it was me. I
mean, surrealism became a way of life for me during those years. And, of
course, when the new government happened, Evita was in opposition.

Now she is very much a designer democrat. She cooks for the government.
She is somebody who believes that if people eat together, they must talk
together. So she prepares dishes for the ANC to try and get Robert Mugabe
around the table, to try and find out why he is creating a genocide in his
country. Evita's very tempted to put Valiums in his orange juice and get him
out of the house and into a box and put him under the ground. But, you know,
she has no sense of humor and no sense of irony, which makes her a very, very
important clown figure because if I said the things that she says--for
example, Evita says, `During apartheid we used to put all our political
prisoners on Robben Island. Now George Bush has followed our example, and he
puts his political prisoners on Cuba.' So I'm using an enormous amount of
information from our racist and fascist totalitarian past to sadly reflect the
state of very important, dignified democracies in 2004.

GROSS: Is Evita talking at all about AIDS?

Mr. UYS: Yeah. Now she comes with me. When I go to the schools, she's one
of the characters I do because the kids know her more than me. And I say to
them, `Do you want to see Evita?' `Yes!' Now these are 2,000 black kids in a
township in the middle of nowhere sitting on the cement floor. `Do you want
to see Evita?' `Yes!' `Shall I bring her to you?' `Yes!' And so out comes
the lipstick, and I put on the lipstick. Well, they, first of all, nearly
have a heart attack with the excitement because...

GROSS: Wait, wait, wait a minute. When you put on the lipstick, are you
facing them or...

Mr. UYS: I'm facing them. Oh, yes. And I'm rolling on this lipstick. I
mean, you know, Boy George, eat your heart out. And they scream with delight
because this middle-age, bald, fat man is putting on lipstick. And then I put
on tinted glasses because I haven't got time for eyelashes. And I put on big
earrings. And I put on a poncho, which gives the idea of a dress. And then I
say, `Is she here?' `No!' I said, `What's missing?' `The hair!' `Ah,
there.' So I put on the hair. I turn around so that my back's to them, put
on the wig, give a beat or two, turn around and there she is. And, of course,
they do somersaults with delight.

So the wonderful magic of theater works for them. And, of course, she, in
fact, says to them, like all conservative people say to them, `No, no, no.
You're too young to have sex. You must play soccer and football, and you must
play with your dolls and wait till you get married before you have sex.' And,
I mean, rubbish, rubbish, rubbish. You know, kids--they want to hear that
because sex happens around the corner at the age of 10. So she is very much
reflecting that sort of prejudice in their lives.

But the fact is that her little grandchildren say to her, `What is all this
about the AIDS?' So she's got to answer their questions. And her son, De
Kock--now she's got twin sons: De Kock Bezuidenhout, who is gay, and Izan,
who is a Nazi. Now interesting the name Izan--when you put that name in a
mirror, it reads `Nazi.' I mean, N-A-Zed-I; I-Zed-A-N. And of, course, De
Kock is very involved with the AIDS program and reality because his best
friend, his lover, has got HIV, which Evita doesn't know. And Evita's very
offended by this because she's an Afrikaner, she's a Christian, she's white;
it can't happen to her. It can only happen to poor blacks. But her son has
been very specific in saying to her, `Mama, you must talk about this. You
must help people identify with the fact that AIDS is part of life.' And then
she says to him, `De Kock, why are you so involved with this horrible AIDS?'
And then he says, `Mama, because I'm positive.' And so I said, `Well, if you
think you know what you're doing, I'm not going to argue.'

So, you see, one takes her through that denial area, where she represents, I
mean, 60 percent of my audience, white and black. And so she is very nervous
about it. But her sister, Bambie Kellermann, who is a blonde, grand
horizontal, a real tarty woman, very Marlene Dietrich because she went to
Germany and she married a Nazi. But she didn't know he was a Nazi because she
was an Afrikaner. I mean, what was the difference as far as she was
concerned. And, of course, she had to become a stripper. And, of course,
when he eventually died as minister of war in Paraguay, she's now back in
South Africa running a brothel. And she's got his ashes in an urn, and she
has AIDS. But as she said, she's got the money; she can afford the drugs.
And she flies to London and gets it free on her old national health card.

So wherever I can, I use my characters to confront issues. You know, just
going back to what you said earlier on, do I feel racist when I do black
characters who are politicians, yes, I do. But what I'd rather do, instead of
doing the minister of health, who needs to be done very firmly, I'd rather do
somebody in the health area, like a nurse or a doctor, to reflect what is
happening rather than actually become a sort of Uncle Tom character done by a
white man with black accent. I don't feel comfortable with that. And people
are right to say if they don't have a background, it's racist.

When I once did my performance at one of Nelson Mandela's AIDS awareness
dinner parties to raise money for AIDS orphans, Oprah Winfrey was a guest.
And Evita refers to her as `Comrade Winfrey.' And I must say she was very,
very uncomfortable for the first three minutes of Evita's cabaret, where Evita
was saying to Nelson Mandela, `We apologize for apartheid. We're very, very
sorry it didn't work.'

GROSS: (Laughs)

Mr. UYS: And Oprah took some very deep breaths and swallows, until she saw
that Nelson Mandela was falling off his chair. He was roaring with laughter.
So Oprah understood that the great celebration of where we are is that our
former convicts, our former prisoners, our former victims are people with a
great sense of humor. Again, sense of humor--that is the key. That has been
my inspiration through my life. And now with my friends who are dying of a
virus, I am no longer frightened of sitting next to them and holding their
hands and kissing them and hugging them. I wouldn't go there five years ago
because of my terror, but I can do it now. And there's extraordinary humor
where they say to me, `Let's plan the funeral.' I mean, you know, it takes an
enormous amount of courage and humanity to be able to get there.

GROSS: How many people would you estimate you know who've died of AIDS?

Mr. UYS: I don't know. I don't count. I just miss them. I don't count. I
don't count. I can't count because I'm wrong; because if we're losing 600
people a day, that's a lot of people. You know, I keep on--when I talk to the
kids in South Africa, because they've seen it on television so often, I remind
them of 9/11. First of all, I say, `You know, 3,300 people died on that
terrible day. And yet on that terrible day 3,300 people died in South Africa
of AIDS, and the next day 3,300 people died of AIDS, and the next day and
every single day since 9/11 we've lost the same amount of people every day.'
And, also, the image of an airplane crashing into a building, and I say to
them, `We are buildings, we are skyscrapers of passion and energy. We are the
towers that were there. And the HIV virus is like a hijacked plane filled
with petrol that goes into us and explodes, and that's our immune system and
we collapse. You've seen it on television, but it's happening among us. But
we can't see it, but we must understand it.' So images are very important,
very important.

GROSS: My guest is South African satirist Pieter-Dirk Uys. We'll talk more
after a break. This is FRESH AIR.

(Soundbite of music)

GROSS: If you're just joining us, my guest is Pieter-Dirk Uys. And he's a
South African satirist and actor. And during the apartheid years, he
satirized apartheid in a very critical way, but now he's been talking a lot
about AIDS in his performances and touring schools in South Africa, talking to
students about safe sex.

How does post-apartheid South Africa compare with your expectations? It was
something that you were hoping for, you know, for so long. And now that
you're several years into it, how does it compare?

Mr. UYS: Well, you know, I never thought we'd get here. I never thought we
would have a democracy. I expected a Holocaust on the lines of Rwanda or
Kosovo or Berlin in '45 because, dear God, we needed to be punished for what
we did. But we got away with it. I mean, Nelson Mandela came out and said,
(mimicking Mandela) `Now I'll give you your second chance. Let's do it
together.' So I must tell you I'm hugely in a feeling of celebration. I am
very aware--not to demean the fact that violence is totally out of control.
People are dying because of carelessness. There should be much more focus on
paying policemen. And we must look after ourselves, but it can be done.

We have done an enormous amount in 10 years, beyond expectations. We are a
healthy, young democracy, and we've had a very boring third election, which is
great. We actually counted our votes in 48 hours, and we're a Third World
country; we're not Florida. And that was great. So I'm an optimist. I
always want to say my glass will always be half-full, not half-empty.

GROSS: Now, you know, your character Evita Bezuidenhout, is an example of,
you know, a white matron who supported apartheid. And now you've tried to
trace her as she's adapting to the democratic, majority-ruled country she
lives in. What about real people who you know who supported apartheid? Have
you watched them try to change in the new country?

Mr. UYS: Enormously. And it's an extraordinary--one example: Recently I was
in a black township, and my friend said, `Just look over there.' And there
was a Mercedes-Benz with--the boot of the back of the car was open. And there
was a lady like Evita with gray hair very well-coiffered; she'd been to the
hairdresser. She was the sort of Afrikan's white woman who voted for
apartheid. And she was actually allowing the children to take trays of food
out of her car into their little house because she'd adopted those little
families because they didn't have parents because of AIDS. And when I went up
to her, she shouted at me. She said, `Stay away! I don't like you. I don't
like what you did to us Afrikaners.' So she's not my friend, but she was
doing this extraordinary gift of compassion and help to the future. So I have
great respect for what people are doing out of their hearts and just out of
their heads.

GROSS: I want to ask you a little bit about your family and your background.
Your father's family is Afrikaner.

Mr. UYS: Yes.

GROSS: And your mother's family is Jewish, but you didn't know that until
after he death.

Mr. UYS: Yes.

GROSS: She fled Germany after Hitler came to power. She had converted to
Christianity and moved to South Africa. And, you know, when I read that, I
was thinking, `That's probably the wrong place to have fled to.' I mean, like
in your show, you make so many comparisons between, you know, the Afrikaners
and the Nazis just in terms of...

Mr. UYS: Yes.

GROSS: ...their kind of racist ideology. Why do you think she came to South
Africa?

Mr. UYS: Well, I think--we must also remember that other countries didn't
want the Jews. America and Britain were already starting to say no. And it
was...

GROSS: Of course, apartheid wasn't officially in place yet also.

Mr. UYS: No, no. Apartheid started in '48. And my mother--her brother had
gone out to South Africa some years before. And she was a concert pianist.
Anyway, she went out there, and she met my father on the stage of the City
Hall when they were doing a metsa concerto(ph) together.

GROSS: Oh.

Mr. UYS: But Afrikaners aren't known to like anybody. So I don't think
anybody who escaped sort of anti-Semitism wants to sort of announce themselves
to anti-Semitic people. I find it very difficult to explain why, although I
do understand why she didn't want to confront that. The pain must have been
terrible, the loss must have been terrible. We are now retracing the history
of my mother's family, an extraordinary story. Her piano, which she brought
from Berlin in '37, which is at home--my sister's a concert pianist, and this
piano has been our touchstone and our sort of heartbeat for all these
years--has now gone back to Berlin. It's going into the Jewish Museum. And
my sister will be playing a recital on her mother's piano in Berlin. And
that's the sort of a story that Spielberg makes us cry about, and it's
happening in my own family. So I salute all that background that I'm now
discovering at the age of 59.

GROSS: How into Afrikaner ideology was your father?

Mr. UYS: My father was a very decent, kind, wonderful man. And he was an
Afrikaner who was terrified of anything that was not acknowledged by his
tribe, meaning black people as people, although, again, we were not allowed
racism in the house because my mother made it very clear that she wouldn't
stand for it. And as things changed, my father changed with them with great
shock and then great awe and then great enjoyment. When I brought a black
actress into our house in the late '80s and she went up to my father and
she said, `Hello, Pa, darling,' and kissed him on his lips, I thought he'd
have a heart attack. But within two weeks he was kissing her back.

So, you know, again, just deflating that terror and that fear--and we fought
like hell in the '70s. He hated what I was doing. He threw me out of the
house because within the framework of being an Afrikaner, I was a terrorist
and a Communist. And then he found out that I wasn't and that the people that
he believed were liars--and so we became very good friends.

GROSS: Do you think your father knew that your mother was actually Jewish?

Mr. UYS: Well, you know, when I did once ask him, he said, `No, she was a
Catholic.' I said, `But isn't that worse for an Afrikaner?' You know? And
then we laughed and didn't go there. He didn't--my mother died very
tragically. She committed suicide. And, really, one didn't want to go
anywhere that would cause him pain, so we didn't talk about those things.

GROSS: How did you find out what her background really was?

Mr. UYS: Through her brother, who survived her; through my sister's
extraordinary--I suppose her looking into backgrounds and reading the letters.
Being German, my mother wrote letters to her friends, kept copies of the
letters; her friends kept copies. We have got correspondence that goes back
to 1935--an extraordinary life, in which I see a mother that I never knew.
And, you know, I just lost her very young; I was very young when she died, so
I don't know how she would have enjoyed what I'm doing, although she always
said I'd be a writer. And so my sister is really becoming the archivist of
the family, and she's showing me an enormous amount of detail that I had no
idea about, although instinctively I knew I was Jewish because I just always
loved my Jewish friends and the Jewish food, the Jewish humor, the
extraordinary capacity for self-mockery. And I'm proud to be part of that,
and I'm proud to be an Afrikaner. So I belong to both chosen people.

GROSS: Why are you proud to be an Afrikaner?

Mr. UYS: Well, I am. You know, it'd be terrible to tell you now, at the age
of 59, I'm ashamed of my roots. I am an Afrikaner. Whatever my people have
done, I will not walk away and pretend I'm not part of that. I am part of
that. And I will use the guilt that I've inherited to actually make sure it
doesn't happen again. And humor is a great shield.

GROSS: Now you have your own theater now in South Africa. Is that right?

Mr. UYS: I've moved to a little town 100 kilometers west of Cape Town called
Darling. It's wonderful to live in a place called Darling. And people, `Yes,
darling. Where, darling?' I said, `In Darling, darling.' And I've taken over
the little railway station--it's very much sort of like a little Baghdad
cafe--and turned it into two theaters, a restaurant and a bar and then an art
gallery and an art school for the little kids in the community and a piano at
school. And we have a huge involvement with our community kids. We've got
1,500 kids under the age of 16, street children that we look after, and an
enormous inspiration with them. And that's where I am.

And Evita Bezuidenhout is based--it's called Evita se Perron. And, of course,
Peron is the Africans' word for station platform. And it's become a sort of
a--you know, people come, tourists come, from all over the world because we've
got an exhibition of all of the terrible symbols of apartheid: the `whites
only' signs; all the pictures of Fervut(ph) and the apartheid regime. Well,
it is a museum. We call it a nauseum. It is definitely a Disneyland at bad
taste because people come and laugh at their fear. That's back to where we
were, right, in the beginning? Laugh at fear.

GROSS: You got a Truth and Reconciliation Award.

Mr. UYS: Yes.

GROSS: A couple of years ago, was it?

Mr. UYS: Yeah, two years ago.

GROSS: Uh-huh. Was that from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission?

Mr. UYS: Yes, from Archbishop Desmond Tutu and the commission. And it was a
great, great embrace, very, very important for me because those two things
are, I suppose, the most important aspects of the democracy: the truth of the
past, the truth about the future, meaning the good news and the bad news; and
the reconcilliation, where people are actually embracing each other and going
forward to make it work for everybody.

GROSS: What does the citation say?

Mr. UYS: The citation said--I can't remember, but it said something like,
`Somebody who actually used humor to reflect fear and used entertainment to
educate' and has not actually got out of the tree--I mean, I feel like I'm an
old queen up a tree throwing tomatoes at the politicians, you know. So maybe
that's where I'll end up, you know, like--it was a great tribute. But then I
must tell you Evita Bezuidenhout also got an award in San Diego. She'd got
the Living Legacy 2000 Award.

GROSS: (Laughs)

Mr. UYS: And that award had been given in the past to Mother Teresa, Princess
Diana and Hillary Clinton. And, frankly, when I found out that Evita was
getting the award, I did phone them from South Africa, and I said, `I thank
you so much. But do you realize that Evita Bezuidenhout does not exist?' And
the lady said, `Honey, you know, to be a legend, you don't have to exist. You
just have to be.' And it was a wonderful thing because there were 30 awards
that night to very, very significant women who'd done an enormous amount for
women all over the world. And the 31st award was to Evita. And there she was
on stage looking just glorious, and she said, `Thank you for this wonderful
award. It's the only award that Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu can't get
because they're not a woman like me.'

(Soundbite of laughter)

GROSS: This is a drag performer's dream come true, isn't it?

Mr. UYS: I'd say. Absolutely. I mean, with politicians writing all my
material and having some wonderful women to have as inspirations, yeah. And
be an actor--you know, I keep on saying it's my job. You know, it's got
nothing to do with actually drag or being transsexual.

GROSS: Right. Right.

Mr. UYS: It's just me doing a job. And the fact that I've got good legs
helps. And I say if I had to play a tree, I'd play a damned good tree. And
I've played a cat and a dog already, and maybe I'll play the stone. So it's
my job.

GROSS: Well, Pieter-Dirk Uys, a pleasure to talk with you. Thank you so
much.

Mr. UYS: Thank you.

GROSS: Pieter-Dirk Uys is a South African satirist. He'll be back in the US
in January to perform his one-man show, "Foreign AID," at Harvard's American
Repertory Theatre.

The animated film "The Triplets of Belleville" has come out on DVD. Music
critic Lloyd Schwartz considers the music in the film after a break. This is
FRESH AIR.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Analysis: Criticism over choice of Oscar for best song
TERRY GROSS, host:

This year's Oscar for the best song went to "Into the West" from "The Lord of
the Rings." You had trouble remembering that, you're not alone. Classical
music critic Lloyd Schwartz says that the memorable theme from "The Triplets
of Belleville" should have won. The animated feature is now out on DVD, and
Lloyd says it's filled with wonderful musical moments.

(Soundbite of "Mass in C Minor")

LLOYD SCHWARTZ reporting:

That's music from Mozart's great "Mass in C Minor" conducted by Nicholas
Harnoncourt. It's not anything you'd expect to hear in a popular movie,
least of all an animated movie. But it's used to powerful effect in Sylvain
Chomet's edgy, unsettlingly eccentric "The Triplets of Belleville." In this
scene the young hero, a champion bicyclist, has been abducted from the Tour de
France. And his devoted grandmother and dog are following his kidnappers
across the Atlantic on a paddleboat. It's an inspired choice to have Mozart's
roiling music depict the rolling waves of a turbulent ocean. What's even more
unusual is that Mozart's sacred music is heard in the same film as a
vaudeville show depicting such celebrating Americans in Paris as Josephine
Baker and Fred Astaire, who does a dance in which he is devoured by his own
shoes.

But the heart of "Triplets of Belleville" is the Academy Award-nominated song
"Belleville Rendez-Vous," which recurs throughout the movie. It's sung by the
Aponama sisters(ph), Parisian vaudeville stars in the 1930s.

(Soundbite of "Belleville Rendez-Vous" sung in English and French together)

SCHWARTZ: Chomet's teasing, quasi-nonsense lyrics and Benoit Charest's
syncopated, off-kilter, minor-key tune captured the feeling of 1930s jazz and
are impossible to get out of your head, unlike the song that actually won the
Oscar, "Into the West" from the third "Lord of the Rings" movie, which was
sung at the Oscar ceremonies by Annie Lennox, who co-wrote it, a song I can't
remember at all.

I'm especially fond of the scene late in "The Triplets of Belleville" when the
grandmother, in the New World, joins the aged triplets on stage. She
accompanies them striking the spokes of a bicycle wheel like a steel drum,
while the triplets crumple a newspaper for percussion, pluck the bars of a
refrigerator shelf and use a vacuum cleaner as their wind instruments.

(Soundbite of song)

SCHWARTZ: Some unforgettable, Oscar-winning songs have also come from
cartoons: "When You Wish Upon A Star" from "Pinocchio" and
"Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah" from Disney's "Song of the South." But the Academy has a
history of big mistakes. In 1937, it bypassed one of the greatest American
songs ever written, George Gershwin's "They Can't Take That Away From Me," for
a Bing Crosby Hawaiian number called "Sweet Leilani." And not one Beatles song
was ever even nominated. I'm sure "Belleville Rendez-Vous" will stay with us
longer than--What was the song that won this year's Oscar?

GROSS: Lloyd Schwartz is classical music editor of The Boston Phoenix.

(Credits)

GROSS: I'm Terry Gross.
Transcripts are created on a rush deadline, and accuracy and availability may vary. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Please be aware that the authoritative record of Fresh Air interviews and reviews are the audio recordings of each segment.