AFRO-NETS> Kaiser Daily HIV/AIDS Report - Fri, 10 Aug 2001

[Cecilia Snyder <csnyder@ccmc.org>]

Kaiser Daily HIV/AIDS Report - Fri, 10 Aug 2001
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South African One-Man Show Tackles Government Response to AIDS

Pieter-Dirk Uys, a gay, white, 56-year-old South African known as the 
nation's "most prominent satirist," has switched the "targets of his 
mockery" from the white-minority government of the apartheid era to 
the black-majority government's "failure" to respond to the country's 
AIDS epidemic in his new one-man show "Foreign AIDS," the New York 
Times reports. Uys shows the same "readiness to draw fire from and 
taunt the authorities" in his new show, but he admits that "[i]n a 
racially charged society of new taboos in which whites no longer 
dominate, it is far more difficult" to perform his brand of satire 
"without being accused of racism." In an effort to avoid provoking 
blacks, he resists doing outright impersonations of black political 
leaders, as he did with whites, instead treating them as "celebrity 
superstars." But the "political elite" that surround President Thabo 
Mbeki, criticized for his public expressions of doubt over the causal 
link between HIV and AIDS, are not off limits in "Foreign AIDS." The 
play, currently being performed in the Kilburn district of North Lon-
don, grew out of the touring show "For Fact's Sake" that Uys took to 
160 South African schools. The free show attempted to teach young 
people that they could avoid HIV by "changing their sexual habits." 
The experience exposed Uys to "things that were harsh and that were 
uplifting for their display of courage," and those experiences "fuel" 
several of the "tirades" against the South African government that 
Uys' characters engage in as part of his new production. Uys realizes 
that those tirades "could also land him in big political trouble back 
home," where he has not yet performed the play. However, he continues 
to be provocative, not only with South Africans, but also with the 
Western world. One of his characters, Bambi Kellerman, the wife of a 
Nazi fugitive, compares the developed world's "indifference" to Af-
rica's AIDS epidemic to the Allied troops' "inaction to prevent the 
Holocaust" during the early years of World War II. Uys is not afraid 
of the audience's reaction because the play is meant to force people 
to "confront their fear of AIDS," he said. "AIDS is the beginning and 
the end in South Africa. If AIDS succeeds, we won't have a country 
anymore," he said. The show next will move to the Netherlands and 
"possibly" New York (Cowell, New York Times, 8/9).


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The Kaiser Daily HIV/AIDS Report is published for kaisernetwork.org, 
a free service of The Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation, by National 
Journal Group Inc. ¸ 2001 by National Journal Group Inc. and Kaiser 
Family Foundation. All rights reserved. 


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