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Uys to be honoured in Berlin
– Cape Times, 9 February 2011
Satirist Pieter-Dirk Uys will not linger while in Germany, to collect an award at the Berlin International Film Festival, as he has important work to do in South Africa.
The Special Teddy Award will be presented to Uys in Berlin on Friday next week for his commitment to Aids education in South African schools.
Every year at the film festival a Teddy Award is presented for outstanding lifetime achievements. This year the award’s 25th anniversary is to be celebrated.
Uys said he would not linger in Germany because he had lots of work to do with the mountains of material politicians would provide now that election season had opened with President Jacob Zuma’s claim that an ANC membership card was a passport to heaven.
Chatting to the Cape Times from his Darling home yesterday, Uys said he had been speaking to children and listening to their concerns about Aids since 2001.
“Oh, God. Is that 10 years? I would say that is the most important part of my life’s work. Humour is a wonderful way to confront fear. And the children are terrified about something that no one will talk about.”
He will also be honoured for the work of his on-stage alter ego, Evita Bezuidenhout.
“So she will also be there. And she will show them some leg.”
Two days after collecting the award, Uys will give a performance of his show Desperate First Ladies at the Jewish Museum in Berlin where his late mother’s piano is kept. He explained that she had been from Berlin and had come to South Africa, with her piano, in 1937. She then met his father, also a pianist.
In this performance he celebrates his “Jewish heritage, his Afrikaner legacy and his fantastic legs” and he hopes to remind the audience that a patriot can also be someone who protects his country from its government.
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