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YOU ANC NOTHING YET  — On  the  road  to  Mangaung

– Pieter-Dirk Uys, Public Address delivered in the Great Hall, Wits University, 23 April 2012.  

 

I am honoured and humbled to stand here today in the Great Hall of Wits University where so many have stood before me. Doctors, lawyers, presidents, teachers, icons, leaders, authors and media-stars, sharing wisdom, experience and leadership. I am none of those. And yet can be all of them: male, female or convertible. I could even don a beret like a tea cosy and suggest that our democracy is dictatorship.

  

This is a big country with a big history. We have been down many roads together. The road to Sharpeville. The road to Boipatong. The road to Dakar. The road to Codesa. The road to Polokwane. And now we are on the road to Mangaung. There will be eight months of political inactivity because our ruling party is fighting each other for power and wealth.

 

What happens in a democracy when the government is out to lunch?

 

There are the People. We are not alone.

 

After Mangaung we will be on the road to the 2014 General Election. We will have part-time governance, because our ruling party is fighting among themselves for wealth and power.

 

What happens in a democracy when government does not govern?

 

There are the People. We are not alone.

  

I wanted to be a teacher when I was fifteen, because I had a teacher at school who inspired me to think. When in Standard 8 at an Afrikaans school, my English teacher asked us to write a poem in English.

 

I said: No Miss, I can't.

 

She said: But Pieter, you can.

 

I said: No Miss Nel, I can't.

 

She said: Pieter, you can do anything. If you believe in it and work towards it, you can do anything.

 

Thank you Miss Nel. You're right.

 

The one person who cannot be present here today in the audience is also known as the most famous white woman in South Africa and she doesn't exist. But just because Evita Bezuidenhout doesn't exist, doesn't mean she's not real. Since 1978 I have had to believe in her, and work towards making her believable to a nation. Dieting for a woman who does not exist.

  

Before I could go into my second year BA at UCT to be that teacher I hoped to be, I was hijacked by the theatre. As a result I have been mostly in solitary confinement ever since.  

 

Thabo Mbeki said: I am an African.

 

I say: I am an entertainer.

 

I eventually was slipped my degree in an unmarked envelope under a door at the stroke of midnight in 1968, having promised that I would never use it. I haven't. You don't need a degree to do what I must do: listen. Watch. Wait and see. Commit yourself to the most bizarre pastime in the world: reacting.

  

I can't act; I can only react. I can't tell jokes. I have to tell the truth. The truth is often funnier. When I found myself at the UCT Drama School in 1966, they said that I had no tangible talent as an actor. I was a polite Afrikaans boy, so I believed in older people's wisdom. I became a stage manager.

 

I would like to say to anyone here who is committed to that life in theatre to shout it out. I am the stage manager. You are the captain of that ship. It can not sail without you.

  

I would like to invite all ministers in government to spend a week in the theatre, working backstage as assistant stage managers. They will be happy to know that we do have blue lights backstage, but only to prevent actors from falling down stairs or off the stage. They will be a part of organization, structure, discipline; with respect and humility; having to do homework in preparation for delivery. All the things our ministers could learn from and carry out into the real world.

  

Theatre has no prejudice. It's about service delivery.

 

Can you deliver the performance? Or can't you deliver the performance?

 

Non-racial, non-sexist, often nonsensical, but very simple. I think it is the most honest profession in the world. What you see is what you get. You can't fake it. You get paid what people pay at the door. Not like in films where stars get paid millions based on possible returns. Or being the head of some company where it is often difficult to see what value the CEO is adding that makes his salary worth all those million-rand bonuses. And you're as good as your last performance. Rotten service delivery in theatre means the public support won't return. The audience won't vote for you by buying a ticket and sitting through another dismal experience of inaction, of boredom and disappointment, just out of sentimentality or habit.

 

To entice a Gauteng audience to come to the theatre today in April 2012 is hugely complex. Return home from a hard day at work. Change your clothes not into trainers and tracksuit (although you could). Set your burglar alarm, feed the two Rottweilers on the back veranda so they don't bite you on your way to the front door. Take a loaded gun just in case. Reverse your four-by-four out of the driveway, hoping the burglars don't slip in while you drive out. Risk your life in the Joburg traffic, meaning you become a racist within 20 seconds. (In seven days time the e-trip from Pretoria and back will also cost you double!) Get to the theatre. Park your car. Kiss your car goodbye. Collect your ticket. Maybe a few seconds to gulp down a glass of crappy theatre wine. Sit and wonder what the hell you're doing there. Hope for the best as the lights dim. And then the magic happens, more often than not. I greatly appreciate and am thankful to anyone who makes the effort to come to the theatre. They deserve our respect.

  

Does theatre change minds? Yes. If it's kak you'll stay away; that's a major mind-change. If it's the magic that we must conjure up with words, impressions, expressions, light and shade, song and dance, laughter and tears, it will change not just minds. It can change lives. But the only time theatre has really changed politics was when American President Abraham Lincoln was assassinated during Act One.

  

Humour can be used as the weapon of mass distraction. When you laugh, you seldom think that you will be laughing at something you don't even want to think about. Laughing at fear can make that fear less fearful. It's still lethal. It can still kill. But at least you're in charge of that fear. You can look it in the eyes. It will never be taller than you. Look away from fear in terror and that fear becomes a giant, so frightening that you will never find the courage to face it. It will win. You will die. Of fear. No one has ever died laughing.

  

Fear has become the drug of choice throughout the political world. A lethal drug being freely pushed by political dealers. They thrive on prejudice and frightening us — terrorism, the economic crisis, divide and rule. So I look for the 'mock' in democracy and the 'con' in reconciliation. Politicians blame. They do not inspire. Looking back on a life in the trenches of satire, it is fear that has been my greatest motivation, with irony as the only protection. Today in 2012 I have been called a racist, because as a white commenting on black government one can too easily be trapped in easy racist criticism. When that word stops all discussion, debate or even thought, I say:

 

Yes. I am a racist.

 

I was born into a racist society in 1945.

 

My school was white and racist.

 

My Dutch Reformed Church was white and racist, only because my God was white and racist.

 

My life was white and racist and I spent much time breaking the laws and the rules protecting whiteness and racism.

  

And then in 1994 when I was forth-nine years old, for the very first time I was allowed to stand in a queue with anybody irrespective of race. Millions of us stood together and voted, some for the very first time. I was no longer a white Afrikaner. It was no longer politically correct to be a racist in South Africa. I was a South African. Who said life cannot start at fifty.

  

Have things in South Africa changed since the tsunami of freedom in 1994 washed away the poisonous structures of separate development, creating a rainbow of hope? Yes. Everything has changed. From civil war to civil peace. Apartheid meant death, torture and loss. It destroyed hope and fed hatred. Democracy should mean the opposite. A new Constitution enshrines freedoms. Torture is illegal, but seventeen years without water and electricity can be torture. The death penalty was recalled, while today's violence, crime and viruses do cause death. Hope should now be the cornerstone of our future, but rotten education and chronic unemployment erode all hope. Hatred has supposedly been replaced by tolerance and support. Abject poverty in spite of the promises of a better life hatches hatred in slums and hovels. Everything has changed; yet too much stays the same. How long can decades of patience hold?

  

South Africa had its share of bloodletting, but it was called a Struggle, not a Battle. Let us always be grateful that we were committed amateurs, not bloody professionals. Was it so difficult to bring the two warring sides together and find out that they both loved the same land?

  

Mrs Evita Bezuidenhout tells how she brought the ANC and the National Party together secretly in 1985, in the dining room of her embassy in Bapetikosweti. The border between the homeland and South Africa divided her dining table into two countries: the ANC safely seated in the Bantustan; the NP smugly in Suid-Afrika. She served her bobotie and watched those mortal enemies confront each other eye to eye. At first black and white stared across at each other and glowered. Then someone told a Van der Merwe joke in Afrikaans and everyone in the ANC cried. They so missed the language! We want to hear Afrikaans! Praat Afrikaans!

 

And the Broederbond screamed: Voertsek! Voertsek! Voertsek!

 

Then Pik Botha opened all the bottles of Allesverloren, en die wyn het gevloei soos Bloedrivier. They started singing each others' songs. Imagine the NP boere struggling through the Click Song. Picture General Magnus Malan and Comrade Joe Modisa, arm in arm, doing an acapella version of Sarie Marais. The one song they all sang together that night in 1985 could have been the anthem of the New South Africa: Jou kombers en my matras en daar lê die ding!

  

We were excused our carelessness once; we will not be excused again. We actually got away with apartheid. No Nuremburg Trials. No one hung like Saddam Hussein for crimes against humanity. The last thing the world expected. There was no way we whites would survive the success of apartheid. Only 700,000 whites voting for a minority government to rule over 24 million voiceless subjects for forty-six years? It had to end in a bloodbath worse than anything the world had ever seen.

  

It didn't. Thanks to their generosity of spirit, their compassion, and their faith in a better life, the black majority embraced the white Madam and the white Master and didn't move into the house in Lower Houghton as threatened. Well, only a few. We thank people who became our saviours. Some will thank FW de Klerk for being the one to open the door. It needed the leader of the National Party to destroy the National Party and FW de Klerk did that in an afternoon. We thank Nelson Mandela for not coming out of jail angry. How would you have felt? In jail for twenty-seven years for what you believe in? Away from your children? Your wife goes mad? Nelson Mandela could so easily have come out of jail and spoken like Robert Mugabe. Nelson Mandela could have said: To hell with democracy! Take the farms and kill the whites! But he didn't say that. Nelson Mandela came out of jail with that beautiful smile and said: Tannie Evita, give me another koeksister! Nelson Mandela gave truth to the saying: love your enemy; it will ruin his reputation. Ten days ago President Jacob Zuma said: love your enemy and you will reach seventy. He's the proof. Love them and marry them too!

  

It was not just easy satirising the leaders of the apartheid regime. It was familiar. They were of my tribe. All I had to do was (strikes PW pose). Now after thirty years I even look like the old fucker. But when Nelson Mandela became the first democratically elected President of South Africa? A good guy in the Union Buildings? Hello! How can you make fun of Nelson Mandela? It's like doing Mother Theresa with a dildo! But it was Nelson Mandela who inspired me to get on with my job. History will one day analyze the way Madiba used humour to diffuse a civil war.

 

• Forming a government with those who locked you up for twenty-seven years shows a sense of humour.
• Invited the widows of past apartheid leaders to tea shows an extraordinary sense of humour.
• Then flying to Orania to have tea with Mrs Verwoerd proves you need a psychiatrist!
• Wearing the #6 jersey and single-handedly winning the 1995 Soccer World Cup shows a wicked sense of humour.
• Stepping down as President of a four-year-old democracy after one term was a joke we could have done without.
• Using music to spread an anti-HIV message to the youth was a celebration we must always encourage with a smile.

 

Our honeymoon with freedom, our celebration of the rainbow nation, our relief at still being alive and allowed to moan and complain about everything went on for too long. In 1999 we sobered up with a shock and found ourselves in a Mbekivellian eclipse.

  

After the 1994 election I was happy to leave the ANC alone. I had voted for this liberation movement on whose behalf I had to speak in tongues of comedy for twenty years. Everyone now had a voice. My job was over. I needed to get a proper job. But the ANC also proved how quickly things were changing. Soon they found me. My honeymoon with Amandla was cut short. Some politicians proved that they were like monkeys. The higher they climbed the poles of ambition, the more of their arses we could see. And today after seventeen years of democratic government, when I look up into the heaven of SA Politics, what do I see? Poepholle.

  

Who can think of retirement when the new targets present themselves on a daily basis? Attacking the judiciary and our constitutional rights, racism, sexism, homophobia, corruption: none of those are funny. So get into that kitchen of comedy and mix in some hypocrisy, facts, fiction, fear, anger and that essential spice of humour.

  

Today my audience from the days of Adapt or Dye, Total Onslaught, Beyond the Rubicon, Rearranging the Deckchairs on the SA Bothatanic, Cry FreeMandela, One Man One Volt are pensioners like me. The audience of today are old enough to be my grandchildren. And they have the vote. Some were born after Nelson Mandela was freed from jail. Many have never lived in a racist world of terror and hate, fear and degradation. Freedom is today's drug of choice for the youth. It is being peddled by political dealers.

  

Apartheid will never ever come back again under the same name. But let us not underestimate the inventiveness of bad politics. Of course it will come back because it made money. It will have a bland, banal name, even unpronounceable. Or just an acronym. And because we are free and protected by the greatest constitution in the world (till next month?), we will vote for it because it looks like democracy and end up in the fear-filled darkness for another few generations.

  

There are good people in government, otherwise we wouldn't be here today. Thank God for the good people in the ANC, the Women's League, COSATU, the SACP and yes, even the ANC Youth League. Thank God for the good people in Civil Service, the Police, the Army and Civil Society. Thank God for the good people in Opposition: in the DA, the FF+, the PAC, the IFP, COPE and others. Thank God for the Zapiros and the Justice Malalas, the Alistair Sparks and the free media. Thank God for people of South Africa: black, white, Coloured, Indian, Asian and other, who are better than the bad and more good than the greedy; who must take the lead because the leaders don't know which road to follow. The high road of corruption? Or the low road of fascism. Somewhere between them is the footpath of democracy — gravelly, full of sharp stones and poisonous snakes, slippery and very dangerous. It is the only way forward.

  

I am a terminal optimist. In the theatre you have to be. But my definition of optimism is quite broad: I expect the worst, hoping that the worst will never be as bad as I imagine. Government writes me my material. Starting with the National Party who gave me the gifts of a PW Botha, a Pik Botha, a Fanie Botha, a Bothalesi. And today I have copywriters in Luthuli House, the provinces and Parliament who will keep me busy for a long time. I've always said: I don't pay taxes; I pay royalties. We have the best government that money can buy. But where has the inspiration gone? Where are the men and women who happened to be in politics not for their own enrichment, but for the betterment and survival of their people. We had them once. Now there are too many third-rate people with fourth-rate ideas. Perhaps we should move Parliament back to Robben Island?

  

When corruption with a capital C becomes the cancer that infects the body politic, it must be stopped before it becomes terminal. Treatment for cancer includes chemotherapy and radiation. There are painful side effects, hair loss, nausea. And more. That lies ahead for us all. There is no alternative. Give the people the courage to lead and then the government must follow.

  

It is the 23rd of April 2012. Comrades, you ANC nothing yet.

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