The Nauseum
In the foyer of the Perron opposite the box office can be found walls covered with pictures of Tannie Evita with her friends and colleagues. She is seen posing with presidents, ministers, leaders, legends and political superstars: Nelson Mandela, FW de Klerk, Desmond Tutu, Piet Koornhof, Pik Botha, Kadar Asmal, Roelf Meyer, Jay Naidoo, Frene Ginwala, Cheryl Carolus, Terror Lekota, Cyril Ramaphosa, Patricia de Lille, Connie Mulder and Helen Zille.
The extraordinary picture of Pik Botha smooching his favourite diplomat needs careful explanation. It was taken at Evita's opening night of her performance in the play Selle ou Storie at Johannesburg Civic Theatre. Pik was a guest. He was dazzled and his kiss real and heartfelt.
Evita was also the MC at FW de Klerk's 70th birthday celebration and on that night is seen sweeping towards Nelson Mandela who awaits her with open arms. Between them watching with bemused smiles FW de Klerk, his wife Elita and Desmond Tutu. Truly the gods on Olympus confronted by Alice in her Wonderland.
On Heritage Day 24th September 2003 Evita Bezuidenhout opened BOERASSIC PARK. Since then it has delighted many thousands of visitors with artworks reflecting a hysterical tongue in South Africa's historical cheek. The many flowers from Taiwan have basked in both sun and rain, open 24 hours a day.
Inspired by the legendary concrete garden of Nieu Bathesda, BOERASSIC PARK focuses on more than just plastic blooms and Voortrekker Monument birdbaths. There are various original artworks to enjoy. Students from the UCT Michaelis School of Art have created the ultimate gravy train, a concrete chook-chook with Madiba as the smiling engine, chugging along the rail to freedom.
Behind him he drags the baggage of our young and controversial democracy: Comrade Thabo flying overseas on his plane, former Leader of the Opposition Tony Leon in his pram throwing his toys, Reverend Alan Boesak, rehabilitated jailbird and fraudster, pious and free with a ball and chain attached to his ankle, Winnie the Mugger of the Nation in her bath, like Medusa with rubber tyre straps for her hair and small soccer-booted foot just visible above murky waters. While Evita Bezuidenhout in her flag dress waves them goodbye surrounded by the cats, AWB leader Eugene Terre’blanche falls off his horse, as he did in real life, and lies on the tracks, poepdronk and irrelevant.
Opposite this remarkable joyride is a Groot Trek Moment created by students from Stellenbosch University. The concrete ox wagon is bogged down in the mud of the past with four great stone oxen struggling to get out of the quicksands of history, buried to their heads while trying to wedge themselves and their heavy load through the golden arches of the MacDonald sign to the future.
There are also rough rusted figures of African people reflecting the hard slog of survival: from the mines, on the mines, the roads, in the fields, on the way with buckets on their heads, picks and shovels in their hands. Made from pieces of tin and iron, they each tell a human tale.
Scattered around are apartheid signs from those days when they were regarded as normal. The trouble is they're still so familiar that some visitors hesitate to enter an area where a sign states WHITES ONLY. So small yellow notices have been attached to each sign: This was an apartheid sign pre-1994. Mixed-race couples love posing with their truly South African offspring in front of one of these signs that once declared them illegal and immoral.
A 1959 cream and green Ford Fairlane takes pride of place. This car belonged to Evita's husband, Oom Hasie, while he was minister of Water Affairs and Minister of Black Housing in Verwoerd's government. He then combined his portfolio by building a black township in a dam! It was in this ministerial limo that Dr JJ de V Bezuidenhout was shot at. The bullet holes are still in the front windscreen even though they missed the Minister.
But some months later he was found on the backseat of his car in the parking area of the Laagerfontein Hotel, having sex with a black waitress. His breaking of the Immorality Act caused no end of upset for his wife, who managed to hush it all up with bribes and threats. The black woman disappeared.
From the passionate reactions and saucy tales coming from visitors, it seems that in the lives of all white South Africans over a certain age, something remarkable and memorable happened on the back seat of a Ford Fairlane!