Evita
The most famous white woman in
South Africa!
Born: Evita Bezuidenhout was born in Bethlehem in the Orange Free State on 28 September 1935 as Evangelie Poggenpoel. She became Killarney Film Actress in the mid 50's in films like "Boggel en die Akkedis", "Meisie van my drome" and "Duiwelsvallei".
Married: She married Dr JJ de V Bezuidenhout (Oom Hasie) in 1958. Their children are De Kock, Izan and Billie-Jeanne.
Political Career: Associated with Parliamentary life as the wife of MP for Laagerfontein in the 60's and 70's, she became an intimate friend to HF Verwoerd, Tini Vorster and Eliza Botha.

Present at the momentous happenings such as: Macmillan's speech, Verwoerd's assassination, Vorster's rise to power and PW Botha's coup.

She became SA Ambassador to the Independent Black homeland Republic of Bapetikosweti in 1983.

Evita assisted Pik Botha in the Total Diplomatic Onslaught on the world during the 80's
Family: Evita is the grandmother to three black children from Billie-Jeanne who married Leroy Makoeloeli. Her son Izan is an active member of the AWB and her other son De Kock is a with the Gay Liberation movement. Her husband is writing his memoirs and her sister, Bambi Kellermann is shocking the nation with her frank cabarets and confessions.
Today: At present, Evita is and Ambassador without Portfolio, chief liason person with President Mandela's office with regard to Afrikaans Cultural Affairs. She is on the committee looking into what to do with the old Symbols of State.

She is the best babotie maker in South Africa.

Evita is known for her TV chat show FUNIGALORE, which was her contribution to the RDP: reconstructuring prejudice and developing compassion.
Pieter-Dirk Uys on Evita: Toward the end of the 1970's, I was writing a weekly column for the Sunday Express in Johannesburg. It was during the time of the Information Scandal, which led to the eventual fall of John Vorster and the rise of PW Botha. The land was abuzz with rumours of embezzlements, thefts, even murder - but because of the ever-increasing paranoia about press control and censorship, it was not possible to write about these things.

So I created a character in my column out of whose mouth these rumours / facts dripped like warm honey. She was the wife of a Nationalist NW, someone on the fringes of power but elbow-deep in the catering, so she knew all the ins and outs. For 3 years she appeared about once a month, informing the nation of the stench under the cloak of respectability and no-one stopped her (me). Someone even gave her a name: "The Evita of Pretoria".

When I started my one-man show "Adapt or Dye" in April 1982, I gave this creature a physical reality - eyelashes, high heels and handbag - and she has never looked back! Right from the start "Tannie Evita" stepped out of the chorus line and took off into folklore, leaving behind the many other characters I did in my shows.

The public wanted more of her all the time, so I created more around her - her husband Hasie and her three children. I played them all on stage in "Farce about Uys" and on film in "Skating on thin Uys".

The absurdity of the homeland system cried out for attention and so she became its most famous ambassador. Even during 2 years when I stopped performing her - fearing she would swamp me with her forcefulness - the public didn't notice. Mrs Evita Bezuidenhout was alive and living among them, in spite of me!

I introduced her to audiences in Australia, the United Kingdom, Canada, Holland, Germany and Scandinavia. She became as confident on foreign soil as she was in her own backyard. People wrote to her, promising to support her in her legal efforts to control that "third-rate satirist Pieter-Dirk Uys" who was so cruelly making fun of her.

Politicians wrote too. Minister Pik Botha faxed her, Archbishop Desmond Tutu kissed her on the cheek and danced the toyi-toyi with her in his garden. Designers designed for her. I dieted because of her.

Originally the idea for a biography on Evita centred around a few recipes and funny pictures, but once five years of research into the fascinating detail of South African politics had passed, I realised that Evita's biography was not just the story of a woman, or the story of a nation. It was, in many cases, the story of our lives.
Living Legacy award: Tannie Evita was recently awarded the Living Legacy 2000 Award in San Diego by the Woman's International Centre for "Her contribution to the place of women in the last century."

While other honourees received the award for great things, Ons Tannie received hers for the laughter and positive energy that her presence evokes. Mother Theresa and Hilary Clinton are past honourees of this award.
QUOTE FROM LOS ANGELES TIMES
6 October 2009		 "Uys dons fake eyelashes and presidents listen."

- Charlotte Stoudt
ARTICLE: "PIETER-Dirk Uys is a theatrical phenomenon: successful, influential, an educator and a perfectionist." by MARY JORDAN published: 2010/08/10 in the BUSINESS DAY Johannesburg:

PIETER-Dirk Uys is a theatrical phenomenon: successful, influential, an educator and a perfectionist. His conversation is witty and provocative, rather like Coleridge’s definition of Imagination: a combination of sameness with difference, of the unexpected and the familiar, of friendliness and competition.

Uys’s name is synonymous with surprise and even with shock, for he is a celebration of contradictions: hilarious and malign, polite and lewd, generous and caustic. But the most sensational of all his contradictions is that he has bamboozled us into accepting and keeping faith with Evita Bezuidenhout, the she who is a he, the amazingly actual star who has a complete life of her own.

Now, the joke of the pantomime dame lies in the tension between the female of the clothes and the sturdiness of the hairy male legs and heavy boots. The drag queen is the other extreme, really a man mocking a woman and at the same time trying to titillate the audience. Evita is somewhere in between: Uys, by the careful manipulation of Evita’s image on stage and screen, is a man, playing a woman, and making points about life. It is sublime character acting in which Evita takes on a visibility and a reality for audiences which vies with, and often subsumes, the public persona of Uys.

For Evita Bezuidenhout has her own inimitable style and career path. She has become a recognised celebrity, very much a part of the South African social scene. She has addressed Parliament. She has chatted to presidents and international movie stars. She is called upon to talk to book clubs, and to be interviewed on TV.

Yet, working from the premise that a politician whose intelligence is underestimated is more effective and more dangerous than a politician whose intelligence is respected, she never, ever misses an opportunity to hammer or lampoon those in government, for their conspicuously wasteful taste for the opulent and for their promises made and not kept.

What Uys has done, the trick that has been most successful, is to reproduce as accurately as possible something intrinsically funny in the way that most of us live. Once again he has repositioned himself, still illuminating the quirks and flaws in human behaviour , but registering and relishing them through the rich coherence of Evita’s own story, which Uys has built up over time, now barricading her into the trivia of domestic life by having her produce a cookbook.