A Good Space
PIETER-DIRK UYS
Satirical playwright, novelist and Aids-awareness campaigner Pieter-Dirk Uys left Cape Town for Darling after he’d had enough of the vicious southeaster. But he still climbs the hill behind his house to see Table Mountain and regularly returns to present his one-man shows and explore his favourite inner-city haunts
Long Street – with its Victorian architecture and decorative mosques, bookshops and bargains – has always been the heart of Cape Town for Pieter-Dirk Uys. From 1972 to 1978 he lived on several of the 20 blocks making up Long Street, while honing his craft at the iconic Space Theatre. Ten years ago he revisited those times in his production No Space on Long Street.
Pieter has written and performed more than 50 plays, revues and one-man shows, and has taken his unique blend of political satire to audiences worldwide. When performing in Cape Town, he stays at the revamped
19th-century Metropole Hotel in Long Street. ‘The first place I lived in was an attic near Buiten Street,’ he reminisces over black coffee at Melissa’s in Green Point. ‘I also lived on the first floor of a building on the corner of Bloem and Long which had a fish shop and cockroaches the size of dogs and I lived in the attic of Carnival Court when it was still a brothel – white girls entertaining Japanese sailors was considered okay because they were classed as “honorary whites”.
‘Long Street had this wonderful sense of being lived in then – people occupied the apartments, had breakfast at the cafes, there were children about. Now many of the inner-city developments are owned by investors who are only here for three weeks of the year. I wish these new developments were more accessible to families, the developers could have tax deductions…’
He remembers the second-hand bookshops and Second Time Around, where he bought a full-length black fur coat labelled ‘genuine French simulation’. Today he still loves buying original pieces from the street artists and browsing the bookshops, particularly Clarke’s Bookshop, which he recommends for its extensive South African selection. And while he hates traffic congestion, he likes the parking guards, particularly a former Ghanaian dentist who prefers his current job to extracting molars.
‘Cape Town is a difficult old tart who doesn’t like to embrace anyone new,’ he says, ‘but she should welcome this, because they – the people from West Africa – are contributing an enormous amount.’ Pieter grew up in a typically middle-class thatched home in Pinelands in the southern suburbs, with his distinguished musician parents Helga Bassel and Hannes Uys, and pianist sister Tessa. Thursday night concerts at the City Hall were a regular treat and on several occasions he attended triple concertos performed by his family trio. He still loves this musical tradition, but is appalled by the current state of the iconic Italian Renaissance building.
‘It looks like a bomb exploded in there, with trellis tables selling bubblegum and disgusting toilets for the greatest artists in the world. It’s shameful.’ Across from the City Hall is the Grand Parade where, as a boy, Pieter would start his Saturday morning rifling through hawkers’ stocks looking for photos of his icon, Sophia Loren. Then he’d take in a movie at the Colosseum and buy the latest copy of Stage and Cinema. Sometimes his school would visit Kirstenbosch – ‘to this day I adore it’ – and on weekends he’d climb Table Mountain via Skeleton Gorge.
The Company’s Gardens, which he visited with his granny and where they rescued the kitten Boeboe – one of many important cats in his life – remains ‘a wonderful haven of sanity’. He still loves plants and trees, and is leading a greening project on the main street of Darling. Speaking of gardens, Pieter suggests Cape Town’s District Six ‘cancer scar’ be given back to the people as a garden of memory with statues from South Africa’s colonial and apartheid past.
He’d also take some for Boerassic Park, his satirical garden of artworks and memorabilia at the old Darling railway station, now converted into the famous cabaret venue, Evita se Perron. Pieter can see Table Mountain from the hill behind his home in Darling. He remembers gazing at the same mountain from Robben Island, where his church took youngsters for an annual braai and swim. Years later in 1994, his famous alter ego, Evita Bezuidenhout, interviewed new democratic leaders at Robben Island for his show Funigalore.
Evita commented: ‘Well, we did put you in a beautiful place.’ To which Mac Maharaj replied: ‘Evita, we were never allowed to see the view. But occasionally we heard children laugh and it gave us a sense of hope.’
Pieter is still stricken by these contrasts – the beauty of Cape Town juxtaposed by the tik-induced violence. ‘There’s so much we could do to make life better. That’s the bad face of Cape Town, she smiles on the rich and ignores the poor.’
HOME
Darling
ESCAPE
Movies
SUNDAY
Working in Darling, or exploring Salt River and Woodstock
SOUND
Hans Kramer’s World of Music in the Sixties, now amazon.com
WINE
Groote Post Merlot
PRECIOUS
Trees
SHOPS
Second-hand bookshops
DANCE
Jikeleza dance project for impoverished communities and street children
VIEW
Table Mountain
RESTAURANT
Haiku, Bukhara, Rozenhof
SEASON
Spring in Darling with its spectacular flowers; winter with a fire, cat and red wine
Metropole Hotel
38 Long Street, 021 424 7247
Clarke’s Bookshop
211 Long Street, 021 423 5739
Evita se Perron
Darling Station
www.evita.co.za
Cape Philharmonic Orchestra
021 410 9809
www.cpo.org.za
Pieter-Dirk Uys
www.pdu.co.za