Publications: (plays not listed)

A Part Hate A Part Love , Radix/Random Century, 1990

Evita's Funigalore, Penguin S.A., 1995

The Essential Evita Bezuidenhout , David Philip, 1997

Trekking to Teema , Compress, 2001

Elections & Erections, Struik/ZEBRA, 2002

PIETER-DIRK UYS (unable to attend - 2004 Time of the Writer)

South Africa

Outspoken satirist, playwright, entertainer and novelist, Pieter-Dirk Uys , born in Cape Town in 1945, has, since the mid 1960s, written, filmed and performed over 35 plays, videos, revues, and one-man shows throughout South Africa, and all over the world. When Uys's satirical plays started irritating South African politicians in the 70's, most were banned, so he launched his ‘one-man total onslaught' in 1981 against the narrow-minded Pretoria regime, most of whom, he says, are now ‘either dead, in retirement, in disgrace, insane, incontinent, forgotten, or recycled as avid supporters of the black majority rule'. A Part Hate A Part Love is the biography of Evita Bezuidenhout, Pieter-Dirk Uys's most visible creation, known and accepted as the “most famous white woman in South Africa ”. The book Evita's Funigalore is based on his 1994 12-part television series in which Evita Bezuidenhout interviewed the new democratic leaders, including Nelson Mandela. His most recent novel, Trekking to Teema , was South Africa 's first Internet Book, before being published in ‘tree-format', and his new play, Auditioning Angels , premiered in July 2003. Pieter-Dirk Uys was awarded South Africa 's prestigious Truth and Reconciliation Award in 2001, as well as honorary literary degrees from Rhodes University (1997), University of Cape Town (2003), and the University of the Western Cape (2003). In 2000 Evita Bezuidenhout was awarded the Living Legacy Award in San Diego , U.S.A. For the past three years Uys has been travelling to schools around South Africa with a free AIDS-Awareness entertainment, entitled For Fact's Sake , which has reached over one million young South Africans, for around R14-million less than Sarafina 2 ! Elections and Erections , Uys's long awaited memoir, recounts the origins and history of Tannie Evita Bezuidenhout, as well as his own childhood battle to overcome Calvinistic homophobia, and his passionate activism against apartheid, and, more recently, HIV/AIDS. Having exposed the bones of the dinosaur “apartheid kultuur' for the entertainment of democratic audiences worldwide, he is delighted, he says, to still have a government who write his best material!