Pieter-Dirk Uys

HARDtalk celebrates its twentieth anniversary with a repeat of one of its classic interviews. In this interview from 2016, Stephen Sackur speaks to South African satirist, Pieter-Dirk Uys. Leaders who routinely abuse their power cannot stand to be laughed at. Satire is a potent political weapon. That's a truth my guest today has exploited for forty years. Pieter-Dirk Uys styles himself as "the most famous white woman in South Africa." Thanks to his alter ego Auntie Evita; a character he created to poke fun at the white Afrikaner establishment during the apartheid era, and which he now uses to lampoon Jacob Zuma and the ANC. Are there dangers in playing South Africa's recent history for laughs?