Who has the last laugh?

The South African comic Pieter-Dirk Uys is under fire for satirising the ANC over HIV and Aids

For 20 years, the satirist Pieter-Dirk Uys mercilessly flayed the apartheid regime in South Africa. But now he has shocked the black Establishment with a radical claim that the African National Congress (ANC) government's stance on HIV infection and Aids treatment is tantamount to genocide – for which the President, Thabo Mbeki, and his Health Minister, Manto Tshabalala Msimang, could one day find themselves on trial in The Hague.

Although an estimated 11 per cent of the country's population carries the HIV virus, it is known that Mbeki and some colleagues have yet to be convinced that the virus is connected directly to Aids. Uys sent a furious e-mail to a number of people in South Africa, including members of the government, calling for an investigation into the culpability of the leaders in failing to take effective action against HIV/Aids. "Rather this happens now than in 10 years' time, when the world will no doubt look back at 2003 and the actions of the South African President and his Minister of Health, and realise that by acting sooner, millions of lives could have been saved," he wrote.

In an article, he accused the ANC leadership of virtually denying the existence of the threat of Aids. "At every opportunity the President, his advisers and especially his Minister of Health have demeaned the seriousness of the pandemic and created havoc among those who seek help. The national comprehensive strategy is starting to look like a systematic, planned extermination of an entire group of South Africans: those who are poor. The new apartheid has already established itself. Black and white South Africans with money will live. Those without money will have no access to medicines and drugs. They will die," he wrote. The statement caused an uproar and elicited an angry government statement, and has also (Uys says) brought hundreds of messages of support.

Uys's anti-apartheid credentials were flawless. Despite harassment and threats of violence, he never flinched from slashing at the regime's jugular. He says: "I had a very simple target in apartheid. It was serious and it was frightening, and yet we learned to laugh at our fear. But lately, I have realised that our particular minefield in South Africa has moved from politics to sex, and it now seems that Aids is threatening to succeed where apartheid failed. And then when... Mbeki starts suggesting in effect that HIV comes from Mars and Aids comes from Venus, I thought: 'What the hell is going on here?' I thought that the only way to survive this is to confront it, like I did with apartheid; to go right into that terrible dark corner and see how big the monster is. And, of course, it's not 20ft high; it's tiny, and lethal." Uys now devotes much of his time to Aids-awareness presentations in schools.

"I know that it is a terrible thing to accuse someone of genocide. But how often have we looked back on genocide and asked: 'Couldn't someone have done something?'

"One of the problems is that nobody wants to talk about this. It's almost as if all these people are dying of natural causes – or natural Xhosas [a South African ethnic group], as I sometimes say. Some of my friends have been worried that I might get into trouble over this, but I'm not going to shut up."

The government statement noted that all citizens, including Uys, enjoyed freedom of speech. "While we are convinced that there are limits to satire, we do recognise Uys's right to overstate matters and respond flippantly to serious issues. We would have thought that Pieter-Dirk Uys would realise from his own experiences in Aids prevention that searching for scapegoats and instant solutions is not the correct response to the challenge of HIV/Aids."

Uys's favourite response was the e-mail reading: "Pieter-Dirk Uys, yislaaik [an untranslatable expletive], are you mad?" Uys says: "Yes. Mad as hell! But not as insane as those who think there are limits to satire."