  Seventeen southern sky BL Lacs were observed in UBVRI using the CCD Camera on
the 1.0m telescope at the South African Astronomical Observatory (SAAO) in Aug
and Nov 1999. The analyses of all the seventeen sources are now complete, and
are available via anonymous ftp (ftp pukrs1.puk.ac.za/pub/Blazars). A few
examples of our results are however given in this paper. Whereas PKS 2005-489
and PKS 2155-304 apear to have been in a high state, PKS 0048-097 and PKS
0521-365 showed evidence of variability on a time-scale of a few days, with the
amplitude of variability increasing towards short wavelengths. This is
consistent with observations of gamma-ray BL Lacs, which show similar behaviour
in optical and X-rays.
