SONG AGAINST DR. MALAN

Press, Volume LXXXIX, Issue 27055, 2 June 1953, Page 2

SONG AGAINST DR. MALAN

PRESS CRITICISM IN SOUTH AFRICA (N.Z. Press Association—Copyright) CAPE TOWN, May 31. Afrikaans’ newspapers in South Africa are up in arms about the song "Don’t Malign Malan.” which is sung nightly on the London Hippodrome stage by Marie Bryant, an American negro performer. "Die Burger,” . the Government Party’s Cape Province newspaper, spoke of it as “disrespectful mockery of the white South Africans’ alleged inhumanity towards the poor blacks.” A correspondent of the National Party mouthpiece in Transvaal, “Die Transvaaler,” said that the song was part of a provocative attack on South Africa. It was taking place on the eve of the Coronation—“precisely the occasion when Britain will most wish to stimulate goodwill in South Africa.” There have been mutterings, too, in the correspondence columns of the English-speaking newspapers about the song’s ridicule of Dr. Malan. One writer in the Johannesburg “Star” says: “It ill behoves England to show disrespect to any visitor, mucn less to a visiting Premier who is an honest God-fearing gentleman.” Bryant’s song, with an ironic refrain, “Malan is a wonderful man,” was written for her by two young British songwriters, David Climie and Ronald Cass. She said in London recently that she would go on singing her song in spite of South African criticism. “It has brought me one of the best hands I have had in the show, she said.