Don't Pan Dan

Of all the sultans, maharajas, Prime Ministers and assorted plenipotentiaries who went to London for the coronation, South Africa's Daniel Malan was among the last who expected to be serenaded by the British. His government had not been exactly chummy with Whitehall, and Dangerous Dan Malan let it be known as soon as he landed that too many Britons were saying too many unpleasant things about racial persecution in South Africa. "Busy-bodyism," he called it.

So it was a matter of surprise to the Prime Minister, and of indignation to his followers back home, to discover that he had become the hit of a musical revue at London's famed Hippodrome. Marie Bryant, a lively American Negro jazz singer from New Orleans, had become a London sensation by singing a song that went:

Don't malign Malan because he dislikes our tan.

We know that it's wrong to have skin that's all brown,

And wrong to be born on the wrong side of town.

It is quite right that our filthy old homes be burned down.

Malan is a wonderful man--don't malign Malan.

He's doing the best he can.

London newspapers duly took note of the song on the occasion of Malan's arrival for the coronation, but the Prime Minister, already bent over by the white man's burden, sagely paid it no mind. Back home in Johannesburg, however, his followers exploded. NEGRESS' SATIRICAL SONG ABOUT DR. MALAN! cried the Nationalist newspaper Die Transvaler. PALACE APPROVES IT; PRESS SLANDER FOLLOWS!

As for palace approval, there had been none; the Lord Chamberlain, as official censor, simply had found the revue fit for public view without considering its political content. As for South Africa's protests, the revue's producer said Don't Malign Malan would definitely stay on the program. Stops the show almost every night, he added.

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