[Media-watch] Rian Malan: Carbuncular journalism

[David Miller]

Rian Malan: Carbuncular journalism

Anton Harber

YOU could call it carbuncular journalism. It is that kind of writing
designed mostly to get under people's skin, produce pain and pus and
possible infection. The keenest practitioner in this country is Rian Malan.

Malan was quoted by the president in his state of the nation speech a
fortnight ago for his "maturity" in admitting in a recent article that he
was wrong to have been so pessimistic 10 years ago about this country's
chances of peace and prosperity.

"The gift of 1994 was so huge, that I choked on it and couldn't say thank
you. But I am not too proud to say it now," Malan wrote in the Sunday Times.

Public praise is unusual for Malan, as is his admitting he was wrong or
writing in praise of anyone or anything.

At home, if not abroad, where he has his biggest audience and his writing is
much honoured, he is used to being attacked, disliked and scorned for the
positions he takes. Indeed, he invites it. He was recently quoted describing
himself as a "moral leper".

Malan shot to fame with a remarkable book in 1990 called My Traitor's Heart
in which, with raw honesty and poetic brilliance, he confronted the
contradictions and fears of being an Anglicised and alienated Afrikaner in
Africa.

Everything he has done since then has been carbuncular.

When activists were rallying forces against the apartheid state, Malan's
scorn was aimed at them. When the fight was on for equal, trade union,
gender and similar rights, Malan spoke the language of a neo-conservative.

When everyone was trying to stem the battles of the early 1990s and expose
the Third Force, Malan reserved his contempt for the peacemakers.

When the truth commission criticised the mainstream media for its
inadequacies in the apartheid era, Malan said the outspoken, anti-apartheid
media were even worse in their distortions. When the world was outraged by
the Boipatong massacre that disrupted the negotiations in 1992, Malan
suggested the incident was "sexed up" by those who wanted to break off talks
anyway. When the world celebrated Nelson Mandela, Malan wrote a piece for a
US magazine that ridiculed the man.

In 1991, he wrote a piece about a violent, racist, anarchic psychopath who
bred killer pitbulls, lived by illegal *****-fighting and had a fake trade
union poster on his wall that said, "An injury to one is no concern of
mine".

Malan's piece, in Frontline magazine, was about how much authentic, truly
South African and in tune with the times this man was, as opposed to the
"good people, with hearts in the right places, striving to be good New South
Africans" who spent their time, it seems, holding "agonising nonracial
séances around their swimming pools".

All of it was written in the most lyrical, hypnotic language. As Rory
Carroll recently wrote in the Observer: "Malan's crime is not just saying
the unsayable, but saying it so well."

In every piece Malan writes, one is never quite sure if he is being
searingly honest or just contrarian. Certainly, he finds a way to go against
the grain time after time and has made a successful international writing
career off it. Certainly, he is himself at the focal point of most of his
own writing. If the capital I on his keyboard jammed, Malan would be lost
for words.

But there has to be a special place for a journalism that constantly gets
under the skin, causes discomfort and produces pu s, even if it sometimes
feels as if Malan does it for his own pleasure. Malan recently wrote his
most contrarian piece of all.

In the Spectator and Noseweek magazines, he questioned AIDS statistics and
suggested the AIDS "industry" was pumping them up to get more money and more
attention.

Nothing wrong with questioning statistics, one has to say; and it would be
no great surprise if, given the fight to get HIV/AIDS on the global and
South African health agendas, there had been some overexuberance in stating
the problem.

Malan was certainly noticed. He was noticed by the AIDS dissidents, who
trumpeted his article. And by the AIDS activists, who are vilifying him.

And by the president, who I suspect was responding in his parliamentary
speech as much to the oxygen Malan gave to the AIDS dissident industry as to
his mea culpa on the new SA.

In an article posted on the internet recently, fellow writer James Whylie
quotes Malan saying of himself over lunch one day: "I'm a kak writer and a
bad human being, man, but I'm a really good rhythm guitarist. I'm really,
really good."

Anyone who has been subjected to Malan's occasional, thrown-together band,
The Crying Shame, will tell you he is wrong again. He is a really bad guitar
player.

*This column first appeared in Business Day, Feb 20, 2004
*Harber is Caxton Professor of Journalism and Media Studies

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