My Traitor's Heart: A South African Exile Returns to Face His Country, His Tribe, and His Conscience

The book is divided into 3 sections. In the first, Malan describes his own childhood and adolescence, leading up to his forced flight from South Africa, with a major focus on his youthful love for Blacks (especially in the abstract). The second part of the book details a number of violent murders that Malan investigated upon his return to South Africa in 1986 to write this book. In this section, Malan describes the intense violence that was occurring in South Africa at the time, and how all Whites, even doctors providing humanitarian services in the townships, became targets for Black rage. He also explores violence between rival Black political groups. In the closing section, Malan visits a White woman named Creina Alcock, who lived on the border of Msanga, a tribal homeland, where she and her husband had struggled to build a sustainable rural development project with the local Blacks. The woman was widowed after her husband was killed while trying to negotiate peace talks during a tribal disturbance in Msanga.

The book doesn't have a strong narrative thread- -instead it seems that Malan was trying to communicate some of his own confusion and ambivalence about racial questions by presenting so many stories and sides of the picture, and flipping rapidly from one to the next. The loose organization is effective to some degree; the reader slowly comes to understand the enormity and complexity of South Africa's problems. Yes, many Whites provoked anger from Blacks by their abominable behavior and laws. Blacks in turn responded with violence that was so overwhelming that even those Whites who tried as hard as they could to do the right thing were in mortal danger. And the worst and most senseless violence seemed to occur in Black communities that had no White involvement at all. The entire society was so focused on violence that as one White living on a farm in a rural area told Malan "The guy with the bigger stick wins." In closing with Creina Alcock's story, Malan tries to leave us with a little hope. He argues that Alcock's and her late husband's love for their community has made a marginal difference in the social structure, despite the ongoing attacks on them and thefts of their property by children they had adopted and raised as their own, and even the murder of Alcock's husband. With the infinitesimally small improvements that the Alcocks managed to make in their community by giving their entire lives over to the project, how many millions more Alcocks would it take to turn such a country around, and where might they come from?


This is not a book about South Africa   October 10, 2003
jeri hurd (Connecticut)
11 out of 13 found this review helpful

The previous review to the contrary, this book will always be relevant as long as human beings judge other humans based on race. I just finished reading it and, as an American living in the Middle East, I faced innumerable home truths about myself and my own racist biases during the two days I was glued to it.

It is a painful read, in terms of the atrocities it depicts and the questions it asks. However, it is an essential read, though I wonder if anyone who has not lived long-term outside their own culture can truly appreciate it. It's easy to be a white liberal at home, wrapped in one's own smug assurance and safe within the majority. (And I'm speaking of myself here). Surrounded by 20 million Arabs, Malan's own journeys into Soweto strike far too close to one's heart.

On only the most superficial level is this a book about South African Apartheid. It is also about Israelis and Palestinians, Hindus and Muslims, Northern Irish and the English, the US and its every victim.


Astounding!   February 11, 2000
9 out of 9 found this review helpful

I am an avid reader,having read several books about South Africa. Being an African American I was very curious as to what this author had to say, and figured that I would end up being totally turned off, thus having wasted my time and money ordering it. Was I wrong! My Traitor' Heart was well worth the money and definitely the time. This book casts a broad beacon of light on the very dark history of South African's Apartheid and the evils it wrought on both blacks and the whites who were sympathetic to the struggle. "My Traitor's Heart" was the most heart rending book, but because it gives the reader such fantastic factual information, you can't put it down. I certainly hope Mr. Malan is not through sharing his insights, knowledge and experiences in his native country. I hope his next book comes out soon. Rian Malan I respect and admire you. Excellent!


A terrible, necessary gift to the world   February 29, 2000
acw@easynet.ca (Ontario, Canada)
8 out of 8 found this review helpful

My book club chose this title for our most recent discussion....All caucasian women, middle-class or thereabouts, Canadian by birth. All quite whacked into silence and deep reflection by this book. Rian Malan has bared his own heart, his own mind, his own racist ancestry and his horrific awakenings to the demonic power of apartheid. He spares us nothing in the stories he shares and I wonder how he could keep himself sane and loving as he uncovered, witnessed and experienced an evil that is almost beyond description. He asks at the book's opening, "How do I live in this strange land?" -- He doesn't have an answer to the basic question of why we humans act with such hatred to one another, but his monumental courage in laying bare the poisons of racial cruelty is a horrible and necessary medicine for all of us. This book has jarred me permanently; I am grateful for its power. I hope that Rian writes again -- this first book was originally published in 1990; I would love to read his impressions of the last decade as South Africans struggle to release themselves from the noose of apartheid. Thank you, Rian.


the long wait   October 9, 2000
paula arnell (London, England)
8 out of 8 found this review helpful

I first read this book in 1991, intrigued after seeing the BBC documentary (no video available?) of Malan reliving the horrors and inversions of his terrible journey into the hearts of his countrymen.I was so moved by the book that I wrote to thank him for his thoughts and words. Inevitably this book struck me as his journey towards his truth, which inspires and jolts the reader into a new awareness of their awesome existence in a world of men that seems to seek to render them helpless. It is impossible not to feel and to take a passionate stand about the stories he unfolds of blood and murder in his homeland. But South Africa is only unique in this respect in the openness of the killing. I recently watched a programme about SA, also on the BBC, - a visit by Louis Theroux in his "Weird" series which showed that far from the radical change expected since Malan's original, the Nazi's of SA are alive and well - Eugene Terreblanche may be in prison, but his form of Nationalism exists everywhere in the First World in some form or other. Malan's predictions are all but coming true...thanks for replying to a young idealist all those years ago, Malan. I'm still living my happy but wiser life, searching, writing, and waiting for the next chapters of your story.