Native Life in South Africa | Page 5

the IPA for Tswana
orthography.
Plaatje returned to South Africa but went once again to England after
the war's end, to lead a second SANNC delegation keen to make its
mark on the peace negotiations in 1919. This time Plaatje managed to
get as far as the prime minister, Lloyd George, "the Welsh wizard".
Lloyd George was duly impressed with Plaatje and undertook to
present his case to General Jan Smuts in the South African government,
a supposedly liberal fellow-traveller. But Smuts, whose notions of
liberalism were patronizingly segregationist, fobbed off Lloyd George
with an ingenuous reply.
Disillusioned with the flabby friendship of British liberals, Plaatje was
increasingly drawn to the pan-Africanism of W. E. B. Du Bois,
president of the NAACP in the United States. In 1921 Plaatje sailed for

the United States on a lecture tour that took him through half the
country. He paid his own way by publishing and selling 18,000 copies
of a booklet titled "The Mote and the Beam: an Epic on
Sex-Relationship 'twixt Black and White in British South Africa" at 25
cents each. In the following year, after Plaatje had left, this new edition
of "Native Life in South Africa" was published, by the NAACP
newspaper "The Crisis" edited by Du Bois.
Plaatje returned home to Kimberley to find the SANNC a spent force,
despite its name change to ANC, overtaken by more radical forces. At a
time when white power was pushing ahead with an ever more intense
segregationist programme, based on anti-black legislation, Plaatje
became a lone voice for old black liberalism. He turned from politics
and devoted the rest of his life to literature. His passion for Shakespeare
resulted in mellifluous Tswana translations of five plays from "Comedy
of Errors" to "Merchant of Venice" and "Julius Caesar". His passion for
the history of his people, and of his family in particular, resulted in a
historical novel, "Mhudi (An Epic of South African Native Life a
Hundred Years Ago)", dedicated to his daughter Olive who had died in
the influenza epidemic while Plaatje was overseas -- described in the
dedication as "one of the many victims of a settled system".
"Mhudi" was published by the missionary press at Lovedale in 1930, in
a somewhat bowdlerized version. It has since been republished in more
pristine form and is today considered not just the first but one of the
very best novels published by a black South African writer in English.
Plaatje lived an extraordinary life but died a largely disappointed man.
His feats of political journalism had been largely forgotten and his
creative talents had hardly yet been recognised -- except in the confined
world of Tswana language readership. But today Plaatje is regarded as
a South African literary pioneer, as a not insignificant political actor in
his time, and as a cogent commentator on his times. He was an explorer
in a fascinating world of cultural and linguistic interaction, who was in
retrospect truly a "renaissance man".
Related Reading:
Sol T. Plaatje (ed. John Comaroff with Brian Willan & Andrew Reed),
"Mafeking Diary: a Black Man's View of a White Man's War", Athens,
Ohio: Ohio University Press & Cambridge Meridor Press, 1990. (1st
edn. London: Macmillan, 1973, publ. as The Boer War Diary of Sol T.

Plaatje).
Sol. T. Plaatje (ed. Tim Couzens), "Mhudi", Cape Town: Francolin,
1996; definitive edition.
Brian Willan, "Sol Plaatje: South African Nationalist, 1876-1932",
London: Heinemann, 1984.
Brian Willan (ed. & comp.), "Sol Plaatje: Selected Writings", Athens,
Ohio: Ohio University Press, 1996.

Neil Parsons is a Professor of History at the University of Botswana.
He is author of "King Khama, Emperor Joe, and the Great White
Queen", which details the journey of the Batswana delegation to
England of 1895, and other books relating to the history of the region.

To Miss Harriette E. Colenso, "Nkosazana Matotoba ka So-Bantu",
Daughter of the late Rt. Rev. J. W. Colenso (In his life-time Bishop of
Natal and "Father of the Zulus").
In recognition of her unswerving loyalty to the policy of her late
distinguished father and unselfish interest in the welfare of the South
African Natives,
This Book is Dedicated.

Contents

(A) Who is the Author? (B) Prologue

Chapter I
A Retrospect
Chapter II
The Grim Struggle between Right and Wrong, and the Latter Carries
the Day

Chapter III
The Natives' Land Act
Chapter IV
One Night with the Fugitives
Chapter V
Another Night with the Sufferers

Chapter VI
Our Indebtedness to White Women
Chapter VII
Persecution of Coloured Women in the Orange Free State
Chapter VIII
At Thaba Ncho: A Secretarial Fiasco
Chapter IX
The Fateful 13
Chapter X
Dr. Abdurahman, President of the A.P.O. / Dr. A. Abdurahman, M.P.C.
Chapter XI
The Natives' Land Act in Cape Colony
Chapter XII
The Passing of Cape Ideals
Chapter