Native Life in South Africa | Page 5

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 XIII
Mr. Tengo-Jabavu, the Pioneer Native Pressman
Chapter XIV
The Native Congress and the Union Government
Chapter XV
The Kimberley Congress / The Kimberley Conference
Chapter XVI
The Appeal for Imperial Protection
Chapter XVII
The London Press and the Natives' Land Act
Chapter XVIII
The P.S.A. and Brotherhoods
Chapter XIX
Armed Natives in the South African War
Chapter XX
The South African Races and the European War
Chapter XXI
Coloured People's Help Rejected / The Offer of Assistance by the South African Coloured Races Rejected
Chapter XXII
The South African Boers and the European War
Chapter XXIII
The Boer Rebellion
Chapter XXIV
Piet Grobler Epilogue Report of the Lands Commission

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Native Life in South Africa
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(A) Who is the Author?

After wondering for some time how best to answer this question, we decided to reply to it by using one of several personal references in our possession. The next puzzle was: "Which one?" We carefully examined each, but could