Sol Plaatje's Native Life in South Africa. Jacob Dlamini

copies to booksellers and agents at home and abroad. This was the normal business of publishing but, in difficult wartime conditions, short of staff, short of paper for printing, and facing constant disruption, it was far from straightforward. But it was Plaatje himself who drove sales of the book, selling thousands of copies as he addressed meeting after meeting on his travels. He mobilised influential friends to ensure that copies of the book reached the pinnacles of power – particularly Georgiana Solomon who sent copies to both British and South African prime ministers, backed up with passionate letters in support of his cause.

      Native Life in South Africa crossed many borders. It found a space within the intellectual networks of empire – and reached defined audiences, black and white, in Britain and South Africa. It inserted itself into the long conversation between black America and black South Africa. It was reviewed widely and positively – in Germany and the Netherlands as well as the countries of the British Empire. One hundred years on, its achievement deserves to be celebrated.

      NOTES

      1 ‘Native Congress Mission to England’, Diamond Fields Advertiser, 14 July 1914, in Brian Willan, ed., Sol Plaatje: Selected Writings (Johannesburg: Wits University Press, 1997), 176.

      2 For further details on this, and on Plaatje's time in England more generally, see Brian Willan, Sol Plaatje: A Biography (Johannesburg: Ravan, 1984), 174–204.

      3 British Museum Central Archive, record of application of Plaatje, Solomon Tsekisho: letter from Weinthal to the Librarian, British Museum, 1 December 1914, and Plaatje to the Librarian, British Museum, 3 December 1914.

      4 P S King & Son Catalogue of Publications (1919), 51, in Records of J W Arrowsmith Ltd, 40145/P/62, Bristol Record Office, Bristol, UK.

      5 Alice Werner to Harriette Colenso, 18 February 1916 and 23 February 1917, Pietermaritzburg Archives Repository, Colenso Papers, Box 63.

      6 ‘The South African and Rhodesian Stalls’, African World, 1 January 1916, Supplement, vi; ‘An Exceptional Concert’, African World, 25 December 1915, Supplement, ix and xi (photos). For Clicko's various adventures, see Neil Parsons, Clicko: The Wild Dancing Bushman (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2009).

      7 Plaatje to Mrs Sophie Colenso, 28 January 1916, Colenso Papers, Box 56.

      8 Plaatje to Modiri Molema, 11 July 1920, University of the Witwatersrand Historical Papers, Molema/Plaatje Papers (A979), Da61; W H Hulbert (a director of P S King & Son) to Edwin Cannan, 3 July 1917, London School of Economics and Political Science, Library and Archives, Edwin Cannan Papers, correspondence with publishers (1019). For a general account of the situation faced by publishers during the First World War, see Iain Stevenson, Book Makers: British Publishing in the Twentieth Century (London: British Library, 2010), 31–48.

      9 Reviews in Daily News and Leader, 12 July 1916, and Birmingham Post, 2 July 1916.

      10 Reviews from United Empire and South Africa quoted in a flyleaf in Sol T Plaatje, Native Life in South Africa, Before and Since the European War and the Boer Rebellion (London: P S King & Son, Ltd, second edition, October 1916).

      11 Review of Native Life in South Africa, New Age, 27 July 1916, and by ‘Delta’, African World, 3 June 1916. Alice Werner responded to the critical review in New Age, complaining that the reviewer ‘must have given a very superficial perusal to this work’, spelling out the central points Plaatje had made (‘Native Life in South Africa’, letter to the editor from A Werner, New Age, 17 August 1916, 382).

      12 Olive Schreiner to Mrs G Solomon, 5 October 1916, in Liz Stanley and Andrea Salter, eds, The World's Great Question: Olive Schreiner's South African Letters 1889–1920 (Cape Town: Van Riebeeck Society, 2014), 341.

      13 Plaatje to Sir D Chaplin, 6 April 1919, National Archives (Kew), CO 417/629, 34975; Harris to L Moore, 21 July 1916, Bodleian Library (Oxford), Archive of Anti-Slavery and Aborigines' Protection Society, S19 D3/14; J H Harris, ‘General Botha's Native Policy’, Journal of the Royal African Society 16 (1916). For more on Harris's campaign, see Brian Willan, ‘The Anti-Slavery and Aborigines' Protection Society and the South African Natives' Land Act of 1913’, Journal of African History 20/1 (1979), 83–102.

      14 Harris, op. cit.; see also Harris's articles in Manchester Guardian, 27 December 1916, and Fortnightly Review, January–June 1917.

      15 Union of South Africa, Report of the Natives' Land Commission, UG 25, 1916; typed extract of letter from Plaatje to Alice Werner [n.d.], Colenso Papers, Box 63 (notes and fragments).

      16 I am grateful to Peter Limb for locating and supplying a copy of this review; see also Peter Limb, ‘The Print World of the Press and Native Life in South Africa’, this volume.

      17 Harris to Clifford Sharp, editor of the New Statesman, 7 October 1916, Archive of AS and APS, S22 G203; Harris to Sir Harry Wilson, 14 August 1916, S19 D3/14.

      18 Plaatje to Mrs Solomon, 8 December 1916, West Sussex Record Office, Cobden Papers 974, 750g. In South Africa, Harris's New Statesman article was picked up and commented upon by both Abantu Batho and The International (see ‘The Modern Voortrekkers’, Abantu Batho, 30 November 1916, reproduced in Peter Limb, ed., The People's Paper (Johannesburg: Wits University, 2014), 389–390).

      19 Willan, Sol Plaatje, 200–201; Henry Nevinson's involvement in the episode can be traced through the entries in his private diary (Bodleian Library, Oxford, MSS. Eng. misc. e. 620/1, entries for 2 Nov and 7 Dec 1916, 3 Jan, 26 Jan, 1 Feb, 15 Feb, 27 Feb, 1 Mar, 20 Mar, 17 Apr, 24 Apr 1917).

      20 Willan, Sol Plaatje, 198–199. Georgiana Solomon had also sent a copy of Native Life in South Africa to the British prime minister, David Lloyd George, and received a polite acknowledgement, but given his other commitments, it is unlikely he had time to read it (Mrs G M Solomon to David Lloyd George, 15 October 1919, CO 551/123, 60993).

      21 Willan, Sol Plaatje, 253–256 and 259–264.

      22 Plaatje to Du Bois, 19 December 1920, Special Collections and University Archives, University of Massachusetts, Du Bois Papers (MS312), (mums313-b016-i323).

      23 Willan, Sol Plaatje, 269.

      24 ‘Account of North American tour’, in Willan, Selected Writings, 299.

      25 T D Mweli Skota, ed., The African Yearly Register: Being an Illustrated Biographical Dictionary (Who's Who) of Black Folks in Africa (Johannesburg: R L Esson & Co., 1930), 245.