This multi-authored collection incorporates a dozen chapters that attend to a wide range of resonant issues brought to the fore by the text of Native Life, while in most cases providing insights into the pivotal period around the time of the book's publication in 1916 – the early days of the then ‘new South Africa’ under white minority rule and its newly acquired imperial dominion status. Our volume addresses the substance and style of the text, the lives of the book as object, and the contexts of its reach and relevance. We open with an account of Native Life's journey to publication and its reception, moving on to its aesthetics and interconnections with the press, its place, circulation, mobilities and contestations in the national context and wider world, taking into account the effects of the First World War. We then consider Native Life's intellectual and political foundations, its relationship to the writing of history and women's roles in society, the salience of land and legal issues, and its inheritance as reflected in physical and sociopolitical landscapes of contemporary South Africa. The chapters vary in their preoccupations, views and speculations and, in some cases, sit in discursive tension with each other. They can be read as stand-alone pieces or as part of a wider contemplative whole. Above all, the aim is to draw attention to, and open up further reflections on, Plaatje's pioneering, hard-won book. There are inevitably concerns and themes that this volume does not manage to explore, but which we hope ensuing conversations will address. The volume closes with a short story by Mokae, inspired by Native Life, and written specially for this volume. In addition to full bibliographic details in the end notes of each chapter, we provide a listing of key resources for those who want to learn more about Plaatje, whether through visiting relevant sites, dipping into biographies or digging into archives.
We turn now to focus on the author of Native Life himself. What of his early years, education and influences? What contributed to his life of politics and writing? How did he come to be in Britain in 1916 to publish Native Life, and what did he do after its publication?
Sol Plaatje (1876–1932) – formative years
Solomon (Sol) Tshekisho Plaatje was born in the Orange Free State in 1876. Both his parents were of Barolong origin, and Christians – Lutherans of the Berlin Missionary Society. His Dutch-sounding surname was evidently given to his grandfather by a Griqua landlord. Not long after he was born, his family moved to the Berlin mission at Pniel, near Barkly West, where he attended the mission school. Here he learned both Dutch and English, and went as far as the school could take him.
In spite of his abilities at school, he did not join the ranks of select missionary-educated peers in going on to secondary education, but moved instead to the nearby diamond-mining town of Kimberley to take up a job as a telegraph messenger with the Post Office. He studied assiduously in his spare time, keen to qualify for employment as a court interpreter for the Cape's civil service, one of the sought-after jobs available to educated young black men like himself. At the same time he engaged in the busy social life that Kimberley's African community created for themselves, taking advantage of the relatively liberal atmosphere that prevailed in the town.
Early in 1898, aged twenty-one, he married Elizabeth M'belle, the sister of one of his closest friends, Isaiah Bud-M'belle, interpreter to the Griqualand West High Court. They were of Mfengu origin, isiXhosa speakers from the eastern Cape, and initially both families were opposed to the match. Later that year he secured the kind of job he was after, moving to Mafeking (later Mafikeng, now Mahikeng), some 200 miles to the north, to become clerk and interpreter to the magistrate and civil commissioner, Charles Bell. He was there when, in October 1899, war broke out between Britain and the Boer republics, and the town of Mafeking was immediately surrounded by Boer forces. He survived the ensuing seven-month siege, working throughout this time for both Charles Bell and the British military authorities, to whom he supplied military intelligence, collected from spies and runners who passed through the Boer lines. He also acted as interpreter to the Court of Summary Jurisdiction, set up after martial law was declared. Along with a number of others in Mafeking, many of them with little to do but await their relief, he wrote a personal diary – in English – persisting with it until the end of March 1900. Remarkably, the diary survived and was published for the first time in 1973.8 Two years later Plaatje left the Cape Civil Service in order to become editor of Koranta ea Becoana (Bechuana Gazette), an English-Setswana weekly newspaper that was financed by Silas Molema, a prominent Barolong chief in Mafeking. Although its finances were always precarious, it provided Plaatje with a platform to act as a spokesperson for his people – not only the Barolong but Setswana-speakers more generally, and for a wider constituency that extended beyond, encompassing Africans living in the Transvaal and the then Orange River Colony.
Koranta ea Becoana folded in 1909 but the following year, shortly after the Act of Union brought together the four colonies of southern Africa into a single new polity, he became editor of a new newspaper, Tsala ea Becoana (Friend of the Bechuana), which later expanded to become Tsala ea Batho (Friend of the People). He moved to Kimberley and was now supported financially by a Barolong consortium from Thaba 'Nchu anxious to make their voice heard in the affairs of the new Union of South Africa. Plaatje was recognised as one of the leading black spokespersons of his day, and was among those who came together in January 1912 to form the SANNC. He became its first general secretary and immediately set about arranging meetings with government ministers to lay their grievances before them.
The 1913 Natives' Land Act and campaigning abroad
It was in the dual capacity of political leader and newspaper editor that Plaatje led the campaign against the Natives' Land Act of 1913, the focus of Native Life. The Land Act was by far the greatest challenge the new Congress faced and it was galvanised into action. The Land Act claimed to implement the principle of territorial segregation or separation. It proposed to confine African landholding to some 7.3 per cent of the total land surface of the Union, prohibiting Africans from purchasing land outside these defined reserves except with the permission of the governor general. Recognising that the proposal was patently inadequate to support a population that was four times the size of the white population, provision was made under the terms of the Land Act for a commission to recommend further areas of land to be set aside for African occupation. This was to be under the chairmanship of Sir William Beaumont, a retired high court judge, and was supposed to report back within two years.
Along with this grand design, devastating to the aspirations of those involved in the new national Congress, were some further provisions which responded to the demands of white farmers in the Orange Free State. Here, ‘sowing on the halves’ (sharecropping) was prevalent, African tenants typically giving half of their produce to white landowners in exchange for the right to farm the land. Amid widespread complaints that Africans were becoming too wealthy, white landowners had pressed for legislation that would alter the terms of tenancy in their favour, enabling them to extract their tenants' labour rather than a share of their harvest. The Land Act thus had the effect of greatly strengthening the bargaining position of the white landowners.
Plaatje reproduces the Land Act in its entirety in Native Life. He documents its effects, and then tells the story of the Congress's campaign against it. The SANNC's representations to the Union government were fruitless, leaving the organisation with no alternative but to take their case to London, the imperial capital. What happened next, and Plaatje's long, ultimately successful struggle to publish Native Life, can be followed in Chapter