Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje (1876-1932) was one of the foremost African leaders of his generation in South Africa. As the first general secretary of the African National Congress (ANC), founded in 1912, Plaatje was a prominent political spokesperson, interacting regularly with government officials and other leading whites in both South Africa and Great Britain. Plaatje was much more than a political figure, however. Prior to the formation of the ANC, he was a court interpreter at Mafeking, where he became caught up in the famous siege during the Anglo-Boer War (1). After the war he became editor of two successive newspapers, Koranta ea Becoana (Bechuana Gazette) and Tsala ea Becoana (The Friend of the Bechuana), both published in Setswana and English. As one of the band of pioneering African newspaper editors, he viewed his role as that of a "mouthpiece" for his people. It was this role that brought him to prominence and led to his selection as ANC general secretary.

Plaatje was a significant writer. His political tract, Native Life in South Africa (2), was an angry denunciation of the 1913 Natives' Land Act. The first sentence is perhaps one of the hardest hitting political statements in South African history: "Awaking on Friday morning, June 20, 1913, the South African Native found himself, not actually a slave, but a pariah in the land of his birth" (Document 52, p. 186). His writing was not limited to political developments, however, for in the same year he published Native Life, he also published a book of Tswana proverbs in both the original language and in translation (3). Later in life, Plaatje increasingly turned his attention to literary pursuits, translating Shakespeare's Comedy of Errors, Julius Caesar, and Much Ado about Nothing into Tswana (4). Plaatje also wrote the first novel in English by a black South African, Mhudi: An Epic of South African Native Life a Hundred Years Ago (5). It is not surprising, then, that such a wealth of written material by such an important early political and literary figure in the history of African nationalism in South Africa would lead to an edition of his Selected Writings within three years of the electoral triumph of the party which he helped found.

Brian Willan is the natural editor for Plaatje's work, since he has not only written the authoritative biography of Plaatje (6), but also assisted in editing Plaatje's Mafeking Diary. The organization of Selected Writings is very much along the lines of the biography. Indeed, Willan utilized most of the material in the Selected Writings in preparing the biography. Part One deals with the Mafeking siege and Plaatje's editorship up to the creation of the Union of South Africa in 1910, which is covered in Chapters Four through Six of the biography. As the title for Part One implies ("All we claim is our just dues"), this was an era when African political leaders were seeking, in the words of a Plaatje editorial in the 20 April 1904 issue of the Bechuana Gazette, "equal rights for all civilized men" (Document 27, pp. 86-87).

Part Two, 1910-1923, covers the same ground as Chapters Seven through Twelve of the biography. Here the emphasis is on Plaatje as a political leader, as suggested by the section's title, "Champion for the cause of our peoples." Among the key themes are the fight against the 1913 Natives' Land Act, Plaatje's representation of African interests in England during the First World War, and his 1920-22 trip to Canada and the United States to foster ties with African-Americans. The third and final part of the book covers the period 1924-32 (Chapters Thirteen through Sixteen in the biography) and focuses on Plaatje's career as "A pioneer in literature." While documents relating to the Sechuana Proverbs (Document 54) and to his A Sechuana Reader in International Phonetic Orthography (7) (Document 55) appear in part Two, Part Three is where the bulk of the material for this facet of Plaatje's life is to be found.

As one would expect, Selected Writings contains excerpts from Plaatje's major published works, including the Mafeking Diary (Document One), Native Life in South Africa (Document 52), Mhudi (Document 98), Diphosho-posho (Comedy of Errors) (Document 95), and others, including publications noted above, for a total of nine documents. Since these excerpts are readily available elsewhere, they are not as unique and useful as are the remaining ninety-five selections. The most numerous of these are forty-eight articles and editorials from the newspapers Plaatje edited and articles published principally in the English-language press over the course of his life. That newspapers such as the Cape Argus, the Cape Times, and the Diamond Fields Advertiser regularly published pieces by Plaatje suggests the respect accorded to his views by at least some leading English-speaking white South Africans. There are also thirty-three letters in the collection written to white officials and politicians, business leaders, personal contacts, fellow Africans, and others. Four manuscripts are also part of this collection, including a 1908/09 piece entitled "The Essential Interpreter" (Document 10). Willan drew heavily on this document in his biography (8) to illustrate the critical role of African court interpreters to the functioning of colonial administration and also to show Plaatje's implicit belief in the fairness of the Cape Colony's judicial system. Rounding off the collection are two pamphlets, two transcripts of interviews, three speeches/addresses, and three documents categorized as "other." All of these documents are English-language originals. If there is a significant shortcoming to the book, it is that Willan does not provide translations of any documents that originally appeared in Setswana, although the columns of Plaatje's newspapers contain plenty of this type of material.

Sol Plaatje today is the best known member of the founding generation of the African National Congress. In large part this is due to his prolific writing. John L. Dube, the first president of the ANC, was also a newspaper editor, but the range, scope, and diversity of his writing was far more limited than that of Plaatje. Plaatje had an original and fertile mind, and was able to express himself extremely well in both English and Setswana, as his highly capable translations of Shakespeare demonstrate. The appearance of his Selected Writings serves further to enhance his well-deserved reputation as one of the foremost South Africans of his era.

1. He kept a diary during the siege, which was published more than seven decades later. Sol T. Plaatje, Mafeking Diary: A Black Man's View of a White Man's War, edited by John Comoroff (Athens: Ohio University Press, 1973).

2. London: P.S. King and Co., 1916; new edition, (Johannesburg: Ravan Press, 1995)

3. Sol T. Plaatje, Sechuana Proverbs with Literal Translations and their European Equivalents (London: Kegan Paul, Trench and Trubner, 1916).

4. Two of the translated plays were published: Diposho-phoso (Comedy of Errors) (Morija: Morija Printing Works, 1930), and Dintshontsho tsa bo-Juliuse Kesara (Julius Caesar) (Johannesburg: Witwatersrand University Press, 1937).

5. Lovedale: Lovedale Press, 1930; new edition, with an Introduction by T.J. Couzens, London: Heinemann Educational Books, 1978; new edition, with an Introduction by Tony Voss, Johannesburg: Ad. Donder, 1989).

6. Brian Willan, Sol Plaatje: South African Nationalist, 1876-1932 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984).

7. D. Jones and S.T. Plaatje, A Sechuana Reader in International Phonetic Orthography (with English translations) (London: University of London Press, 1916; repub. Farnborough, Hants: Gregg International Publishers, 1970).

8. Willan, Sol Plaatje, pp. 68-70.

R. Hunt Davis, Jr.
Department of History and Center for African Studies
University of Florida