Sol Plaatje

Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje (9 October 1876 – 19 June 1932) was a South African intellectual, journalist, linguist, politician, translator and writer. The Sol Plaatje Local Municipality, which includes the city of Kimberley, is named after him, as is the Sol Plaatje University in that city, due to open its doors in 2014.^[1]

Early life

Plaatje was born in Doornfontein near Boshof, Orange Free State (now Free State Province, South Africa), the sixth of eight sons.^[2] His grandfather's name was Selogilwe Mogodi but his employer nicknamed him Plaatje and the family started using this as a surname. His parents Johannes and Martha were members of the Tswana tribe. They were Christians and worked for missionaries at mission stations in South Africa. The family moved to Pniel near Kimberley in the Cape Colony when Solomon was four to work for a German missionary, Ernst Westphal, and his wife Wilhelmine. There he received a mission-education. When he outpaced fellow learners he was given additional private tuition by Mrs. Westphal who also taught him to play the piano and violin and gave him singing lessons.^[2] In February 1892, aged 15, he became a pupil-teacher, a post he held for two years.

After leaving school, he moved to Kimberley in 1894 where he became a telegraph messenger for the Post Office.^[2] He subsequently passed the clerical examination (the highest in the colony) with higher marks than any other candidate in Dutch and typing.^[3] At that time, the Cape Colony had qualified franchise for all men 21 or over, the qualification being that they be able to read and write English or Dutch and earn over 50 pounds a year. Thus, when he turned 21 in 1897, he was able to vote, a right he would later lose when British rule ended.^[2]

Shortly thereafter, he became a court interpreter for the British authorities during the Siege of Mafeking and kept a diary of his experiences which were published posthumously.^[3]

After the war, he was optimistic that the British would continue to grant qualified franchise to all males but they gave political rights to whites only in the 1910 Union of South Africa. Plaatje criticised the British in an unpublished 1909 manuscript entitled "Sekgoma – the Black Dreyfus."^[3]

Career

As an activist and politician he spent much of his life in the struggle for the enfranchisement and liberation of African people. He was a founder member and first General Secretary of the South African Native National Congress (SANNC), which would become the African National Congress (ANC) ten years later. As a member of an SANNC deputation he travelled to England to protest the Natives Land Act, 1913, and later to Canada and the United States where he met Marcus Garvey and W. E. B. Du Bois.

While he grew up speaking the Tswana language, Plaatje would become a polyglot. Fluent in at least seven languages, he worked as a court interpreter during the Siege of Mafeking, and translated works of William Shakespeare into Tswana. His talent for language would lead to a career in journalism and writing. He was editor and part-owner of Koranta ea Becoana (Bechuana Gazette) in Mafikeng, and in Kimberley Tsala ea Becoana (Bechuana Friend) and Tsala ea Batho (The Friend of the People). Plaatje was the first black South African to write a novel in English – Mhudi. Plaatje wrote the novel in 1919, but it was only published in 1930. In 1928 the Zulu writer R. R. R. Dhlomo published an English-language novel, entitled An African Tragedy, at the missionary Lovedale Press, in Alice. This makes Dhlomo's novel the first published black South African novel in English, even though Plaatje's Mhudi had been written first. He also wrote^[4] Native Life in South Africa, which Neil Parsons describes as "one of the most remarkable books on Africa by one of the continent's most remarkable writers";^[5] and Boer War Diary that was first published 40 years after his death.

Personal life

Plaatje was a committed Christian,^[6] and organized a fellowship group called the Christian Brotherhood at Kimberley. He was married to Elizabeth Lilith M’belle, a union that would produce five children – Frederick, Halley, Richard, Violet and Olive. He died of pneumonia at Pimville, Johannesburg on 19 June 1932 and was buried in Kimberley. Over a thousand people attended the funeral.^[7]

Recognition and Legacy

• 1935: three years after his death, a tombstone was erected over Plaatje’s grave with the inscription: “I Khutse Morolong: Modiredi Wa Afrika – Rest in Peace Morolong, You Servant of Africa”.^[8]

Decades passed before Plaatje began to receive the recognition he deserved. "Much of what he strove for came to nought," writes his biographer Brian Willan, "his political career was gradually forgotten, his manuscripts were lost or destroyed, his published books largely unread. His novel Mhudi formed part of no literary tradition, and was long regarded as little more than a curiosity."^[8]

• 1970s: interest was stirred in Plaatje's journalistic and literary legacy through the work of John Comaroff (who edited for publication The Boer War Diary of Sol T. Plaatje^[9]), and by Tim Couzens and Stephen Gray (who focused attention on Sol Plaatje's novel, Mhudi^[10][11][12])

• 1978: Mhudi was re-published under the editorial guidance of Stephen Gray^[13]

• 1982: Plaatje’s Native Life in South Africa: Before and Since the European War and the Boer Rebellion (1916) was re-published by Ravan Press.^[14]

• 1982: the African Writers Association instituted a Sol Plaatje Prose Award (alongside the H. I. E. and R. R. R. Dhlomo Drama Award and the S.E.K.Mqhayi Poetry Award).^[15]

• 1984: Brian Willan published his biography, Sol Plaatje: South African Nationalist, 1876-1932.^[16]

• 1991: The Sol Plaatje Educational Trust and Museum, housed in Plaatje’s Kimberley home at 32 Angel Street, was opened, actively furthering his written legacy.^[17]

• 1992: the house at 32 Angel Street in Kimberley, where Plaatje spent his last years, was declared a national monument (now a provincial heritage site).^[18] It continues as the Sol Plaatje Museum and Library, run by the Sol Plaatje Educational Trust, with donor funding. In the 2000s the Sol Plaatje Educational Trust has published Plaatje biographies by Maureen Rall^[19] and Sabata-Mpho Mokae.^[20]

• circa 1995: the Sol Plaatje Municipality (Kimberley) in South Africa's Northern Cape Province was named in Plaatje’s honour.^[21]

• 1998: an honorary doctorate was posthumously conferred on Plaatje by the University of the North-West, with several of his descendants present.^[22]

• 1998: Plaatje’s grave in West End Cemetery, Kimberley, was declared a national monument (now a provincial heritage site).^[23] It was only the second grave in South African history to be awarded national monument status.^[24]
• 2000: The Diamond Fields Advertiser launches the Sol T Plaatje Memorial Award to honour the top Setswana and top English matriculant each year in the Northern Cape. The first recipients are Claire Reddie (English) and Neo Molefi (Setswana).^[25]

• 2000: the Department of Education building in Pretoria was renamed Sol Plaatje House, on 15 June 2000, “in honour of this political giant and consummate educator.”^[17]

• 2000: the South African Post Office issued a series of stamps featuring writers of the Boer War, with Plaatje appearing on the 1.30 Rand stamp. The series also includes Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Winston Churchill, Johanna Brandt and the Anglo-Boer War Medal.^[26]

• 2000: the African National Congress initiated the Sol Plaatje Award, one of a number of annual achievement awards. The Sol Plaatje Award recognises the best performing ANC branch.^[27]

• 2002: the Sol Plaatje Media Leadership Institute was established within Rhodes University's Department of Journalism and Media Studies.^[28]

• 2005: the Saulspoort Dam was renamed Sol Plaatje Dam, although not in honour of Sol Plaatje the man but in remembrance of 41 Sol Plaatje Municipal workers drowned in a bus disaster there on 1 May 2003.^[29][30]

• 2007: the Sol Plaatje Prize for Translation was instituted by the English Academy of South Africa, awarded bi-annually for translation of prose or poetry into English from any of the other South African official languages.

• 2009: the Sol Plaatje Power Station at the Sol Plaatje Dam was commissioned - the first commercial small hydro power station constructed in South Africa in 22 years.^[31][32]

• 2009: Sol Plaatje was honoured in the Posthumous Literary Award given by the South African Literary Awards (SALA).

• 2010: the first Plaatje Festival, held in Mahikeng, hosted by the North West Province Departments of Sport, Arts and Culture and of Education, on 5 and 6 November 2010. It brought together Plaatje and Molema descendants, poets, journalists, scholars, language practitioners, educators, and learners, who "paid tribute to this brilliant Setswana man of letters."^[17]

• 2010: a statue of Sol Plaatje, seated and writing at a desk, was unveiled in Kimberley by South African President Jacob Zuma on 9 January 2010, the 98th anniversary of the founding of the African National Congress. By sculptor Johan Moolman, it was erected at Kimberley's Civic Centre, formerly the Malay Camp, and situated approximately where Plaatje had his printing press in 1910 – 13.^[33]

• 2011: the European Union Sol Plaatje Poetry Competition was inaugurated, honouring "the spirit of the legendary intellectual giant, Sol Plaatje, the activist, linguist and translator, novelist, journalist and leader." Winners' work has been published in an annual anthology since the competition's inauguration.^[34]

• 2012: Seetsele Modiri Molema's Lover of his people: a biography of Sol Plaatje was published. Translated and edited by D.S. Matjila and Karen Haire, the manuscript, Sol T. Plaatje: Morata Wabo, dating from the 1960s, was the first Plaatje biography written in his mother tongue, Setswana, and the only book-length biography written by someone who actually knew Plaatje.^[35]

• 2013: the naming of the Sol Plaatje University in Kimberley, due to open in 2014, was announced by President Jacob Zuma on 25 July 2013.^[1][36]

• 2013: the renaming of UNISA's Florida Campus Library as the Sol Plaatje Library, unveiled on 30 July 2013.^[37]

• Schools in Kimberley and Mahikeng are named after Sol Plaatje.

Original writing

• Boer War Diary (circa 1900)
• The Essential Interpreter (circa 1909) an essay
• Mhudi (1930) historical novel
• Native Life in South Africa (1914) P. S. King and Son Ltd., London, a protest against African dispossession
• Sechuana Proverbs with Literal Translations and their European Equivalents (1916) K. Paul, Trench, Trubner and Company, London
• A Sechuana Reader in International Phonetic Orthography (1916)
• Bantu Folk-Tales and Poems

Translations of Shakespeare

• Dikhontsho tsa bo-Juliuse Kesara - Julius Caesar
• Diphosho-phosho - The Comedy of Errors

Select bibliography

• Couzens, T.J. 1973. Sol Plaatje's Mhudi. Journal of Commonwealth Literature 8(1)

• Chrisman, L. 2002. British Imperialism and South African Resistance in Haggard, Schreiner and Plaatje. Oxford: Clarendon.

• De Villiers, G.E. 2000. Servant of Africa. The life and times of Sol T Plaatje. Pretoria: Stimela.

• Gray, Stephen. 1976. Sources of the first black South African novel in English. Munger Africana Notes

• Gray, Stephen. 1977. Plaatje's Shakespeare. English in Africa 4.1: 1-6.

• Midgley, Peter. 1997. Sol Plaatje, An Introduction. Grahamstown: NELM.

• Midgley, Peter. 2000. Sol T. Plaatje. In Paul A. Scanlon, South African Writers (Dictionary of Literary Biography: 225). Detroit, Gale, 2000, 346–357.

• Mokae, Sabata-Mpho. 2010. The Story of Sol T. Plaatje. Kimberley: Sol Plaatje Educational Trust.

• Molema, S.M. (edited by D.S. Matjila & K. Haire). 2012. Lover of his people: a biography of Sol Plaatje. Johannesburg: Wits University Press.

• Pampallis, John. 1992. They Fought for Freedom: Sol Plaatje. Cape Town: Maskew Miller Longman.

• Rall, Maureen. 2003. Peaceable Warrior. The Life and Times of Sol T. Plaatje. Kimberley: Sol Plaatje Educational Trust.

• Willan, Brian. 1984. Sol Plaatje: South African Nationalist, 1876-1932. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press; and Johannesburg: Ravan Press (1986).

• Willan, Brian (ed). 1996. Sol Plaatje: Selected Writings. Johannesburg: Witwatersrand University Press.

References

External links

• A biography and chronology of his life
• Works by Sol Plaatje at Project Gutenberg

v t e African National Congress History Leaders Secretary-General 1912–1915 S. T. Plaatje 1915–1917 R. V. S. Thema 1917–1919 S. Msane 1919–1923 H.L. Bud-M'belle 1923–1927 T. D. Mweli-Skota 1927–1930 E. J. Khaile 1930–1936 E. Mdolomba 1936–1949 J. A. Calata 1949–1955 W. M. U. Sisulu 1955–1958 O. R. Tambo 1958–1969 P. P. D. Nokwe 1969–1991 A. B. Nzo 1991–1997 M. C. Ramaphosa 1997–2007 K. Motlanthe 2007–present G. Mantashe President 1912–1917 J. L. Dube 1917–1924 S. M. Makgatho 1924–1927 Z. R. Mahabane 1927–1930 J. T. Gumede 1930–1936 P. ka Isaka Seme 1937–1940 Z. R. Mahabane 1940–1949 A. B. Xuma 1949–1952 J. S. Moroka 1952–1967 A. J. Lutuli 1967–1991 O. R. Tambo 1991–1997 N. R. Mandela 1997–2007 T. M. Mbeki 2007–present J. G. Zuma Deputy President 1952–1958 N. R. Mandela 1958–1985 O. R. Tambo 1985–1991 N. R. Mandela 1991–1994 W. M. U. Sisulu 1994–1997 T. M. Mbeki 1997–2007 J. G. Zuma 2007–2012 K. Motlanthe 2012-present M. C. Ramaphosa National Conferences 38th (1949) 39th (1950) 40th (1951) 41st (1952) 42nd (1953) 43rd (1954) 44th (1955) 45th (1957) 46th (1958) 47th (1959) 48th (1991) 49th (1994) 50th (1997) 51st (2002) 52nd (2007) 53rd (2012) Structure and wings ANC Today ANC Women's League ANC Youth League National Executive Committee Radio Freedom Umkhonto we Sizwe Allied organizations Congress of South African Trade Unions South African Communist Party Category

Authority control WorldCat VIAF: 68937922 LCCN: n50020411 ISNI: 0000 0001 0911 853X GND: 118792466 SELIBR: 84104 SUDOC: 027909557 BNF: cb119850101 NLA: 35231447

Persondata
Name	Plaatje, Sol
Alternative names
Short description	South African politician and writer
Date of birth	9 October 1876
Place of birth
Date of death	19 January 1932
Place of death