Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Table of Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Foreword: Sol T Plaatje and the ‘power of all’
- Introduction: Native Life in South Africa – then and now
- Editions of Native Life in South Africa: 1916 to the present
- Looking Back: Foreword to Ravan Press edition of Native Life in South Africa, 1982
- Poetic Tributes
- What is in a name? In memory of Sol T Plaatje
- Segopoco Sa Moshui Sol T Plaatje
- In memory of the late Sol T Plaatje
- Lefatshe, nkometse
- Earth, swallow me
- Miscellaneous Frontmatter
- Chapter 1 Native Life in South Africa: Writing, publication, reception
- Chapter 2 Modernist at large: The aesthetics of Native Life in South Africa
- Chapter 3 The print world of the press and Native Life in South Africa
- Chapter 4 Going places: Native Life in South Africa and the politics of mobility
- Chapter 5 Native Life in South Africa and the world at war
- Chapter 6 African intellectual history, black cosmopolitanism and Native Life in South Africa
- Chapter 7 ‘Native Lives’ behind Native Life: Intellectual and political influences on the ANC and democratic South Africa
- Chapter 8 Whose past? Native Life in South Africa and historical writing
- Chapter 9 Women and society in Native Life in South Africa: Roles and ruptures
- Chapter 10 African progressivism, land and law: Re-reading Native Life in South Africa
- Chapter 11 Land and belonging: On the tomb ya ga Solomon Plaatje
- Chapter 12 Revisiting the landscapes of Native Life
- A Contemporary Reimagining: The Road to Dikhudung
- Contributors
- Plaatje Resources
- List of Figures
- Index
Chapter 11 - Land and belonging: On the tomb ya ga Solomon Plaatje
from Poetic Tributes
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 April 2018
- Frontmatter
- Table of Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Foreword: Sol T Plaatje and the ‘power of all’
- Introduction: Native Life in South Africa – then and now
- Editions of Native Life in South Africa: 1916 to the present
- Looking Back: Foreword to Ravan Press edition of Native Life in South Africa, 1982
- Poetic Tributes
- What is in a name? In memory of Sol T Plaatje
- Segopoco Sa Moshui Sol T Plaatje
- In memory of the late Sol T Plaatje
- Lefatshe, nkometse
- Earth, swallow me
- Miscellaneous Frontmatter
- Chapter 1 Native Life in South Africa: Writing, publication, reception
- Chapter 2 Modernist at large: The aesthetics of Native Life in South Africa
- Chapter 3 The print world of the press and Native Life in South Africa
- Chapter 4 Going places: Native Life in South Africa and the politics of mobility
- Chapter 5 Native Life in South Africa and the world at war
- Chapter 6 African intellectual history, black cosmopolitanism and Native Life in South Africa
- Chapter 7 ‘Native Lives’ behind Native Life: Intellectual and political influences on the ANC and democratic South Africa
- Chapter 8 Whose past? Native Life in South Africa and historical writing
- Chapter 9 Women and society in Native Life in South Africa: Roles and ruptures
- Chapter 10 African progressivism, land and law: Re-reading Native Life in South Africa
- Chapter 11 Land and belonging: On the tomb ya ga Solomon Plaatje
- Chapter 12 Revisiting the landscapes of Native Life
- A Contemporary Reimagining: The Road to Dikhudung
- Contributors
- Plaatje Resources
- List of Figures
- Index
Summary
Hip-Hop music is the last place many would expect to find Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje. Yet there he is in a song titled ‘We Built this City’ by Hip-Hop Pantsula (HHP), a famous South African rapper and one of the country's leading entertainers. HHP, real name Jabulani Tsambo, is a pioneer of a South African genre of hip-hop known as motswako, arguably the most dominant style of rapping in South Africa at present, with its proponents winning awards and topping the charts. In ‘We Built this City’, HHP claims Plaatje as an ancestor of both motswako and Mafeking (later Mafikeng, now Mahikeng), the city with which motswako (and Plaatje) are closely identified. HHP raps:
On the tomb ya ga Solomon Plaatje
From the womb o tswe o tshwere botaki
In the rooms though you find out go tswile kgotla re apere dibaki
This is not a record label re party
Now we built this city with two ma-handsa
Botsa fela wena we got the answers
If not, you can catch me on the BBC X
Soon I'll be signing those BEE cheques
On the tomb of Solomon Plaatje
Emerged from the womb with talent
In the rooms a delegation in suits awaits
This is not a record label but a party
We built this city with our hands
Just ask we have the answers
Otherwise, catch me on the BBC
Soon I'll be signing those BEE cheques
Motswako is defined by its mix of Setswana and English – rappers use both languages over a simple but steady beat. The song in question celebrates the city of Mafeking as the home of motswako. But why Plaatje's tomb? Why claim it as the source from which motswako and HHP's talent grew? Why would a young artist (HHP was born in 1980), raised in the former homeland of Bophuthatswana, claim as an ancestor a man who was more cosmopolitan than Lucas Mangope, the Bophuthatswana president under whose reign HHP grew up, could ever be? Why claim as an ancestor a man whose grave is not even in the former homeland, but in Kimberley? By raising these questions, I intend in this essay to ask broader questions about how, in Native Life in South Africa, Plaatje treated the land as both object and symbolic site of attachment and belonging.
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- Chapter
- Information
- Sol Plaatje's Native Life in South AfricaPast and Present, pp. 196 - 210Publisher: Wits University PressPrint publication year: 2016