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 1 - Native Life in South Africa: Writing, publication, reception
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
Native Life in South Africa is remarkable not just for what it is but for how it came into being, its writing and publication, in the face of considerable odds, a triumph of the first order. But it was a close run thing: it could very easily have failed to see the light of day. This chapter aims to tell that story.
The book had its origins in the campaign of the South African Native National Congress (SANNC) against the Natives’ Land Act of 1913. Unable to persuade the South African government of its case against the legislation, Congress met in Kimberley in February 1914 to elect a deputation to take their case to London to lay before the British imperial government, which still had formally to approve all South African legislation. Plaatje, general secretary of Congress, was elected a member of the deputation and – with three others – accompanied John Dube, president of Congress, to London in May 1914.
Plaatje had taken a leading part in the organisation's campaign against the Act and had written extensively about it in the columns of his newspaper, Tsala ea Batho (Friend of the People). He must have conceived the plan to set out the case in book form well before he set off for England, and he began writing it on board the SS Norseman once it set sail from Cape Town in May. ‘I am compiling this little book on the Natives’ Land Act and its operation,’ he wrote when on board ship, ‘which I hope to get through the press immediately after landing in England.’ He added that it kept him ‘busy typewriting in the dining room all forenoons’, while ‘the afternoons I spend on deck, making notes etc’.
His book was written in the first instance in the form of an appeal to the British public. This was so because Plaatje and his colleagues were under no illusions that the colonial secretary Lord Harcourt was likely to disallow the Natives’ Land Act, and that they had therefore to appeal to the British public for support. From the beginning, the book was conceived as an integral part of this campaign. It would be nearly two years, however, before it was published – and, at more than 350 pages, would not be the ‘little book’ he had in mind when working on it aboard the Norseman.
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- Information
- Sol Plaatje's Native Life in South AfricaPast and Present, pp. 1 - 17Publisher: Wits University PressPrint publication year: 2016