‘Native Life’ 100 years afte
Sol T Plaatje’s ground-breaking ‘Native Life in South Africa’ was published 100 years ago. and are the editors of a new scholarly work on his book, ‘Sol Plaatje’s Native Life in South Africa: Past and Present’ (Wits University Press), from which this edit
Sol Plaatje’s Native Life in South Africa, originally published in 1916, was first and foremost a response to the landmark Natives Land Act of 1913. It arose out of the protest campaign of the South African Native National Congress (SANNC) founded in 1912, renamed in 1923 the African National Congress (ANC).
But the book was far more than a robust rejoinder to a significant piece of legislation, and it was far from being an ANC publication. Native Life was Plaatje’s distinctive handiwork, independent and individualistic, casting a wide net in its observations and sparing no one its critical gaze.
It ranges widely in its commentary on pressing issues of the day — many persisting in contemporary South Africa — while vividly narrating the author’s journeying in South Africa’s farmlands and from its industrialising centres to Britain’s imperial capital and beyond.
Written by one of South Africa’s most talented early 20th-century black leaders and journalists, Native Life is a foundational, but sometimes under-recognised, book in South African politics, history and literature. At home and abroad, it is not nearly as widely studied or read as Plaatje’s 1930 novel Mhudi.
In the century since its publication, Native Life has been curiously neglected by historians. This contrasts with the attention it attracted at the time it was published, when it was widely read, reviewed and even mentioned during debates in the South African House of Assembly. But after that it largely disappeared from view.
Partly this was because it selfevidently failed to achieve its objective. Not only was the Land Act not repealed, but other legislation built upon its foundations, taking South Africa further down the path of segregation. It did not help either that the book defied easy categorisation. Part polemic, part political commentary, part history, part autobiography, it fitted into no recognised genre, falling between the cracks of conventional epistemologies.
A mo r e d a mn i n g r e a s o n f o r Native Life’s neglect was its being a book written by a black South African — its seriousness, reliability and relevance arguably not being recognised. For much of the 20th century historians engaged with South African history through the lens of the white population. Black history, when it made an appearance in historical writing, was largely relegated to the realm of the tribal and customary.
Historians were slow to develop a more inclusive approach to South Africa’s past.
When they did, Native Life was mostly neglected. But, from the 1960s and 1970s, as historians began to take a more sustained interest in black South African history and the origins of political opposition, Native Life was rediscovered as an important source.
In the following decade, Native Life came into its own. Ravan Press published a new edition, the first time it had been printed in South Africa. The Land Act, too, attracted more scholarly attention as historians turned their attention to rural history.
In 2013, the centenary of the passing of the Land Act focused attention not only on the Act itself and its consequences, but led several historians to take a closer look at Native Life.
In contrast, Native Life and its author were highly regarded among black intellectuals of the day, and since.
A week after Plaatje’s death in 1932, the journalist, poet and playwright HIE Dhlomo wrote a eulogy, ‘ An Appreciation’, of his friend. Dhlomo’s esteem of Plaatje and his writing were generally shared by African intellectuals of the time. In the 1950s annals of the history of the ANC, ZK Matthews acknowledges, in reference to the Land Act, that “the story of the hardships and the disabilities in land matters which that Act imposed upon African people is told by … Plaatje, in his well-known book Native Life in South Africa”.
Njabulo Ndebele describes Native Life as a landmark in the historiography on South African political repression: “The book is remarkable not only for its impressive detailing of facts but also for its well-considered rhetorical effects which express intelligent analysis, political clarity and a strong moral purpose.”
Many referenced the “prescience” of the opening sentence of Native Life, lending it an affective power and a somewhat prophetic aura: “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.”
Plaatje’s generation faced many challenges in engaging in social advocacy and intellectual work. The mission-educated African intelligentsia was a small group, occupying a precarious social and economic position — attested to by the perilous state of Plaatje’s finances throughout his life. Even in beating the odds to gain an education, the African intelligentsia had to circumvent a range of institutional exclusions.
Dhlomo noted, in an overview bemoaning the biased ethnocentric history penned by white scholars, that research by blacks was ham- pered by segregationist policies: “Natives cannot get access into public and state libraries and into the archives departments.”
Apart from publishing in newspapers, there were very few outlets for their writings. Black intellectuals faced limited resources and their marginal status made the produc- tion, circulation and reception their contributions significantly harder than for their white counterparts.
The writing of Native Life signals the aspirations and needs of the African intelligentsia to assert their humanity, modern citizenship and agency.