Sol Plaatje's Native Life in South Africa

Past And Present

Janet Remmington, Brian Willan, Bhekizizwe Peterson, Sabata-mpho Mokae, Nhlanhla Maake, Peter Limb, Albert Grundlingh, Khwezi Mkhize, André Odendaal, Christopher Saunders, Heather Hughes, Keith Breckenridge, Jacob Dlamini, Sean O'Toole, Janet Remmington, Brian Willan, Bhekizizwe Peterson, Janet Remmington, Brian Willan, Bhekizizwe Peterson, Janet Remmington, Brian Willan

• Publisher: Wits University Press
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781868149834
• Topic: Storia
• Subtopic: Storia africana

First published in 1916, Sol Plaatje's Native Life in South Africa was written by one of the South Africa's most talented early twentieth-century black leaders and journalists. Plaatje's pioneering book arose out of an early African National Congress campaign to protest against the discriminatory1913 Natives Land Act. Native Life vividly narrates Plaatje's investigative journeying into South Africa's rural heartlands to report on the effects of the Act and his involvement in the deputation to the British imperial government. At the same time it tells the bigger story of the assault on black rights and opportunities in the newly consolidated Union of South Africa – and the resistance to it. Originally published in war-time London, but about South Africa and its place in the world, Native Life travelled far and wide, being distributed in the United States under the auspices of prominent African-American W E B Du Bois. South African editions were to follow only in the late apartheid period and beyond.

The aim of this multi-authored volume is to shed new light on how and why Native Life came into being at a critical historical juncture, and to reflect on how it can be read in relation to South Africa's heightened challenges today. Crucial areas that come under the spotlight in this collection include land, race, history, mobility, belonging, war, the press, law, literature, language, gender, politics, and the state.

CHAPTER 1

NATIVE LIFE IN SOUTH AFRICA WRITING, PUBLICATION, RECEPTION

Brian Willan

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’.¹

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.

The struggle to publish

For several weeks after their fruitless meeting with Lord Harcourt in July 1914, the Congress delegates pursued their campaign of public meetings, urging the British public to put pressure on the imperial government to reconsider its responsibilities to South Africa. In August their plans were thrown into disarray by the outbreak of war. Back in South Africa the SANNC, meeting in Bloemfontein, recalled the delegates from England, believing that they could strengthen their claim to justice by a display of loyalty to the Empire in its hour of need. They had in any case run out of money. Dube had already returned home, and Mapikela, Msane and Rubusana were ready to do likewise.

Plaatje, however, was not. He wanted to stay on long enough to complete his book and to see it published; he had unfinished business relating to Barolong land rights that he wished to take up with the imperial government, and in the courts if need be; and he also wished to travel to America, hoping to raise funds to support his newspaper and several other ventures. So he refused to agree to the terms of a loan arranged by the Anti-Slavery and Aborigines' Protection Society to cover the cost of his fare back home, determined to remain in England until he had achieved his objective.²

Although he was desperately short of money, Plaatje somehow survived the next few months, encouraged by the friendly response to his cause from the British public. He found lodgings at 25 Carnarvon Road in Leyton, an east London suburb, where Native Life in South Africa would mostly be written. His landlady, Alice Timberlake, showed him great kindness and did not press him for the money he owed for board and lodging. He also enjoyed the active support of a group of friends who rallied around him, impressed by his dedication to his cause. They included William Cross, a leading member of the interdenominational Brotherhood movement, with whom he formed a lasting friendship, and a group of women with South African connections who lived in and around London: Georgiana Solomon, widow of the famous Cape statesman Saul Solomon; Sophie Colenso, daughter-in-law of the famous Bishop of Natal; and Alice Werner, a lecturer in African languages at King's College, London. All would play a key part in helping him eventually to publish Native Life in South Africa.

Despite suffering through the bitterly cold winter of 1914–1915, Plaatje made good progress with his book. He found congenial employment assisting Daniel Jones, reader in phonetics at University College, London, to carry out a phonetic analysis of Setswana, his native tongue, and he wrote a number of articles for Leo Weinthal, editor of the London-based African World. Weinthal also supported his application for a reading ticket to use the library of the British Museum. ‘I want some information with reference to a work on South Africa which I am about to produce,’ Plaatje explained to the librarian, who issued him with the ticket he needed. Access to the British Museum and its unparalleled collection would be vital to his enterprise.³

He had also to raise the funds to pay for the printing and publication of his book for it had not taken long to discover that no publisher would take it on without a substantial subsidy. Of the publishers he had approached by the beginning of November 1914, the well-known firm of Longman, Green & Co. was the most expensive, quoting him a price of £120 to print 1000 copies of the book, while Edward Hughes & Co., who had printed the deputation's pamphlet several months earlier, was the cheapest at £87. Both required a down payment of £50 before they would embark upon the work of typesetting.

In the end he reached agreement with the London firm of P S King & Son. They were publishers as well as printers so would be able to sell and market his book through the normal channels. They were a well-established, reputable company, founded in 1819, and made a speciality, so they said, of ‘Publications dealing with Economics, Social questions, Politics, Local Government’.⁴ Their offices were in Great Smith Street, adjacent to the Houses of Parliament in Westminster, and their letterheads and publicity material invariably carried an image of Parliament as if to emphasise their closeness to government. They were not sufficiently confident of the sales potential of Plaatje's book to take it on without insisting on a subsidy, however, so Plaatje was left with the problem of raising the necessary funds – though it seems that P S King & Son required only £60 to print and publish 1000 copies of the book, cheaper than the other quotes he had obtained.

Even this was a huge challenge. In February 1915, with completion of his manuscript in sight, and encouraged by the positive responses of people to whom he had shown it, he appealed for help to the Barolong chief regent, Lekoko, in Mafeking (later Mafikeng, now Mahikeng). Plaatje himself was of Barolong origin, had lived in Mafeking between 1898 and 1910, and knew Lekoko well. He reminded the chief how the book, if only it could be published, would help the cause of the Barolong by drawing particular attention to their circumstances, and how it would be a matter of pride for the chief and his descendants if he, chief regent of the Barolong, made possible the publication of the first book to state the case of the African people of South Africa, and thereby expose the lies told about them by hostile white people.

Unfortunately his appeal was unsuccessful. Lekoko fell ill and then died without sending any money. By May 1915 Plaatje had proofs of his book from P S King & Son but they would not proceed without further payment. Georgiana Solomon tried to raise a loan but she too failed in her efforts. Then another of his friends, Alice Werner, offered to help, launching an appeal on his behalf. She explained the circumstances, emphasised the loyalty of black South Africans to the imperial government in the current conflict, and ended with the assertion that it was ‘of the greatest importance that [Louis] Botha should be supported in the just and generous native policy to which I believe him personally to be inclined, though many of his supporters make his position difficult in this regard, so I understand’. Such a perception of the South African prime minister was common enough in liberal circles. It soon led to serious complications, however, for a copy of her letter found its way into the hands of John Harris, organising secretary of the Anti-Slavery and Aborigines' Protection Society. Knowing Plaatje's views and the likely thrust of his book, Harris thought the appeal amounted to an attempt to raise money under false pretences, and concluded (unjustifiably as it turned out) that he [Plaatje] must have deliberately misled Alice Werner as to its contents. Harris advised potential contributors against donating money towards the book's costs of publication, and took every opportunity to cast doubt upon Plaatje's character and integrity, suggesting that he had been living off funds collected specifically for the book's printing costs. Again, as Alice Werner was eventually able to demonstrate to him, this was entirely without foundation.

In John Harris Plaatje had a determined and devious enemy. The two men had not met since Plaatje had stormed out of a meeting at his offices in August 1914, but Harris was intent upon suppressing the book. Underlying his hostility to Plaatje was his belief that segregation was in the best interests of the African population of South Africa, and hence his support for the Natives' Land Act of 1913 and the policies of the South African government. He was also fearful that any association with Plaatje's campaign would incur the hostility of both the South African and British governments, and that this would jeopardise the prospects of what was to him a far higher priority – his society's campaign against the Chartered Company's claim to crown land in Rhodesia.

Plaatje's supporters believed Harris was perfectly capable of resorting to underhand methods in sabotaging the publication of Native Life in South Africa: ‘… were Mr H to get on the track of the printer,’ Alice Werner thought, he could ‘do something to complicate matters’ – a distinct possibility since P S King & Son printed pamphlets for the Anti-Slavery and Aborigines' Protection Society as well, and appeared to have kept Harris informed of the book's progress. Outraged by Harris's attacks on Plaatje's personal integrity, she soon concluded that ‘Mr H has his knife into P’.⁵

Plaatje's relationship with P S King & Son remained in a delicate state for the remaining months of 1915, but by the end of the year – Harris's efforts notwithstanding – he had managed to raise more money, no easy task in a country in which the war with Germany was the overwhelming public preoccupation. A week's employment in London just before Christmas had helped. He was engaged as a ‘manager’ to help with the ‘Cape to Cairo Fair and Red Cross Fete’, a charitable jamboree organised by the African World. Here he had a particular responsibility for the South West Africa stall where he found himself working alongside Mrs R C Hawkin, a sister of General Botha. Clicko, the ‘dancing bushman’, one of the leading attractions at the fete, was at a stall close by.⁶

By the end of the following month, January 1916, there was further progress. ‘My troubles here have considerably abated since the New Year,’ he informed Mrs Solomon. ‘I have already paid the printer £27, only £5 of which is borrowed and the binding of the book is now in progress.’ At the same time, writing from Stockton-on-Tees, he was delighted to be able to report that his message was being enthusiastically received in the north of England, and that he had taken forty-two advance orders for the book. All he needed was printed copies to sell.⁷

Native Life in South Africa was finally published on 16 May 1916. It was reward at last for Plaatje's untiring struggles since his arrival in England two years previously, and a notable victory, so he wrote later, after ‘eleven months fighting Harris who was battling to suppress Native Life in the press’. The waiting, he said, had been ‘unbearable’. He had also to overcome the increasingly difficult conditions being faced by publishers and printers. The costs of book production, P S King & Son informed another of their authors, had risen ‘enormously during the past year or so and are still rising’, so it was as well that there were no further delays. Native Life could have suffered the same fate as his newspaper Tsala ea Batho in South Africa, sunk by the massive wartime increase in paper costs.⁸

Reception in the UK

Native Life in South Africa, Before and Since the European War and the Boer Rebellion was the full title Plaatje had settled on, possibly taking his cue from a book of Alice Werner's called Native Life in East Africa published a few years previously. Native Life ran to 352 pages and was bound in a solid wine-coloured hardback cover, good value for 3s 6d. It described the events leading up to the passage of the Natives' Land Act, the effects of its implementation, the campaign mounted by the South African Native National Congress to secure its repeal, the story of the deputation to England and the reception it received, and an account of several historical episodes illustrating the loyalty of African people in South Africa to the cause of the imperial government. Without doubt the most striking chapters of the book are those in which Plaatje described his own observations of the effects of the Land Act during the journeys he made in South Africa in 1913 and 1914.

Native Life in South Africa was formulated as a direct and often emotional appeal to the British public to right the wrongs being done to the African people of South Africa and to secure, above all, the repeal of the Natives' Land Act. ‘Awaking on Friday morning, June 20, 1913,’ so Plaatje began, in words that would become famous, ‘the South African native found himself, not actually a slave, but a pariah in the land of his birth’. He justified his appeal not simply by reference to the constitutional responsibilities that Britain retained for South A...