Sol Plaatje
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![Sol Plaatje as a young man South African History Online[1]](../../../upload/thumb/a/a1/Plaatje-s.jpg/180px-Plaatje-s.jpg)
Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje (9 October 1876 – 19 June 1932) was an accomplished South African intellectual, journalist, linguist, politician, translator, and writer.
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[edit] Life
Plaatje was born near Boshof, Free State. He received a mission-education at Pniel. When he outpaced fellow learners he was given additional private tuition by the missionary, Ernest Westphal and his wife. In February 1892, aged 15, he became a pupil-teacher, a post he held for two years.
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 later become the African National Congress (ANC). As a member of an SANNC deputation he would travel to England to protest the 1913 Native Land Act, and later to Canada and the United States where he met Marcus Garvey and W.E.B. DuBois.
While he grew up speaking Tswana, Plaatje would become a polyglot. Fluent in at least seven languages, he worked as a court interpreter during the Siege of Mafikeng, 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). As a writer Plaatje was the first black South African to publish a novel in English - Mhudi. He also wrote [2] 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"[3]; and Boer War Diary that was first published 40 years after his death.
Plaatje was a committed Christian[4], and organised 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. The Sol Plaatje Municipality in South Africa's Northern Cape Province is named in his honour[5]. In 1998, with several of his descendants present, an honorary doctorate was posthumously conferred on Plaatje by the University of the North West[6].
[edit] Original writing
- Boer War Diary, (circa 1889)
- The Essential Interpreter, an essay (circa 1909)
- Mhudi, historical novel (1913)
- *Native Life in South Africa, a protest against African dispossession (1914)
- Sechuana Proverbs with Literal Translations and their European Equivalents (1916)
- A Sechuana Reader in International Phonetic Orthography (1916)
- Bantu Folk-Tales and Poems
[edit] Translations of Shakespeare
- Dikhontsho tsa bo-Juliuse Kesara - Julius Caesar
- Diphosho-phosho - Comedy of Errors
[edit] Selected bibliography
- Chrisman, L. (2002). British Imperialism and South African Resistance in Haggard, Schreiner and Plaatje. Oxford: Clarendon.
- De Villiers, GE. (2000). Servant of Africa. The life and times of Sol T Plaatje. Pretoria: Stimela.
- Midgley, P. (1997). Sol Plaatje, An Introduction. Grahamstown: NELM.
- Pampallis, J. (1992). Sol Plaatje. Cape Town: Maskew Miller Longman.
- Willan, B. (Ed).(1996): Sol Plaatje: Selected Writings. Johannesburg: Witwatersrand University Press.
