Sol Plaatje: A Biography - Brian Willan

Sol Plaatje: A Biography (Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje 1876 - 1932) - Brian Willan - 1984, first edition - Ravan, Johannesburg - 436p, black & white photographs, index - Paperback in good condition - Internally: clean and tightly bound, previous ownership taped out.

Author, journalist, political spokesman and leader of his people - Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje was one of the most gifted and versatile men of his generation. He devoted his many talents to one overriding cause: the struggle of the African people agaist injustice and dispossession in the years that saw South Africa transformed from colonial backwater into an industrial state.

He is best known today as the author of two books: Native life in South Africa, a scathing indictment of the Natives' Land Act of 1913, one of the most far-reaching pieces of legislation in South African history; and Mhudi, the first novel in English to be written by a black Sourh African

This extensively illustrated biography tells the story of Plaatje's remarkable life for the first time. The early years - his childhood on a German mission station in the Cape Colony of the 1880s and 90s, his first job as a messenger with the Post Office in the diamond town of Kimberley - culminate in his work as a court interpreter for the British military authorities at the famous siege of Mafeking.

As the new century began, the political struggle came to dominate Plaatje's life. He was the first secretary of the African National Congress. Political campaigning took him to Britain where he met Lloyd George, and to the United States, where he met black leaders like Marcus Garvey and WEB Du Bois. He spent the last years of his life in South Arica, devoting himself to the preservation of the Tswana language literature.