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 5 - Native Life in South Africa and the world at war
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
What has been called the ‘cult of centenary’ has become increasingly prevalent as we move further into the twenty-first century and the preceding epoch gradually assumes a less familiar shape, intermittently to be brought into focus by the centenary replays. Such remembrances, it has been claimed, can contribute towards ‘perpetuating, revising or creating public perceptions of past events and people’. Whether that is indeed the case, or to what extent this may happen, is debatable, but at the very least centenaries provide opportunities to showcase the past. Usually, however, centenaries are reserved for major or spectacular historical events and it is not often that a humble book earns its own centenary space. That Native Life has been chosen for such treatment is a singular honour.
The First World War bulked large in the making of Native Life. What Plaatje had originally intended as a ‘little book’ on the Natives’ Land Act of 1913 turned into a much larger enterprise in which the war occupied a prominent place. Four substantial chapters deal pertinently with the war. The war and its effects on African life not only feature in a descriptive manner, but become a leitmotif to underscore discrepancies in South African society at the time. The book has been criticised as not balanced thematically and somewhat disparate in its presentation, yet this is understandable as it was written in the heat of the time and the central theme of injustice is effectively maintained through various lenses. For the historian who first comes to this book many years after it was written, the sprawling and haphazard structure of the publication has its own attractions, as in his digressions Plaatje often drops valuable nuggets of historical detail that would have been omitted in a more tightly controlled narrative with a stronger editorial hand.
Although the war halted the South African National Native Congress's campaign against the 1913 Land Act that was underway in England, Plaatje thought it wise to continue to exploit opportunities it opened up to promote what he considered the best interests of Africans in South Africa, of which foremost was the notion that a demonstration of loyalty to the British cause might yet yield future political dividends.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Sol Plaatje's Native Life in South AfricaPast and Present, pp. 81 - 94Publisher: Wits University PressPrint publication year: 2016