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.