Читать книгу Sol Plaatje's Native Life in South Africa - Jacob Dlamini - Страница 7

Janet Remmington, Brian Willan and Bhekizizwe Peterson

Sol Plaatje's Native Life in South Africa, originally published in 1916, was first and foremost a response to the landmark Natives' Land Act of 1913. It arose out of the protest campaign of the South African Native National Congress (SANNC) founded in 1912, renamed in 1923 the African National Congress (ANC), Africa's oldest liberation movement and, since 1994, South Africa's ruling party.

But the book was far more than a robust rejoinder to a significant piece of legislation, and it was far from being an ANC publication. Native Life was Plaatje's distinctive handiwork, independent and individualistic, casting a wide net in its observations and sparing no one its critical gaze. It ranges widely in its commentary on pressing issues of the day – many persisting in contemporary South Africa – while vividly narrating the author's journeying in South Africa's farmlands and from its industrialising centres to Britain's imperial capital and beyond. Written by one of South Africa's most talented early twentieth-century black leaders and journalists, Native Life is a foundational, though sometimes under-recognised, book in South African politics, history and literature. At home and abroad, it is not nearly as widely studied or read as is Plaatje's 1930 novel Mhudi.

Native Life in South Africa, Before and Since the European War and the Boer Rebellion – to give it its full original title – looked like it might never see a printing press for all the odds that were stacked against it. Published in wartime London, but about South Africa and its place in the world, it would travel far and wide, inspiring support in some quarters and provoking censure in others. During the long, tumultuous twentieth century, it remained largely forgotten, yet re-emerged sporadically under different covers. It gained a measure of increased visibility in late apartheid through its positioning within the struggle genre under the radical Ravan imprint (see Bessie Head's Foreword to the edition reproduced in this volume), and through its publication as a Longman African Classic for British and world markets. A full listing of current and planned editions is provided in this volume for reference, and the opening chapter tells the extraordinary story of the writing, publication and reception of Native Life.

In the aftermath of South Africa's 1994 political transition, Native Life found new meanings and a new audience. In being republished in 2007 under Pan Macmillan's Picador Africa imprint, with an eye on its use in educational settings, it was positioned to reach a greater readership. The edition's foreword by lawyer, educationist and politician Kader Asmal highlights and celebrates both its substance – its ‘ideas which have relevance to our political and cultural life’ – and its delivery, its ‘wry humour’, ‘erudition’ and ‘determination’.¹ It made its way into some curricula, usually in excerpted form, and into some bookshops. A new Picador impression of the 2007 edition is out in the centennial year and has been readily received. Nevertheless, Native Life has remained largely under-read and under-analysed, treated more often than not as a brief stopping point in a South African historical tour than for significant engagement with the text in its own right, or as a spur for making connections with a range of historical and contemporary issues.

Some of Native Life's lines are now iconic, cited in a wide range of contexts within government, academic and public spheres. The most famous is the opening line of its first chapter on the infamous Natives' Land Act being signed into law: ‘Awaking on Friday morning, June 20, 1913, the South African native found himself, not actually a slave, but a pariah in the land of his birth.’² The name of its author, Sol Plaatje, is certainly now recognisable in South Africa owing to the numerous schools, colleges, structures, institutes, awards and initiatives that bear his name, including the Kimberley municipality, a prestigious literary prize, and a new university. Yet a knowledge of the texture of his life and work, and the contents and qualities of his seminal book, lag behind.

Approximately one hundred years on from Native Life's 1916 publication, this collection proposes to do two things: to explore the book in its original context and to consider its contemporary significance. In what follows, it aims to shed new light on why and how Native Life came into being and to reflect on what it has to contribute to understanding South Africa's 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.

In some measure, this collection speaks to issues raised by the discursive volume New South African Keywords (2008), which offers readings on vital concepts central to political and public thought. It reminds us that for the black South African majority, as for millions across the world, ‘the basic struggle remains … the struggle against material want … for human dignity … for wrongs of the past to be recognised … for reparations and for representation’.³ The political circumstances in which the struggle against poverty and justice are fought today are resoundingly different to those more than a century ago when Native Life was published; however, the challenges for improving conditions and life chances remain persistently difficult and are arguably more complex. After more than twenty years of democracy, South African national life is facing extreme uncertainties. Public disillusionment with established political leadership and its management of state resources is growing. Lack of accountability of the ruling ANC, ructions within the party and rural–urban divides are leading to instabilities as well as campaign areas for opposition parties. The harsh economic environment, unrelenting unemployment, inadequate healthcare, a deeply underdeveloped education system, widespread corruption, structural inequalities in institutions and workplaces, and race, class and generational cleavages are keenly felt. If, in the first decade of political transition, South Africa was described as being in a state of ‘fragile stability’ with an emphasis on ‘equilibrium’, in the second decade more focus might be placed on fragility.⁴ In other words, while ‘democratic and progressive forces and possibilities’ are apparent in society, they face formidable pressures, struggles and antagonisms.⁵ In exploring the territory of Native Life at the time of its publication and more than a century later, we aim to stay close to the particularity of different contexts. We hold in the frame a firm sense of social justice and political ideal, as set out by Plaatje and others of his generation, and perhaps most evident today in South Africa's Constitution.

Native Life's wide ambit, hybrid make-up and resistance to easy generic categorisation are qualities that invite perspectives from a range of disciplines, professions and practices. Among the contributors to this volume are historians, literary scholars, journalists, publishers and poets. In addition to reflective essays, the book reproduces some evocative contributions from the past, including Bessie Head's notable foreword to the now out-of-print 1982 Ravan edition and two tribute poems originally published in 1933 in the African-edited newspaper, The Bantu World.⁶ Included are Violet Plaatje's elegy for her father in a series of quatrains not out of keeping with English literary conventions of a mission school background and James M Molebaloa's praise poem in Setswana, infused with Christian references, lauding Plaatje's ‘words' and ‘deeds’.⁷ Drawing from different traditions, yet sharing elements of early twentieth-century African middle-class expression, the tribute poems highlight Plaatje's multiple contributions to society, his tireless advocacy for black South Africans and his expansive reach to national and international seats of power. A third poetic tribute is a contemporary lament in Setswana by Kimberley-based Sabata-mpho Mokae. It registers forms of loss that would seem to reverberate through the generations while alluding to the strength that might come through reconnection to the past.

This multi-authored collection incorporates a dozen chapters that attend to a wide range of resonant issues brought to the fore by the text of Native Life, while in most cases providing insights into the pivotal period around the time of the book's publication in 1916 – the early days of the then ‘new South Africa’ under white minority rule and its newly acquired imperial dominion status. Our volume addresses the substance and style of the text, the lives of the book as object, and the contexts of its reach and relevance. We open with an account of Native Life's journey to publication and its reception, moving on to its aesthetics and interconnections with the press, its place, circulation, mobilities and contestations in the national context and wider world, taking into account the effects of the First World War. We then consider Native Life's intellectual and political foundations, its relationship to the writing of history and women's roles in society, the salience of land and legal issues, and its inheritance as reflected in physical and sociopolitical landscapes of contemporary South Africa. The chapters vary in their preoccupations, views and speculations and, in some cases, sit in discursive tension with each other. They can be read as stand-alone pieces or as part of a wider contemplative whole. Above all, the aim is to draw attention to, and open up further reflections on, Plaatje's pioneering, hard-won book. There are inevitably concerns and themes that this volume does not manage to explore, but which we hope ensuing conversations will address. The volume closes with a short story by Mokae, inspired by Native Life, and written specially for this volume. In addition to full bibliographic details in the end notes of each chapter, we provide a listing of key resources for those who want to learn more about Plaatje, whether through visiting relevant sites, dipping into biographies or digging into archives.

We turn now to focus on the author of Native Life himself. What of his early years, education and influences? What contributed to his life of politics and writing? How did he come to be in Britain in 1916 to publish Native Life, and what did he do after its publication?