Sol Plaatje: A Life of Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje, 1876-1932

By Brian Willan

While the story of modern South Africa has long captured global attention, the story of one of its key forefathers has been eclipsed by those of more iconic political figures. In Sol Plaatje: A Life, Brian Willan restores to history the importance of a remarkable man whose contributions as an intellectual, politician, teacher, linguist, and journalist expanded and advanced the vision of a common South Africa.

Drawing on an extraordinary range of sources reflecting decades of archival and field work, Willan animates Plaatje’s personal and professional fortunes in the context of the tumultuous changes that overtook South Africa during his lifetime, spanning the country’s industrialization and the rise of African nationalism in the early twentieth century. A pioneer in the history of the black press and a literary luminary, Plaatje translated Shakespeare into his native tongue, Setswana, the first such into any African language. Plaatje was a founder of the African National Congress in 1912 and led its campaign against the notorious Natives Land Act of 1913, efforts resonant more than a century later as the ANC today seeks to salvage its legacy from the stain of twenty-first-century corruption. This richly woven biography is essential reading for anyone interested in the generation of black leaders who came before Mandela.

For sale in the US only.

• Language: English
• Publisher: University of Virginia Press
• Release date: May 14, 2019
• ISBN: 9780813943671

Book preview

Reconsiderations in Southern African History

Richard Elphick, Editor

Sol Plaatje

A life of Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje,

1876–1932

Brian Willan

University of Virginia Press

Charlottesville

University of Virginia Press

Originally published in 2018 by Jacana Media, South Africa. This edition of Sol Plaatje is published by arrangement with Jacana Media.

© 2018 by Brian Willan

All rights reserved

Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper

First University of Virginia Press edition published 2019

ISBN 978-0-8139-4209-4 (paper)

ISBN 978-0-8139-4367-1 (ebook)

9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available for this title.

Cover image: This portrait of Plaatje was taken in late 1916 by Lizzie Caswall Smith (1870–1958), a fashionable society photographer, at her studios in Oxford Street, London. It was commissioned by The Christian Commonwealth, a weekly journal, and appears on the front page of its issue of 3 January 1917.

Editing by Russell Martin

Proofreading by Lara Jacob

Design by Shawn Paikin and Maggie Davey

Set in Ehrhardt MT 10.3/14

This book is dedicated to the memory of Tim Couzens (1940-2016), scholar and friend

Contents

List of abbreviations

List of illustrations

A note on terminology

Preface

1 Beginnings to 1894

2 ‘Full of pleasant anticipations’: Kimberley, 1894–1898

3 ‘The essential interpreter’: Mafeking, 1898–1899

4 The siege of Mafeking, 1899–1900

5 After the siege, 1900–1902

6 Editor of Koranta ea Becoana , 1902–1904

7 Koranta ea Becoana and after, 1905–1910

8 Tsala ea Becoana , the South African Native National Congress and the Land Act of 1913

9 Appealing to empire: England, 1914–1916

10 ‘A full-fledged scholar’: England, 1916–1917

11 Back home: South Africa, 1917-1919

12 Overseas again: England, 1919–1920

13 ‘A wild goose chase’? Canada and the United States, 1920–1922

14 Too long away, England 1922–1923

15 The 1920s: A leader without a people?

16 Setswana

17 Mhudi

18 So much still to do

Acknowledgements

Notes

Sources

Index

List of abbreviations

List of illustrations

Photographs in text

Chapter 1:

The new church at Pniel, early 1890s

Chapter 2:

Elizabeth Plaatje

Chapter 3:

Plaatje with family and friends

Chapter 4:

Portrait, c.1900

Chapter 5:

An early issue of Koranta ea Becoana, 1901

Chapter 6:

The staff of Koranta ea Becoana, c.1902

Chapter 7:

Shooting small game, c.1905

Chapter 8:

Plaatje as editor of Tsala ea Batho, 1913

Chapter 9:

SANNC deputation to England, 1914

Chapter 10:

Visiting the grave of Saul Solomon in Eastbourne, Sussex, October 1916

Chapter 11:

Olive Plaatje

Chapter 12:

SANNC delegation to England, 1919

Chapter 13:

Flyer for meetings in New York, March 1921

Chapter 14:

Zonophone records flyer

Chapter 15:

Flyer for ‘Coloured American Bioscope’, Bloemfontein, September 1924

Chapter 16:

Diphosho-phosho front cover

Chapter 17:

Title page of Mhudi

Chapter 18:

Portrait, early 1930s

Plate sections

I Between pages 104 and 105

1 View of Pniel mission, showing old and new churches

2 Johannes Plaatje

3 Simon Plaatje

4 Congregation at Pniel, 1890s

5 Ernst and Marie Westphal

6 Johan Martin Baumbach and family

7 August Schulz and family

8 Chief Montshiwa

9 Barolong stadt, Mafikeng

10 Bend Hotel, Pniel, 1890s

11 Advertisement for Jubilee Singers

12 Town Hall, Kimberley

13 Orpheus McAdoo

14 Post office and Grewer’s Fountain, Kimberley

15 African telegraph messengers, Kimberley

16 Charlotte Manye and other South African students at Wilberforce University, US

17 Rev. Gwayi Tyamzashe, Congregational minister

18 Tengo Jabavu, editor of Imvo

19 Theatre Royal, Kimberley

20 Advertisement for performance of Hamlet in Kimberley, December 1897

21 William Haviland

22 Amy Coleridge

23 Polling table, Barkly West, 1898

24 Cronwright and Olive Schreiner

25 Henry Burton, lawyer and politician

II Between pages 168 and 169

26 Chief Wessels Montshiwa

27 Charles Bell, Mafeking magistrate and civil commissioner

28 Spencer Minchin, attorney

29 Ernest Grayson, clerk to the magistrate and civil commissioner

30 Family and friends

31 Chief Isaac Molema

32 Silas Molema

33 Modiri Molema

34 First page of Plaatje’s Mafeking diary

35 Court of Summary Jurisdiction during the siege

36 Barolong chiefs and headmen

37 War correspondents

38 Armed African raiding party

39 Captured Boer horses

40 Interpreting for Charles Bell and Major Hamilton Goold-Adams

41 Black refugees queuing for food

42 Gun licence issued to Chief Montshiwa

43 Armed guard

III Between pages 264 and 265

44 Boer rebels arrested after the siege

45 Crowds attend the presentation of Lord Roberts’s letter to the Barolong, September 1900

46 Justice William Solomon, president of the Treason Court

47 Justice Andries Maasdorp, KC, judge of the Treason Court

48 Justice Johannes Lange, judge of the Treason Court

49 Joseph Chamberlain visits the Barolong stadt

50 Koranta ea Becoana , 16 August 1902

51 Rev. Jacob Monyatsi

52 A.K. Soga, editor of Izwi la Bantu

53 F.Z.S. Peregrino, editor of the South African Spectator

54 Group portrait, Plaatje and friends

55 Lord Selborne addressing the chiefs at Crocodile Pools, Bechuanaland Protectorate, April 1906

56 Auction of assets of Koranta ea Becoana

57 Chief Fenyang and his wife Lydia

58 Rev. Joel Goronyane

59 Dr Abdullah Abdurahman

60 SANNC conference programme, 27 February to 2 March 1914

61 Staff and committee of Lyndhurst Road Public School, Kimberley, 1913

62 Flyer for meeting of Shern Hall Brotherhood, Leyton, 11 July 1915

63 Portrait, with Charles Calvert and James Kerridge

64 Lekoko Montshiwa, Barolong chief regent

65 Dr Alfred Salter

66 Mr and Mrs Jefferies

67 William and Kate Dixon

68 With Mr Henry Castle and family

69 With Eleanor and Emmie, Henry Castle’s sisters

IV Between pages 456 and 457

70 Georgiana Solomon

71 Alice Werner

72 Leo Weinthal, editor of African World

73 Daniel Jones

74 Native Life in South Africa title page

75 Colenso family at ‘Elangeni’, Amersham

76 John Harris, secretary of the Anti-Slavery and Aborigines’ Protection Society

77 Professor Israel Gollancz

78 Flyer for reception for ‘Mr and Mrs Sol T. Plaatje’, 6 June 1917

79 Betty Molteno and Alice Greene

80 St Leger Plaatje and fellow students at Lovedale

81 Dr and Mrs Theo Kakaza

82 Marcus Garvey

83 Dr W.E.B. Du Bois

84 R.R. Moton

85 Swazi deputation to England, January 1923

86 Scene from Cradle of the World , Philharmonic Hall, London

87 Addressing a meeting, 1925

88 David Ramoshoana

89 Clement Doke

90 Tshekedi Khama, Bamangwato chief regent

91 Halley, Violet and Westerfield Ncwabeni, 1930

92 At the wheel of his 14 hp Renault

93 Violet and the Rhythm Girls

94 Richard Plaatje

95 Portrait, with typewriter and a young friend

A note on terminology

Anybody writing on South African history has some tricky decisions to make regarding the use of terminology, particularly in relation to place names and the names given to African peoples.

On place names, I have generally adhered to contemporary usage, in line therefore with what was familiar to Sol Plaatje and reflected in his own writings: hence Bechuanaland for what is today Botswana, Basutoland for Lesotho, Rhodesia for Zimbabwe. Where place names have remained the same, but with slightly changed spellings, I have used modern variants: hence Mareetsane for Maritzani, Matobo for Matopo, Setlagole for Setlagoli, Mayakgoro for Majeakgoro. When quoting from historical documents, however, I have adhered to the original usage.

Mafeking, or Mafikeng (and, more recently, Mahikeng), which features prominently in this book, perhaps requires some further explanation. The name Mafeking, famous in the English-speaking world for its siege, was a corruption of the Setswana word ‘Mafikeng’, meaning ‘place of stones’. I use ‘Mafikeng’ when referring to the original Barolong settlement, established well before the European township in 1885, or when I refer exclusively to the Barolong stadt, as it came to be known, after this date. I use ‘Mafeking’ for the European town specifically, and on occasion to encompass the two together, as was Plaatje’s practice too.

The names used for African peoples have varied over time in response to changing orthographies and changing politics, and there have often been tensions between linguistic correctness and popular usage. As with place names, I have left terminology unchanged when quoting from original documents, reflecting therefore the wide variations that existed when signifying both the Tswana people as a whole and individual Tswana chiefdoms (for example, Tswana, Chuana, Cwana, Bechuana, Bechwana, Baralong, Barolong). Otherwise, in the body of the text, I have retained African prefixes in line with common usage: hence, collectively, Batswana, Barolong (rather than Tswana, Rolong,), and, individually, Motswana, Morolong. For their language I have used ‘Setswana’, although when this is subsumed within a broader conception of people and culture together, and used as an adjective, I have reverted to ‘Tswana’. When referring to Nguni languages, I have preferred the more commonly used ‘Zulu’ and ‘Xhosa’ to ‘isiXhosa’ and ‘isiZulu’ just as I refer to ‘German’ rather than ‘Deutsch’.

Today the term ‘Kora’ is sometimes used for people formerly known as Korana (or Koranna). I have adhered to the term ‘Korana’, in line with the terminology used by both Plaatje and German missionaries, quoted in this book.

Finally, my use of the terms ‘Dutch’ and ‘Afrikaans’. During the period I write about, the ‘Dutch’ language in South Africa was in the process of becoming ‘Afrikaans’, but not in a unilinear manner, and usage and meaning varied according to context. Sometimes ‘Dutch’ really meant ‘Dutch’, sometimes it was taken to mean its South African variant. Where necessary, and where possible, I have clarified.

Preface

‘One of the outstanding figures in the life of the people of South Africa: unveiling of tombstone on the grave of Solomon T. Plaatje: large and representative gathering at West End joins in impressive ceremonial.’ So ran the headline over a report in the Diamond Fields Advertiser of 13 December 1935, on what had taken place in Kimberley’s West End cemetery the previous day. Then as now the Advertiser was Kimberley’s daily newspaper, and Kimberley the city where Solomon Plaatje had lived the greater part of his life. Compared to others close by, it was an imposing tombstone, the funds to pay for it raised by public subscription. A good-sized crowd, including Plaatje’s widow, Elizabeth, and their four surviving children, were present to witness the unveiling, to honour the memory of a man who had died nearly three and a half years before.

Speaker after speaker praised his achievements. Z.K. Matthews, recently returned from study overseas and, like Plaatje, of Barolong descent, opened the proceedings and ‘eulogised the work of the late Mr Plaatje, enumerating his qualities as a father, a friend of the people, an author, journalist, politician and leader’. Others echoed his sentiments: the mayor of Kimberley, speaking for the City Council and the people of Kimberley; Mr W. McLeod, representing the Non-European Association and the African People’s Organisation, the voice of the Coloured community; and the Rev. Z.R. Mahabane, Methodist minister and a former president general of the African National Congress, today’s governing party in South Africa.

The honour of unveiling the tombstone fell to George Simpson, editor of the Diamond Fields Advertiser, invited to perform this task by Isaiah Bud-M’belle, Plaatje’s brother-in-law. Plaatje, he said in his eulogy, ‘was one of the best known and most highly respected leaders of native thought in the subcontinent’, his premature death an irreparable loss. ‘A man of lowly birth, he forced himself to the forefront by dint of his own exceptional abilities.’ Nobody had ‘contributed in greater measure to the cause of mutual understanding among the races without which there can be no true progress in South Africa’.

Before unveiling the tombstone, he concluded with an appeal to those around him, if they wished to show a true appreciation of Plaatje’s work, ‘to build upon the foundations he so well and truly laid’. ‘He hath lit a torch, let us carry it high. In all reverence and humility, but with feelings of pride and thankfulness in having known him and shared his companionship and comradeship.’ After all had had their say, the Bantu Musical Association Choir and the Lutheran Church choir led the singing of ‘Nkosi sikelel’ iAfrika’, black South Africa’s famous anthem, followed by what was then South Africa’s official national anthem, ‘God save the King’.

On the tombstone, standing there to this day, are inscribed the words ‘We thank thee O Lord for lending us so rare a flower to bless our lives’, followed by an injunction in Setswana: ‘I khutse Morolong: modiredi wa Afrika’. Underneath is the English translation: ‘Rest in peace Morolong: you servant of Africa.’ Few but family would have noticed, when the tombstone was unveiled, that an unfortunate error had crept in: his date of birth, 9 October 1876 was given correctly, but he actually died on 19 June 1932, not 19 July, as the inscription mistakenly has it.

By any standards these were extraordinary tributes, from black and white alike. What would also have struck anybody present was how racially mixed the gathering was. On the face of it, given the segregated society South Africa had already become, this may seem surprising. But this is to project backwards the full force of what was still to come. Kimberley in any case was not Johannesburg or Pretoria, and racial lines were not so sharply drawn. Older traditions, more civil and more civilised, lingered on and, on occasions like this, would assert themselves.

Even so, the tributes were exceptional. They raise many questions. What was it about Plaatje that inspired such sentiments? Why had he made such an impact upon the memories of those who gathered that day? How had he risen from the ‘lowly birth’ George Simpson spoke of, overcoming the seemingly insurmountable barriers that lay in his way? What were his ‘exceptional abilities’? Was he just a genius, rising above his life and times – or is he best understood in the context of the tumultuous times in which he lived?

Today, eighty years on, the main contours of his life are well known. Born a Morolong, to Christian parents, and educated at a mission school near Kimberley, he worked first as a post office messenger in Kimberley, and then as a court interpreter in the smaller town of Mafeking. Caught up in the famous siege, during the South African War, his skills proved invaluable to the military authorities, and he wrote a diary, in English, of his experiences. After the war, as editor of a Setswana–English weekly newspaper, he emerged as one of South Africa’s best-known political spokesmen. He was one of the founders of the South African Native National Congress (SANNC, precursor of today’s African National Congress) in 1912, became its first general secretary, and twice travelled overseas. His Native Life in South Africa, published in London in 1916, set out the black South African case against the policies of their government, and had a huge impact. After travelling to the United States, he returned to South Africa in 1923 and resumed his career as a journalist. Then he devoted himself to literary concerns, writing in both English and Setswana and translating Shakespeare’s plays into Setswana. His novel, Mhudi, was published in 1930, two years before his death.

It is small wonder people sometimes struggled to comprehend such a record of achievement and versatility, remarkable in a society which sought to exclude him, and others like him, from any meaningful role in its affairs. And all from a man who had a serious heart condition, contracted in the influenza epidemic of 1918, which often restricted his activities, and which in the end led to an early death.

In this book I have sought not only to describe these achievements, but to understand the man himself: to look into his origins and upbringing, his family and personal life, the source of his ideals and motivation, how he responded to the challenges he encountered along the way. Where the evidence allows, I have tried to interweave his private and public concerns, to explore his relationships with his wife, his family and his friends. Not out of mere curiosity but from a conviction that the one cannot be understood without the other.

Much of his adult life was driven by his response to change. He lived through a period that saw South Africa’s transformation from colonial backwater into a modern unitary state. It developed an oppressive, racially exclusive form of governance which shaped the lives of all its inhabitants. In many of the events that ushered this in, Plaatje played a significant part: the South African War of 1899–1902; the creation of the Union of South Africa in 1910; the legislative programme that followed, implementing the legal and administrative framework for segregation; the vain attempts by the African people and their representatives to persuade the imperial government to intervene; the continued battle, in the 1920s, to preserve the non-racial Cape franchise, to resist the spread of segregation into every sphere of South African life. More than anybody else, in his journalism, in representations to authorities at home and abroad, in his books and pamphlets, he bore witness to what this meant for those who suffered the consequences.

Yet his interests and concerns went well beyond this. He devoted himself not just to resisting these changes, to opposing them as best he could, but to exploring the creative potential that lay in his country’s multiplicity of cultural traditions. He set out an alternative vision to that propounded by the ideologues of segregation. He loved Setswana, his native language, and did all he could to preserve it from the threats he perceived to its survival. He loved Shakespeare too and thought it the most natural thing in the world to translate his plays into Setswana. In doing so he aimed to highlight its qualities and capabilities and became the first person to publish a translation of Shakespeare in any African language.

This is not my first attempt to write about Plaatje’s life and work. When I did so, over thirty years ago, apartheid was at its zenith. Plaatje may have been in the public eye during his own lifetime, but by the 1970s and 1980s he had largely disappeared from view. Several biographies had been contemplated, and one – by Modiri Molema, a close friend – had been completed, but it had not been published. In the wider public sphere, apartheid had its own narratives and it cared little for the memory of those whose lives and ideals ran counter to its orthodoxies. South Africa had (and has) an extraordinary capacity to distort its past and Plaatje, I thought, was a notable casualty. His life and work needed to be retrieved, and I did my best.¹

Thirty-five years on, that public sphere could hardly be more different. South Africa has once again been transformed, and so too have views of its history. Hitherto neglected dimensions of South Africa’s past have begun to be rediscovered and memorialised. Statues to a new breed of pioneers have been erected, museums revamped, streets renamed, the historical experience of South Africa’s black majority, so long neglected, has moved into the mainstream.

Plaatje has been caught up in this process. Today he is widely celebrated, his place in South Africa’s history reclaimed. In 2004, for example, he was awarded the Order of Luthuli in Gold, South Africa’s highest award, in recognition of his contribution ‘to the cause of restoring the dignity of oppressed South Africans and exceptional contribution to the struggle for a free and democratic South Africa’. In Kimberley, more recently, a new university has been named after him.

Such recognition is long overdue. The politics of memory and memorialisation are rarely straightforward, however. Opinions have varied over just what he is to be remembered for, how this should be done, and who should have a say. It has been a reminder of how the preoccupations of the present can shape both memories and representations of the past, and of the challenges for any biographer seeking to be sensitive to present-day concerns without being driven by them. Triumphalist new narratives, I have become increasingly aware, can be as damaging to historical understanding as the distortions, or neglect, that went before. It is one thing to pay tribute to the memory of past leaders and spokesmen, to see them as far-sighted pioneers of an ultimately successful struggle. It is another to know what they were really like, to understand their hopes and fears, to restore to them the agency they exercised. To see them, in other words, in the context of their own times, not ours.

Thus Plaatje has been celebrated for his association with the African National Congress. As its first general secretary and a key figure in its early campaigns, that is entirely right and proper – but not to the exclusion of all else. Little is heard today, for example, of his (longer-lasting) association with the interdenominational Brotherhood movement, or the International Order of True Templars (IOTT), promoters of the cause of temperance, or of his passionate concern for the future of Setswana and its literature. A rather more rounded view needs to be taken, in other words, if his life and legacy are to be properly understood, if we are to avoid being left with a rather one-dimensional view. Today both the Brotherhood and the IOTT may appear to have been dead ends, destined to failure, his concern for Setswana sometimes seen as a distraction from a wider struggle. This was not how it seemed to him.

This book started out as a modest attempt to update the biography I wrote in 1984. It has ended up, however, as a wholly new book and, I hope, the better for it. I have been able to uncover far more new evidence and information than I had imagined possible, shedding new light on almost every aspect of his life: for example, on his early years growing up on a German mission; his elopement with his wife Elizabeth in 1898; his intelligence work during the siege of Mafeking and his involvement in the little-known ‘treason trials’ that followed; the troubled history of the SANNC deputations of 1914 and 1919; his association with the Brotherhood movement in England and the many friendships he made there; his tribute to Shakespeare in 1916 and his work on Setswana with the eminent phonetician Daniel Jones; his travels in North America; the circumstances of the publication of his novel, Mhudi; his work in Setswana in the late 1920s; his relationship with his family.

Many new photographs have come to light, too, as well as a previously unknown recording of his spoken voice, which was discovered in London in 2010. Here, thanks to the serendipitous survival of a privately made 78 rpm record, dating from 1923, he can be heard reading out two tales from his Sechuana Reader. It lay undisturbed for nearly eighty years in a cupboard under the stairs in the Phonetics Department at University College London. Next door was the History Department where I spent three years as an undergraduate student.

This is not to say there have not been tragic instances of loss and destruction, too. Plaatje’s daughter Violet preserved many of his papers, but after her death much simply disappeared, including the unpublished manuscripts of translations of a number of Shakespeare’s plays. Z.K. Matthews, who intended to write about Plaatje in the 1960s, reported that some of his papers had been ‘put in a bath and burnt’. Other valuable manuscripts, like his unpublished novel ‘With other people’s wives’, and a notebook he kept in 1918 and 1919, were lost after that – fortunately not before copies were made.

New scholarship, as well as new evidence, has shed new light on many aspects of Plaatje’s life and work, too. Two areas stand out. Firstly, Plaatje has been discovered by Shakespearean scholarship, both within South Africa and by the broader ‘global Shakespeare’ movement, concerned with what happens to Shakespeare’s plays when they travel overseas. Plaatje, and others like him, it has been realised, could bring their own understandings and meanings to Shakespeare, to interpret him in their own ways. They did not have to take on board, willy-nilly, the cultural baggage that was assumed to come with Shakespeare, but could appropriate him for their own purposes. Secondly, several scholars, especially Tswana-speaking scholars, have looked closely at Plaatje’s writings in Setswana, particularly his translations of Shakespeare. In doing so they have demonstrated the depth of his roots in Setswana culture, the pride he took in his origins and his language, as well as the characteristics and qualities of his writing in Setswana. They have helped to show, in important ways, how he viewed the world as a Motswana. I am indebted to the work of scholars in both these fields and I have drawn on their insights.²

Other new scholarship has shed light on the lives of people with whom Plaatje was associated – Daniel Jones, for example; John Dube, first president of the African National Congress; and African American figures like Marcus Garvey, J.E. Bruce, W.E.B. Du Bois and J.W. Cromwell, all of whom he encountered during his travels in North America. Studies of the black press, of Native Life in South Africa, of the ‘Britishness’ of the early Congress leaders, of the Barolong chiefdoms of Mafikeng and Thaba Nchu, of the ‘ambiguities of dependence’ that sometimes characterised the lives of Plaatje and his colleagues, have likewise enhanced my understanding of both the substance of Plaatje’s life and work and the wider context in which this took place.³

All of this, and the encouragement of friends and colleagues, persuaded me to revisit Plaatje’s life.

ONE

Beginnings to 1894

One hot summer evening, late in 1890, a horse-drawn wagon, carrying three people, made its way northwards from the mission station at Pniel, Griqualand West. Founded nearly half a century before by the Berlin Mission Society, for most of its existence this mission was not considered a success. Missionaries sent out from Germany had struggled to establish the kind of settled community they believed was essential if the Christian gospel was to take root. More recently, though, things had improved. New converts were made, a mission school finally succeeded in attracting some pupils, and the two resident missionaries were working well together. They attributed their success not only to their own efforts and the will of God, but to the arrival at Pniel of groups of Tswana-speaking Barolong. More receptive to their teachings than the nomadic Korana, the previous inhabitants of the region, these Barolong were willing to stay through the bad times as well as the good, and to make the mission their home. They were the hope for the future.

In charge of the small party was Gotthilf Ernst Westphal, the younger of the two missionaries. He was thirty-six years old, originally from Brandenburg in Prussia, and had been in South Africa for over a decade, nearly all of it spent at Pniel. Their destination was Mayakgoro, an outstation of Pniel, some sixty miles away, where adherents of the mission had established a new settlement; the purpose of the visit was to inspect progress, offer succour and support, and to preside over one of the regular church council meetings.

Accompanying Westphal on the journey was a 14-year-old Morolong by the name of Solomon Plaatje, a pupil at his mission school and a son of Johannes, one of his two black deacons. Solomon lived at Pniel with his elder brother Simon, both his parents having moved to Mayakgoro to join Gabriel, one of their other sons. Here they now worked to build up a new mission community.

As they set out from Pniel, so Westphal wrote in his mission diary, Solomon was cheerful and in high spirits, evidently excited at the prospect of seeing his family. When they ran out of things to say, they passed the time by singing hymns, but after a while both dozed off. Only Joshua, the coachman, and the third member of the party, remained awake, keen to make as much progress as possible in the cool of the late evening.

After that things did not go quite so smoothly. Two of the four horses fell ill, delaying their progress. Then they were caught in a heavy thunderstorm, and a violent thunderclap, directly overhead, frightened not only the horses and young Solomon but also – so Westphal admitted – himself. They eventually arrived safely, however, and Westphal was pleased with what he found at Mayakgoro. New church buildings had been erected, a school had been started, and there were more converts than before, thirty-two altogether. Such were the promising outward signs of the spread of the gospel.

Their return journey was less eventful but notable for the uplifting tale Westphal heard from ‘klein Salomo Plaatje’, as he called him. Each morning, Westphal related, Solomon had to make an early start in order to get to school in time, since he lived on the edge of the mission, nearly three miles from the main mission buildings. His home was just off the main road between Kimberley and Barkly West, and the mail coach passed by at seven o’clock each morning. One day, setting off for school, he resolved to run along behind the coach and its six horses to see if he could keep up with it as far as the Bend Hotel, where he had to turn off to walk across the estate. Travelling in the coach were several Englishmen who, Westphal said, loved any kind of sport, and they watched his efforts with keen interest.

He managed to keep up with the coach all the way to the hotel and then sat down on the stoep for a rest. One of the Englishmen brought him a cup of coffee, and asked to look at the schoolbooks he had in his bag; these included not just his own work but that of two girls, most likely his cousins, who were coming on behind. Suitably impressed – Westphal was not sure whether this was by his schoolwork or his running – the unnamed Englishman rewarded Solomon with a shilling, and some sweets to give to the girls. Thereafter he made a regular habit of practising his ‘Schnellläuferkünste’ (‘fast-running skills’) behind the mail coach, and with the money he collected was able to buy his own books as well as some other ‘luxury items’.

Westphal saw a moral in the story. In fact he saw several. By getting himself to school in this way Solomon earned both praise and reward. Through arriving in good time, with his own books to read and study, and attending school regularly, he gained an advantage over the other pupils. Now he was top of his class, his efforts specially praised by the school inspector on his most recent visit. Hard work, natural ability and good character were thus all rewarded, young Solomon Plaatje’s actions a demonstration of how it was possible to combine the useful (nützliches) with the pleasant (angenehmes).

At one level the story Westphal told can be seen as an unremarkable tale of missionary endeavour. Similar examples fill the records. It was the kind of individual success story that any mission needed to convey back to headquarters and to supporters beyond. Without them funds would dry up and they would fail in their efforts to spread the gospel. Nonetheless it is a revealing cameo, bringing to life a moment in a young man’s engagement with a world of which he was not just a part but its very raison d’être. It is also specific enough in its details to suggest more than a hint of future promise. Since Westphal was relating what Solomon had told him, his voice is heard too. What comes through is a sense of an easygoing relationship between the two, founded upon participation in a common project – and far from a one-way process.¹

Much was left unsaid, however. In reality Solomon Plaatje’s fourteen years had been shaped not just by Westphal and the worldview he personified but by his own family history, by the lives they led as Barolong. Like them, he was born into this wider community, or nation, as Barolong often supposed themselves to be, and they took pride in a history that went back centuries before the arrival of any Christian missionary in South Africa. It was the interaction between these two worlds, and the manner in which they came together, that would shape his formative years. And it was the reason why, ultimately, the two found themselves together on that journey to the mission settlement at Mayakgoro.

Who, then, were the Barolong, and how did they encounter these Christian missionaries?

In the 1870s the Barolong lived across wide areas of what are today the Northern Cape, Free State and North West provinces of South Africa, and parts of Botswana. They depended on growing crops and raising cattle for their livelihood, in some places living within the colonial borders of the day, in some places beyond them. Most were attached to one of four chiefdoms. To the south lay the Seleka Barolong chiefdom of Thaba Nchu, numbering some 6,000 people, ruled by the elderly Chief Moroka, completely surrounded by the Orange Free State but still nominally in control of its own affairs.²

To the north lived the Tshidi branch of the Barolong, the most powerful section of the nation, and greater in number; they were ruled by the imposing figure of Chief Montshiwa, and throughout the 1870s fought against Boers from the Transvaal and Orange Free State for the right to occupy the area around the Molopo River, long regarded as their ancestral home. Here the greatest signs of ‘civilisation’ were to be found among the Christian section of the chiefdom, led by Montshiwa’s younger brother Molema. To begin with they lived apart from the main body of the Tshidi Barolong, having been sent to found a defensive settlement in an otherwise uninhabited spot known as Mafikeng, or ‘place of rocks’. Chief Montshiwa had other reasons too for dispatching them to Mafikeng, for he was finding that Christianity, while it had some very practical advantages, was also proving a disruptive influence in the affairs of the Tshidi as a whole.³

In the large region between these two main Barolong chiefdoms, lay scattered, less coherent groups of people of Barolong origin, belonging to the Rapulana and Ratlou as well as the Tshidi and Seleka branches of the nation, living on land now taken over by white farmers, land companies and missionary societies. It was here, on 9 October 1876, just inside the northern border of the Orange Free State, and on land occupied by one of these missionary societies – an outstation called Doornfontein – that Solomon Plaatje was born. Both his parents, Johannes and Martha Plaatje, were Barolong and, as their names proclaim, were Christians too, adherents of the Berlin Mission Society. This was their seventh child, all of them boys: Simon, the eldest, had been born in 1855, followed by Andrew, Samuel, Mmusi (Moses), Elias and then Joshua.⁴

Solomon was baptised four months later: not at the mission station at Pniel, of which Doornfontein was an outstation, but at the society’s older mission at Bethanie, over a hundred miles away. Until recently Johannes and Martha had lived at Bethanie themselves and had left behind numerous friends and relatives, so their wish to return was understandable. At the same time their decision to make the long journey with a four-month-old baby to enable him to be baptised suggests a commitment to the Christian faith quite in keeping with what else is known of their circumstances.

The ceremony was performed on 14 January 1877 by the senior missionary, Carl Wuras, by now well advanced in years. Like most events that had some connection with the Berlin Mission Society, it was efficiently recorded. Entry number 795 in the Bethanie mission register set out the information required: the names of Plaatje’s parents, and of the four godparents symbolically entrusted with care for the child’s future Christian upbringing; his date of birth; and the Christian name his parents had decided to give him – Solomon, or Salomo in its German form, renowned in the Bible for his wisdom.

It was natural that they should want to give him a Tswana name too. They called him Tshekisho, meaning ‘judgement’, a reminder of one of Solomon’s biblical attributes. The name also signified Martha Plaatje’s acceptance of God’s will and judgement in letting her have another boy rather than the girl she wished for. However, according to Martha Bokako, Simon Plaatje’s daughter, and the source of much information on the Plaatje family history, there was a further layer of meaning in the name, derived rather from the term ‘itshekisa’, meaning purity or purification. Overcome with remorse at having sought to anticipate God’s will, the name Tshekisho emphasised Martha’s repentance, her heart now purified for having presumed to express her own wish to have a baby girl.⁵

Important as their religion was to them, family and communal traditions, passed down from generation to generation, had far deeper roots. Fascinated by what he heard, later in life Plaatje took the trouble to write these down, being the first in his family, he believed, ‘to put memory to paper’. At one time his ancestors, on the male side, had been kings of the Barolong nation until Modiboa, his ‘last royal ancestor’, was dispossessed ‘during or about the years 1580–1600’; the kingship passed instead ‘to the house of a younger brother and descended down to Tau (Lion), who ruled over the Barolong about 1770–1790’. On the other side, his mother was a direct descendant of a grandson of ‘Tau’s youngest and dearest wife, Mhudi’, hence of the royal line of the Rapulana – one of the four sections or chiefdoms into which Barolong were now divided.⁶

Like every Morolong, Plaatje traced his ancestry back to Morolong himself, the eponymous founder of the nation, who was believed to have lived in the twelfth or thirteenth century. It served as their myth of origin. Although opinions differ on chronology, genealogies are largely in agreement on the line of succession, on the identities of Morolong’s successors as paramount chief of the nation, and on the belief that they had once lived in the region of the Great Lakes of Central Africa before migrating south. Morolong was succeeded by Noto, then came Morara, Mabe, Mabua, Manoto and Mabeo, the reign of each chief being associated with a particular human quality, and a step in the direction of claiming the region around the Molopo River as their home.⁷

After Mabeo came Modiboa, the last Barolong chief to preside over a united nation. Accounts of his deposition vary in their detail but they have a common thread: he neglected his royal duties in favour of hunting and as a result was displaced by his younger brother Tsheshebe. Modiboa’s descendants nevertheless continued to cherish the memory of their royal origins, becoming known as the Barolong ba ga Modiboa (the Barolong of Modiboa), those who did not desert the rightful heir of Modiboa, and they came to enjoy a reputation for loyalty. ‘It is regarded as a special mark of distinction and reliability’, wrote Modiri Molema, himself of the Tshidi Barolong royal line, ‘to be recognised as being descended from this loyal stock, and the Barolong, with their punctiliousness in such matters, are ever ready to accord precedence to their brothers of Modiboa’s stock.’⁸

Once the Barolong ba ga Modiboa became separated from the main body of the Barolong, they were able to retain an independent existence, remaining in the Molemane (Ottoshoop) and Mooka-osi (Slurry) districts, while the main body of Barolong settled at Setlagole, forty-five miles to the south-west of present-day Mafikeng. Here the line of succession passed from Tsheshebe to Monyane to Setlhare to Mokgopha to Masepa to Thibedi, and then to Tau; with the ba ga Modiboa, in Plaatje’s account, the line passed from Mooki to Mongale to Sehuba to Setlare to Mokoto to Dira and then to Selogilwe, who lived in the middle of the eighteenth century.

Tau’s turbulent reign would be a turning point in the history of the Barolong. His ambitions brought him into conflict with the Batlaping, another Tswana-speaking chiefdom to the south, and the Korana, a mixed race of nomadic hunters. Together they proved to be more than a match for Tau’s Barolong, many of whom were apparently opposed to his expansionist aims. It was a recipe for disaster. Tau was killed in about 1780, and in the ensuing confusion and dispute over the succession the Barolong broke into four sections – Tshidi, Ratlou, Seleka and Rapulana. They would retain a strong sense of a common ancestry and shared a common language, but they lived henceforth in independent chiefdoms, each of them taking their name from one of the sons of Tau. It was from the youngest of these, Rapulana, that Plaatje’s mother was descended.⁹

The Barolong ba ga Modiboa, Plaatje’s ancestors on the male side, were even more vulnerable and in no position to withstand the attacks of groups of Korana who flourished in the wake of Tau’s defeat and death. Scattered among the newly forged divisions of the Barolong, they were forced to seek refuge and protection, ceasing to exist as an independent entity. From the time of Tau, the ba ga Modiboa largely ceased to have a recorded history of their own; we know only that it was with the Seleka branch of the Barolong that they were most closely associated.¹⁰

Then, early in the nineteenth century, the Barolong, along with many other peoples in the interior of southern Africa, found themselves caught up in one of the most far-reaching series of events in the history of the subcontinent, the mfecane (‘scattering’ or ‘crushing’), which transformed the interior of southern Africa in the 1820s and 1830s. There were widespread migrations of peoples, bringing first the ‘Mantatees’ (the followers of the Tlokwa chieftainess, Ma Nthatisi) and then the Ndebele (Matabele) under Mzilikazi into the areas occupied by the Barolong. Weakened by internal divisions, and greatly outnum bered, the Barolong could offer little effective resistance and fled whenever they could.

Providentially, as it must have seemed to them, an unexpected source of protection materialised in the form of Wesleyan missionaries, first encountered in 1822. From that point onwards, the history of the Barolong was closely linked to that of missionary endeavour. Within a few years, the entire Barolong nation had gathered at Thaba Nchu under the leadership of the Seleka chief Moroka, living on land which the Wesleyans had succeeded in obtaining from Moshoeshoe, chief of the Basotho.

What drew the Barolong to Thaba Nchu was their need for refuge and protection. The aims of the missionaries were more far-reaching. Seeking to win adherents to their religion, they hoped to wean their potential converts from such traditional customs as polygamy and circumcision, to adopt Western styles of clothing and housing, and to foster a way of life built upon the virtues of monogamy, hard work and regular religious observance. They insisted on Sunday being set aside as a day of rest and worship; they encouraged regular church attendance and the reading of the Bible; and they expected the children of families living on mission stations to attend school so that they too could be taught the basic elements of the Christian religion.

The Barolong were not the only people in need of protection from their enemies. In 1836 Boer trekkers under Sarel Cilliers, making their way northwards from the Cape, encountered Mzilikazi’s forces at Vechtkop, near present-day Heilbron. In the engagement that followed, they escaped with their lives but lost most of their cattle and provisions. When news of this reached Chief Moroka, he sent out his people to rescue them, bringing them back to safety in Thaba Nchu. It was the beginning, Plaatje would write later, of ‘the tragic friendship’ between Barolong and Boers.

After regaining their strength, the Boers joined with the Barolong and drove Mzilikazi and his Ndebele northwards into what would become Rhodesia and later Zimbabwe. But then the Barolong were betrayed by their allies. Joined by other trekkers, the Boers seized much of the land the Barolong had regarded as theirs, and in due course established the independent republic of the Orange Free State. It was an alliance, Plaatje would write, ‘which cost the Barolong very dearly, and which involved sacrifices in men and materials for which history records absolutely no reciprocation on the part of the Boers’. The predicament of the Barolong nation as a whole thus mirrored that of Plaatje’s own forebears, the Barolong ba ga Modiboa: exclusion from what was rightfully theirs. In Plaatje’s memories of the past, there would always be this double sense of dispossession.¹¹

Among those who gathered at Thaba Nchu during the early 1830s was Selogilwe Mogodi, Plaatje’s paternal grandfather, remembered as ‘the first Christian in the family’. From that time, family traditions agree, his direct descendants lived their lives in some form of association with Christian missionaries, albeit of different denominations and in different places, adopting a way of life whose values, beliefs and outward characteristics were increasingly influenced by this connection. As ba ga Modiboa, vulnerable dependants of one or other of the larger Barolong chiefdoms, it was an understandable choice to have made.

Selogilwe and his family did not remain long at Thaba Nchu. Before they departed, Selogilwe’s son Mogodi was married to a woman called Magritta Morwagadi, who gave birth to their first son, Kushumane (Plaatje’s father), in 1835, his date and place of birth – Maamuse, or Schweizer-Reneke – recorded in a prayerbook preserved by the family to this day. By the late 1830s, they had moved to the Philippolis district. Here Kushumane, who was given the Christian name Johannes, married Martha Lokgosi (a Motsieloa of the Rapulana clan), and on 28 February 1855 their first son, Simon (Solomon’s eldest brother), was born. The family must have remained in the district for at least four or five years after that, for it was at Philippolis, as Martha Bokako recalled, that the next two sons, Andrew and Samuel, were born, there being two years between each child.¹²

Philippolis in the 1840s and 1850s was the centre of an independent state governed by the Griqua, a mixed race who had done much to maintain the balance of power, such as it was, between the different groups competing for land and power in the region between the Vaal and Orange rivers. Plaatje’s parents and grandparents were part of the London Missionary Society settlement at Philippolis, comprising a mixture of Dutch-speaking Griquas and Basotho and Batswana pastoralists. For a while during the late 1830s and early 1840s, the missionary responsible for the Tswana-speaking congregation was Gottlob Schreiner, father of the novelist Olive Schreiner, whom Plaatje would encounter half a century later. In 1838, so the mission records reveal, Gottlob Schreiner baptised Plaatje’s grandfather Selogilwe. In retrospect, it was, for Schreiner, a rare success in what was otherwise a troubled time for him.¹³

Family tradition has it that it was while living at Philippolis that Plaatje’s forebears first acquired the name Plaatje. Meaning ‘flat’ in Dutch, the name was reputedly given to Selogilwe (‘Au Plaatje’), by a Dutch -speaking Griqua farmer on whose land they lived. ‘Au Plaatje’ was supposed to have had a flat-looking head, and the Griqua to have been either unable or unwilling to pronounce the family name of Mogodi correctly. Whatever the exact circumstances of its acquisition, the name stuck and has been retained by one branch of the family ever since.¹⁴

The fact that ‘Au Plaatje’ was also known as ‘Ryk Au Plaatje’ (‘Rich Old Plaatje’) suggests that the family were beneficiaries of the period of relative peace and prosperity that Philippolis enjoyed in the 1840s and 1850s. Plaatje himself, writing many years later, had his own family history in mind when he wrote: ‘Prior to the establishment of the Orange Free State our forefathers were trading grain for cattle and horses amongst the Griqua of Philippolis, and exchanging wheat for merino sheep among European pioneers around Colesberg and Victoria West.’ Martha Bokako, too, recalled that this was when her grandfather and great -grandfather built up the size of their herds and stocks, on grazing lands owned by the Griquas. Tradition has it that Mogodi had a talent for healing sick animals, which would have further commended him to his Griqua neighbours.¹⁵

Philippolis’s existence as an independent state came to an abrupt end in 1862 when the Griqua, threatened by the encroachments of the surrounding Boer state, departed for the district of Kokstad in what became known as Griqualand East, sandwiched between the border of the Cape and Natal colonies. At about the same time, most likely as a consequence, the Plaatje family moved northwards to the large mission estate at Bethanie, granted to the Berlin Mission Society some years earlier by the Griqua leader Adam Kok II. In some family accounts Mogodi and Kushumane settled for a while at a mission run by French missionaries on the border of Basutoland, and then accompanied Adam Kok on his epic trek, before deciding to return in the face of severe drought and the hostility of the Basotho chief Moshoeshoe.¹⁶

Bethanie proved to be a much safer haven. Established in 1834, it was the oldest mission station in the Orange Free State, although the missionaries had largely failed in their efforts to convert the nomadic Korana people to a Christian way of life. It was only in the 1850s and 1860s, when there was an influx of Tswana-speaking people (the Plaatje family among them) seeking access to land which was becoming increasingly difficult to find elsewhere, that the mission at Bethanie grew into the kind of settled, prosperous community that the missionaries hoped for.¹⁷

This period of consolidation took place under the autocratic guidance of Carl Wuras, who ran the mission according to the maxim ‘Pray and labour’, and it saw members of the Plaatje family rise to positions of authority and influence in its daily affairs. The ruins of ‘Plaatje’s Camp’, solid stone buildings, can be seen there to this day. Names of members of the family appear regularly in the mission register for the late 1860s and 1870s, recording births, deaths, baptisms and marriages, collective tribute, in their way, to the way of life being forged by the residents of the mission. The Plaatje family was by now at the heart of this.¹⁸

On 17 July 1876, however, three months before Solomon Plaatje’s birth, his grandfather Selogilwe Mogodi, ‘Ryk Au Plaatje’, the patriarch of the family, breathed his last. A resident of the mission for twenty years, and well on in his eighties, he lived long enough to be able to give thanks that his family could gather around him for his final hours. The entire mission community attended his funeral and heard Carl Wuras speak in glowing terms of his commitment to the Christian faith and his contribution to the life of the mission.¹⁹

Once he had been laid to rest, Plaatje’s parents, Johannes and Martha, accompanied by others in their extended family, left Bethanie for Doornfontein, hoping to play their part in the creation of a new Christian community on this outstation. At the same time, so Martha Bokako recalled, Johannes Plaatje, unhappy about the dues he had to pay at Bethanie, was looking for suitable grazing land for his sheep and cattle. Such considerations, temporal and spiritual, were at the heart of life on any mission station.²⁰

In the event the Plaatje family did not remain long at Doornfontein, and within a few years they had moved on yet again, this time to the mission lands at Pniel, some fifty miles further down the Vaal River. Plaatje did not return to the district for nearly forty years.²¹

So it was at Pniel that Plaatje would spend what he called the ‘best and happiest days’ of his childhood. Like many mission stations, it was ideally situated – set in attractive surroundings on a bend on the south side of the Vaal River, not far from the town of Barkly West. It occupied an area of some three square miles, its northern boundary formed by the banks of the river, which were lined by a row of tall willow and karee trees. The main mission buildings, the church, school building and missionaries’ houses, lay close to the banks of the river, just high enough to avoid being washed away by occasional floods. A little further up the river, the ground was broken by clumps of rocky outcrops, but most of the estate, irrigated by dams and steam pumps constructed by the missionaries, possessed rich soils which made it suitable for either agriculture or grazing sheep or cattle. In fact the Pniel mission estate was recognised as one of the most fertile stretches of land for miles around, and visitors were often struck by its great natural beauty and abundance of flowers.²²

Its apparent tranquillity belied an eventful past. Once the home of Korana and Griqua people, it was claimed by the government of the Orange Free State and was later annexed as part of the British colony of Griqualand West, itself incorporated into the Cape Colony in 1881. But as at Bethanie, so the Berlin mission at Pniel failed to build up a permanent, settled community, and it barely survived; in the 1860s, indeed, it appeared to be on the point of closure, and a severe drought forced almost all its inhabitants to leave.²³

In 1867, however, life on the mission was transformed by the discovery of diamonds along the banks of the Vaal River, on land occupied by the Berlin Mission Society. Thousands of people were drawn to this new scene of activity. For the missionaries it was a mixed blessing: on the one hand, it brought in a great deal of money, thanks to the dues they were able to extract from the diggers in exchange for the right to prospect on their property; on the other, it added to the already formidable task of establishing a godly life among the residents of the mission, and it led to a long dispute over the ownership of the Pniel estate, claimed by the society on the basis of a grant made to them in 1854 by the Korana chief Cornelius Kok.²⁴

Parts of northern Cape, Orange Free State and Transvaal in the late nineteenth century, showing Berlin Society missions

Although most of the diggers moved on, the affairs of the mission, in the early 1880s, gave little satisfaction in Berlin. Of the five hundred or so inhabitants of the mission, only a handful were regarded as ‘serious Christians’; others would often resist the attempts of the missionaries to impose any kind of religious discipline.²⁵

When the newly appointed missionary, Karl Meyer, took over at Pniel in June 1881, he faced a difficult task. Dues were not being paid, the mission school had virtually collapsed, and the spiritual life of the inhabitants – so he reported – had sunk very low. He did his best to re -establish some sort of order but a year later was forced to return to Germany through ill health. Responsibility for the task of reconstruction devolved instead to Martin Baumbach, who had been working at one of the society’s stations in the Transvaal and who was now appointed senior missionary; and to a young probationer missionary, Ernst Westphal, who had arrived several months earlier.²⁶

It was during this unsettled time that Johannes and Martha Plaatje and their family arrived at the mission, accompanied by several other Barolong families of the ba ga Modiboa clan. Johannes Plaatje’s name first appears in the mission records in the second half of 1881. Further evidence of their presence comes in the form of an inscription in the Plaatje family Bible, dated ‘Pniel, 2nd October 1881’, one week, that is, before young Solomon’s fifth birthday; and by a much sadder entry in the pages of the prayerbook set aside for the recording of family information, dated 30 October 1881, indicating that his elder brother Joshua, six years old, had drowned in the Vaal River.²⁷

The Plaatjes and their fellow ba ga Modiboa prospered at Pniel. They owned substantial numbers of cattle and other livestock, and lived in a large, thatch-roofed stone building which they built on the edge of the estate, at the foot of a ridge which came to be known as ‘Plaatje’s Hoogte’ (or ‘Plaatje’s Heights’), close to the main road from Kimberley to Barkly West. One year, according to the mission records, Simon Plaatje had 9 horses, 62 head of cattle and 245 sheep and goats – exceeded only by Philip Moyanaga, a relative and neighbour on the estate who had likewise moved to Pniel from Bethanie. They also grew vegetables in the grounds around their compound, and most years would make a good living from the sale of stock and produce, and wood for use as fuel, in the two nearby towns; part of the proceeds then had to go to the mission in return for their right to live there and to graze their livestock.²⁸

At a time when many Africans in the northern part of the Cape Colony were being evicted from their lands, or forced to seek employment elsewhere, these ba ga Modiboa families enjoyed a relatively secure position, well placed to take advantage of the high prices paid for livestock and agricultural produce. For others it was very different. Several years before the Plaatjes arrived at Pniel, nearby groups of Batlaping, fellow Tswana-speakers, had resorted to desperate acts of armed resistance in a hopeless attempt to preserve a way of life now threatened by the demands of white colonists. Residence on a mission station undoubtedly provided some protection from the worst excesses of this new colonial order.²⁹

Pniel’s favoured position presented other opportunities. Plaatje would recall how the river used to overflow its banks and flood the surrounding valleys to such an extent that the pontoons could not carry the wagons across from one side to the other, their owners forced to wait for weeks on end until the floods subsided. This created a good market for fresh milk. The price rose to one shilling a pint, and ‘there being next to no competition we boys had a monopoly over the milk trade’, able to ‘get six to eight shillings every morning