The Individual, Auto/biography and History in South Africa

orthography with “self‐appointed academics and government officials”. 111 According to
Willan, Plaatje’s novel Mhudi, 112 published in 1930, two years before his death, was
a conscious and deliberate attempt on Plaatje’s part to marry
together two different cultural traditions: African oral forms and
traditions, particularly those of the Barolong, on the one hand;
and the written traditions and forms of the English language
and literature on the other. 113
It was in the two articles cited earlier, rather than his book that Willan was more explicit
about his analytical intentions. He had used a key episode of Plaatje’s life ‐ the donation
of an old tram shed to Africans in Kimberley as a meeting hall ‐ to study the ambiguities
of African protest politics and the historical agency of the African petty bourgeoisie in
developing ideological forms functional to its class interests. During 1918, both Plaatje
and De Beers had responded on the same terms to the perceived threat of labour unrest
spreading from the Rand to Kimberley. In their common disapproval, De Beers and
Plaatje had realised the advantages for themselves of co‐operation.
Willan analysed Plaatje’s disapproval of working class militancy as expressing petty
bourgeois class interests. He also showed that this not an isolated episode. Before and
after 1918, Plaatje had expressed his opposition to African involvement in strike
movements. For Willan, Plaatje’s agreement with De Beers in this episode had emerged
out of a pre‐existing set of ideological assumptions. The origins of these assumptions lay
in Plaatje’s mission education, and in much of his subsequent career as court interpreter
and newspaper editor. In addition, economic and political developments after 1909 had
made consensus between De Beers and Plaatje possible. While the Act of Union
appeared to weaken the influence of the diamond industry in relation to gold, the
African middle class was being thwarted by the Act’s failure to extend the African
franchise out of the Cape. 114
111 Brian Willan, Sol Plaatje: A Biography, p 346.
112The full title of Plaatje’s novel was Mhudi: An Epic of South African Native Life a Hundred Years Ago
(Lovedale: Lovedale Press, 1930).
113Brian Willan, Sol Plaatje: A Biography, p 352.
114Brian Willan, ‘Sol Plaatje, De Beers and an Old Tram Shed’, pp 211‐212.
150