The Individual, Auto/biography and History in South Africa

Willan went on to outline his interest in recovering the social history, achievements and
aspirations of the African middle class. Biography in Willan’s work was a ‘lens’ to
uncover “something of the wider social experience of the community of which Plaatje
was a part”. Willan’s work was a study not only of the “exceptionally gifted individual”,
but also of an identifiable social class, with its own institutions and societies, whose
social life Plaatje was associated with and whose values and beliefs he had
assimilated. 115 Willan examined Kimberley’s African petty bourgeoisie (teachers, clerks,
interpreters, priests, traders), who had stood between a partially formed proletariat and
a propertied bourgeoisie. They had developed peculiar forms of cultural expression, and
they were loyal to the empire and valued education, church attendance, progress and
improvement. Through a network of churches, clubs and societies, their activities
created a sense of class and community. As an exercise in social history, Willan wanted
his biographical studies of Plaatje to be
a reflection of the collective personality of a wider group of
people from whom Plaatje derived so many of the beliefs and
values, and so much of the confidence and experience that
enabled him to emerge as a national political and literary figure
.... In Plaatje, these qualities found perhaps their greatest
expression, but they were essentially those of a social group, not
of a single individual. 116
Willan’s biographical studies of the black petty bourgeoisie in Kimberley were the
impetus for Phil Bonner’s application of class analysis to the history of African
nationalist politics. Bonner drew attention to the contradictory and ambiguous effects of
the upsurge in working class militancy on the petty bourgeoisie. Bonner argued that the
fragmented response to conflict between labour and capital on the Rand between 1917
and 1920 on the part of the petty bourgeois leadership of the Transvaal Native Congress
reflected the contradictions of the middle position of this layer of small businessmen and
professionals. Standing between capital and labour, they had been pulled in two ways.
One section had offered its leadership and support to the black working class, while a
115 Brian Willan, ‘An African in Kimberley’, pp 238, 255.
116 Brian Willan, ‘An African in Kimberley’, p 255.
151