Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje was a South African intellectual, journalist, linguist, politician, translator and writer.He was one of the foremost African leaders of his generation in South Africa.Sol Plaatje devoted his many talents to one overriding cause: the struggle of the African people against injustice and dispossession.
Education
About the time he was born, his parents moved to the Pniel mission station of the Lutheran Berlin Mission Society, near Barkly West, and there Plaatje received his only formal education, a few years in the elementary grades.He remained at Pniel for several years as an assistant teacher, studying further with the aid of the missionaries.In 1894 he went to Kimberley, where he found work as a postman, continued his private studies, and eventually distinguished himself on the civil service examinations.
Career
On the eve of the Boer War he was sent to Mafeking as an interpreter, and during the siege of Mafeking in 1899 - 1900 he acted as both court interpreter and clerk to the Mafeking administrator of Native affairs. He was proficient in at least eight languages, including German and Dutch, as well as English and all the major African vernaculars.
Plaatje turned to journalism at the end of the war, and, with financial backing from Silas Molema, chief of the Barolong, he established the first Setswana-English weekly, Koranta ea Becoana (Newspaper of the Tswana) in 1901.
In Kimberley he established a new paper; Tsala ea Becoana, later renamed Tsala ea Batho (The Friend of the People). While producing these papers, Plaatje also contributed many articles to other papers, particularly to the Kimberley Diamond Fields Advertiser. When the South African Native National Congress (later called the African National Congress) was formed in 1912, Plaatje was chosen its first secretary-general. An articulate opponent of tribalism, he exemplified the new spirit of national unity among African intellectuals.
In 1914 Plaatje went to Britain as a member of the deputation charged with appealing to the British government against the Act. The mission proved futile, but Plaatje decided to stay behind after the departure of the rest of the deputation, and he remained in Britain until February 1917, when he returned to South Africa. During this time he lectured, worked as a language assistant at London University, and produced three books, including a detailed and moving appeal against the Land Act, Native Life in South Africa, Before and Since the European War and the Boer Rebellion (1916). The other two works, Sechuana-Proverbs, With Literal Translations and Their English Equivalents and A Sechuana Reader, written with Daniel Jones of London University, also appeared in 1916.
Late in 1919 he took part in a meeting with British Prime Minister Lloyd George. In December 1920 he went to Canada and the United States, where he traveled widely. Meeting with leaders of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, he arranged for an American edition of his book. Native Life, to appear.
At the end of 1923 he returned to South Africa. He continued to write, and when Parliament was in session he traveled to Cape Town to cover the sessions and to lobby for African interests as a representative of the ANC.
In addition to the works already mentioned, his writings include a novel, Mhudi, An Epic of South African Native Life a Hundred Years Ago (1930), The Mote and the Beam: An Epic on Sex-Relationship 'Twixt White and Black in British South Africa (1921), and translations of four Shakespeare plays into Setswana.
Religion
Sol Plaatje was a committed Christian, responsible for organising the inter-denominational Christian Brotherhood devoted to the ideals of equality and fraternity in Kimberley.
Politics
As the first general secretary of the African National Congress (ANC), founded in 1912, Plaatje was a prominent political spokesperson, interacting regularly with government officials and other leading whites in both South Africa and Great Britain.