Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje

Elleke Boehmer (University of Oxford)

Ed. by John Thieme, University of East Anglia
The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 7.2.3.03: South Africa and other Southern Writing and Culture.
Vol. editors: Helen Rachel Cousins (Birmingham Newman University), David Firth (University of Manchester)

Dates

Born 9 Oct 1876
Died 1932
Activity 1896-1932

Places

Born in South Africa
Active in South Africa

Activities

Primary

Journalist
Novelist
Translator

Resources

Plaatje's Works

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The prescient advocate of a multicultural South Africa, a novelist and pioneering journalist, Solomon T. Plaatje was a founding member of the South African Native National Congress (SANNC – later the African National Congress or ANC). He was also a linguist and translator of note, who worked proficiently within and between eight or nine African and European languages, as well as a prolific letter-writer, vigorous speech-maker and pamphleteer, and a translator of Shakespeare and collector of Tswana proverbs. Besides this he was also the author of one of the most significant works of African protest to have been published before the time of political decolonization,

Native Life in South Africa

(1916).

Plaatje’s beliefs were broadly liberal and moderate. Like the petit-bourgeois class of

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1269 words

Citation: Boehmer, Elleke. "Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 30 January 2003 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=3576, accessed 21 November 2024.]