Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje

Elleke Boehmer (University of Oxford)
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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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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 19 March 2024.]

3576 Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje 1 Historical context notes are intended to give basic and preliminary information on a topic. In some cases they will be expanded into longer entries as the Literary Encyclopedia evolves.

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