2016 marks the centenary of Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje’s Native Life in South Africa, a detailed and moving appeal against the Land Act of 1913. The immemorial opening phrase of the book describes the Act’s devastation: “Awaking on Friday morning, June 20, 1913,” Plaatje wrote, “the South African native found himself, not actually a slave, but […]
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History . Solomon Tsekisho Plaatje was a politician, journalist, human rights campaigner, novelist and translator at the turn of the 19th century – one of the most gifted and versatile black South Africans of his generation. Plaatje devoted his many talents to one overriding cause: the struggle of the African people against injustice & dispossession. […]
History . Michiel Heyns grew up all over South Africa – Thaba Nchu, Kimberley, Grahamstown, Cape Town – and was educated at the Universities of Stellenbosch and Cambridge. For much of his adult life he was an academic, lecturing in English at the University of Stellenbosch, but after publication of his first novel, The Children’s […]