Sol Plaatje: A Life Of Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje 1876 – 1932 by Brian Willan is sent to launch at the Sol Plaatje University, Kimberley, South Africa on June 19, 2018.
Sol Plaatje was a South African intellectual, journalist, linguist, politician, translator and writer. He was a founder member and first General Secretary of the South African Native National Congress which would eventually become the African National Congress. He would pass on in 1932 with an impressive body of work, both in fiction and nonfiction, the most famous of which has to have been Native Life in South Africa. He also wrote a novel called Mhudi.
The author has been honoured by his home city of Kimberley which named the local university after him thus the Sol Plaatje University.
A new edition of a biography shedding light on the ancestor written by Brian Willan called Sol Plaatje: A Life Of Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje 1876 – 1932 is out now. The 700 page publication, which is a reissue having first been published in 1984, sheds new light on Plaatje’s struggles and achievements as well as on his personal life. This includes his relationship with his wife and family, friends and supporters. It pays special attention to his formative years looking to his roots in chiefly societies, his education and upbringing in a German run mission, and his exposure to the legal and political ideas of the 19th century Cape Colony.
The new edition of the publication will be presented at the Sol Plaatje University in Kimberley on June 19 at 5pm; this day incidentally is the day Plaatje died in 1932. He will be in conversation with Sabata-mpho Mokae, another Sol Plaatje scholar who is also a creative writing lecturer at the Sol Plaatje University.
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