by Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje (1876-1932), ‘Sol’, a mission-educated African intellectual, was the first general secretary of the South African Native National Congress (SANNC), which was formed in 1912 and subsequently changed its name to the African National Congress (ANC) in 1923. Plaatje led the SANNC’s first major campaign against the Natives’ Land Act of 1913, an early, ‘key’ example of racialised, segregationist policies, which had relegated only a very small portion of land to Africans, in the region of 7.3 percent, and prevented them from purchasing land outside of officially ‘scheduled native areas’. In Native Life in South Africa (1916) Plaatje famously lamented that ‘[a]waking on Friday morning, June 20, 1913, the South African native found himself, not actually a slave, but a pariah in the land of his birth’.
Plaatje travelled to Britain on two occasions, in 1914 and 1919, with delegations from the SANNC, to seek support from the imperial government for the repeal of the act. Neither visit was successful. On both occasions, however, Plaatje remained for a further period, making and cementing important friendships, for example, Georgina Solomon of the Anti-Slavery and Aborigine’s Protection Society. On his second visit Plaatje extended his tour to Canada and the United States, where he not only made connections with African-American leaders, for example Marcus Garvey and W.E.B. Du Bois, and spoke at political events, but also travelled to the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama where he encountered the use of cinema for the ‘uplift’ of African-Americans. He returned to South Africa in 1923 and, in the mode of itinerant showmen in the early part of the twentieth century, he toured with a mobile cinema, screening a diverse range of topicals, newsreels, travelogues and educational films that he had acquired through his travels, in what he described as a ‘labour of love’. He used a projector donated in the US and a generator from the De Beers mining company. He developed these film exhibitions to attract African audiences, discussing the effects of racial segregationist policies and lecturing on the need for Africans to embrace modernity.
Plaatje is an important figure in black history not only in relation to international and South African politics, but also as a thinker, linguist, writer and public speaker, who opposed racial injustice and fought for equality.