Sol Plaatje

Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje was born on 9 October 1876 on the farm Doornfontein near Boshof, in what is now South Africa's Free State, into a Setswana-speaking Barolong family. He grew up on mission stations at Pniel, Mafeking and Kimberley, learned several languages, and passed the Cape's clerical examination with higher marks than any other candidate in Dutch and typing.

During the Boer War he kept a diary documenting the experiences of Black residents trapped in the siege of Mafeking, published only forty years after his death. He became a pioneering journalist and newspaper editor, writing in both English and Setswana, and later translated plays by Shakespeare into Setswana.

In January 1912 Plaatje joined other African leaders in Bloemfontein to found the South African Native National Congress, later the African National Congress, and was made its first general secretary, with John Langalibalele Dube as president. After the 1913 Natives Land Act dispossessed Black South Africans of land, he toured the country to document its effects.

His findings became Native Life in South Africa, published in London in 1916 as part of the campaign against the Act. He travelled to Britain, spoke at over 300 meetings, and helped lead delegations to protest against the law. In 1917 he was offered the ANC presidency but declined and served as senior vice president.

Plaatje completed the novel Mhudi, an epic of South African life a hundred years earlier, around 1920 but struggled to publish it until 1930. It is regarded as the first novel in English by a Black South African. He died on 19 June 1932, aged 55, in Pimville, Soweto. Sol Plaatje University in Kimberley, which opened in 2014, is named after him, and 2026 marks the 150th anniversary of his birth.