Historical Publications Southern Africa (HiPSA), known as the Van Riebeeck Society until their recent centenary, has published a new edited volume of historical documents each year since 1918. The volume for 2020 is their fifth one of writings by black South Africans, a collection of letters authored by the prominent writer and activist Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje between 1896 and 1932. Compiled by the leading Plaatje biographer Brian Willan and edited in partnership with the Tswana scholar Sabata-mpho Mokae, the letters provide a valuable glimpse of how South Africa's momentous social and political changes during the early twentieth century were experienced and viewed by African educated elites of that era.

The book's 260 letters were located by Willan during many years of research in a wide variety of archives, libraries, and personal collections. The book begins with a concise, helpful biography of Plaatje and then presents the letters chronologically, grouped into eight distinct chapters of Plaatje's adult life. Text in Setswana and other languages is accompanied by English translations, and there are numerous informative footnotes identifying people, places, and events mentioned in the letters. The book concludes with brief biographies of the main correspondents, information about the locations of the original letters, a bibliography of suggested further reading, and a detailed comprehensive index.

Sol T. Plaatje is most often identified simply as one of the founders of the African National Congress, but his other extensive activities and accomplishments as a public intellectual have received less recognition. As argued in the book's Introduction, ‘There is a striking contrast between Plaatje's prominence in his own lifetime and the public amnesia that set in after his death’ (xi.) The idealism and moderate views of Plaatje's generation became largely discredited and marginalized by events of the mid-twentieth century, but Plaatje's reputation has been steadily revived since 1990, culminating with the recent establishment of Sol Plaatje University in his hometown of Kimberley, where the book's co-editor Mokae teaches creative writing in African languages.

While many of Plaatje's ideas about South African politics and society are described in his publications — most notably Native Life in South Africa (1916) — the personal letters reproduced in this volume provide important information not found in his other writings. Addressed to a wide range of friends, colleagues, and officials in South Africa and abroad, Plaatje's correspondence reveals both the extensive network of progressive reformers with which he was connected and his undying efforts to mobilize public support and defend the interests of black South Africans. The historical value of a few of the letters is perhaps a little less clear, such as those focused on the mundane details of travel or managing a newspaper, but together they amply demonstrate Plaatje's lively intelligence and charismatic personality amidst the contradictions and uncertainties of the ‘Segregation Era’ in South Africa.

One dominant characteristic of the letters was Plaatje's stubborn hope that the Union of South Africa would be governed more by the relatively liberal laws of the British Cape Colony than by those of the Boer republics, allowing Africans to gain full citizenship through gradual adoption of some elements of European culture while retaining their distinctive communal identities. As Plaatje describes his newspaper Koranta ea Becoana in a 1903 letter to a colonial official: ‘To the European readers it advocates fair treatment to their Native servants, equal political rights to their Native neighbours and the absolute social segregation of the white and black races of South Africa’ (24). At the beginning of the twentieth century, the cultural and political autonomy of African and European communities still seemed more salient than their economic interdependence, and Plaatje envisioned the role of ‘Natives’ in South Africa as separate but equal. When South African society instead became increasingly urbanized, exploitative, and discriminatory, Plaatje was harshly critical of new laws while continuing to seek support from sympathetic white liberals, and he was pleasantly surprised to encounter instances of racial integration outside South Africa. He was also in communication with both the Tuskegee Institute and W. E. B. Du Bois in the United States, pursuing black empowerment through education as well as through Pan African solidarity.

A second major theme displayed in the letters is Plaatje's promotion of Tswana language and culture, with particular emphasis on the interests of the Rolong chiefdom to which he belonged through his parents. A key partner in his journalistic pursuits was the Rolong royal Silas Molema, and he was in regular correspondence with several other members of Tswana chiefly families, advocating on their behalf in his newspaper and in letters to government officials. As Plaatje's political activism appeared to be increasingly fruitless during the 1920s, he devoted more of his attention to literary pursuits, writing a novel, translating several of Shakespeare's plays into Setswana, and collecting Setswana proverbs, praise poems, and tales.

Plaatje failed to find a publisher for many of his works, however, and a third theme that appears frequently in Plaatje's personal letters was his chronic financial problems. In requesting a raise in 1900 for his position as a court interpreter, Plaatje argued that his pay was insufficient to support the standard of living expected of an educated and valuable government employee, obliging him to live in a ‘Native hut’ and subsist on ‘mealies’ and ‘Kaffir corn’ (13–14). On that occasion his request was granted, but numerous subsequent letters to British patrons, the DeBeers Company, Rolong chiefs, and other potential donors demonstrated the difficulty of earning a living as a writer and activist. The fact that most of Plaatje's British supporters were women also suggests that British liberal concern for black South Africans could be more accurately described as maternalistic than paternalistic. Although a full account of Plaatje's achievements necessarily requires study of his other writings, Sol T. Plaatje: A Life in Letters provides valuable evidence of the challenges that he faced and the personal connections that he cultivated as an early champion of equal rights in South Africa.