This impressive, finely wrought scholarly biography of Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje is a synthesis of a similarly thorough work published in the early 1980s with extensive recent research.Footnote ¹ Changing trends in African politics and journalism after 1948 and new writing by South African historians imbued with recovering socio-economic pasts initially meant that, whilst not forgotten in the histories of the African National Congress (ANC), which he helped found in 1912, both activist and academic alike have tended to look askance at ‘middle-class’ leaders such as Plaatje. Yet his accomplishments are too numerous to be ignored: editor of influential multilingual newspapers; first ANC Secretary-General; a leading campaigner against the 1913 Natives’ Land Act; champion of African women's anti-pass protests; global ambassador and agitator for the rights of his people and culture; and author of the seminal Native Life in South Africa (1916) and the first novel in English by a black South African, Mhudi (1930).

Writing in the 1980s at the height of apartheid rule, with its tradition of disregard for black lives, and banned from the country, Brian Willan nevertheless succeeded in recovering much detail on the life of this neglected major African nationalist and writer in his 1982 biography. His approaches to writing Plaatje's story have changed somewhat since then. He now situates Plaatje in a postcolonial South Africa where roads, schools, and even a university, bear his name. Willan draws on a burgeoning literature that he, together with literary scholars such as Tim Couzens and others, has stimulated.Footnote ²

Much has been added to this latest biography. The papers of Ernst Westphal and the Berlin Mission Society provide fresh perspective on Plaatje's early years and education. The Cape Archives and private papers in England allow deeper insight into Plaatje's role in drafting intelligence reports and serving in courts in Mafeking, as well as into Plaatje's family, his wife Elizabeth and her brief teaching career, and the couple's elopement. There is considerably more on Plaatje's literary and linguistic oeuvre in Setswana and English and his engagement with Shakespeare. Neither is the political sphere eschewed; newspapers and archives are well-mined to cast fresh light on liberal allies in England and internal ANC politics. Willan also probes Plaatje's personal motivations for travel to England and North America. In short, he lays down additional layers of evidence on all phases of Plaatje's life. Notes are enlarged; there is a new map of Kimberley and the Mafeking siege, and some different, striking illustrations (112 in all, compared to 105 previously). Yet much is retained from the previous publication. A few chapters are split into two, but the structure hews closely to the original volume, even if the author can rightly claim this as a ‘wholly new book’ (xxii). If sections are akin to the earlier version, fresh data is deftly interwoven: for example, in a chapter on Mahikeng (previously Mafeking, then Mafikeng), we learn this time around of Plaatje's friend David Phooko. The index to this new volume is less useful than the old one, particularly entries for Plaatje that, for instance, lack reference to his birth. If (still) lacking a bibliography of secondary sources, there is now a list of primary sources, although with only one additional interview adduced. Willan does draw on some vernacular sources, if chiefly through translators.

In the Conclusion to the first ‘edition’, Willan characterised Plaatje as living a ‘life of commitment to the African political struggle’ but of ‘deeply conservative instinct’ (391). Plaatje did oppose radicals, yet many black politicians of the day were more conservative than he was, and his complex public roles speak to a consistent humanism and a remarkable willingness to protest injustice. In the current book, Plaatje's liberalism, which, with his Tswana and wider African identities and Christianity, formed the pillars of his thought, remains prominent, but Willan sculpts a sensitive, balanced portrait to fit a changing South Africa with a tiring African nationalism. With Plaatje's political legacy entrenched since 1994, Willan places greater emphasis on his cultural achievements and the enduring lessons of his life for a society that is diverse and should always be inclusive of women and people of different backgrounds.

When George Shepperson favourably reviewed the 1984 book in this journal, he hoped it would ‘herald the coming back of serious, scholarly biography into African studies’.Footnote ³ Despite a trickle of scholarly biographies since that time, including several recently by black South Africans, this trend has remained erratic, in part due to a dearth of sources (Plaatje's archive being an exception), but also because the genre is discouraged for doctoral research.Footnote ⁴ Shepperson also anticipated female biographies, and whilst much remains to be done in this regard, Willan, drawing on feminist studies of Plaatje and his own research, usefully addresses gender.

Can we say more? Plaatje's under-researched vernacular columns (in old orthography) can still reveal added details of the lives of Tswana communities in which he moved, and oral history projects might recover further handed-down memories, whereas recent work on his authorship presents novel pathways for Plaatje Studies.Footnote ⁵

Brian Willan's masterful biography, now enriched and made widely available in a fine printing, will inform new generations of South African and other readers about Sol Plaatje and his depth of character, historical and cultural significance, family, friends, and allies, plus the perilous times in which this amazing individual lived.