SOURCE: Mpe, Phaswane. “Sol Plaatje, Orality, and the Politics of Cultural Representation.” Current Writing 11, no. 2 (1999): 75-91.

In the following essay, Mpe explores Sol Plaatje's Mhudi—the first novel written by a black South African to be published in English—in terms of the relationship between the African tradition of orality and the Western novel. Mpe notes the influence of Mhudi on both pre- and post-apartheid South African literature.

Besides being an allegorical indictment of the Natives' Land Act of 1913 as well as an interpretation of the history of South Africa in the early 1800s from a black perspective, Mhudi is also Sol Plaatje's endeavour to preserve Setswana oral traditions. This is done in a number of ways, one of which is the inclusion of some oral art forms in the novel. Another one is spelled out in his preface to the novel, namely to use financial profits from...