After having been largely forgotten and ignored for decades, in the post-apartheid world of the new South Africa, Sol T. Plaatje (1878-1932), has been hailed as a pioneering figure in the African nationalist movement and the struggle for equal rights. The local authority of the diamond-mining centre of Kimberley in the northern Cape region where he lived for many years and where he is buried, has been renamed the ‘Sol Plaatje Municipality’ in his honour and a new university being established there is to be called the ‘Sol Plaatje University’.
South Africa at Union in 1910
Hitherto, despite the considerable attention recently accorded him, the significance of the bicycle and of cycling in enabling Plaatje to fulfil his role as an activist has been largely overlooked. This article examines how these came to play an important part in his socio-political activities.
The life and times of Sol Tshekisho Plaatje
At the time of his birth in the late nineteenth century, South Africa was not the unitary state it was later to become. Rather, it was an unstable patchwork consisting of British colonies, British protectorates and Boer republics which had resulted from decades of conflict in the region.
Sol Plaatje was born in 1878 in the dorp of Boshof in what was then the Boer republic of the Orange...
