Introduction
Sol Plaatje’s Mhudi is an incredible full-length book written in English by a black writer from South Africa. It is a romantic epic with its setting in the early nineteenth century during the South African wars. The main action is centered around an extermination campaign by King Mzilikazi against the Barolong community at Kunana in 1832. Moreover, the book covers the resulting collaboration of defeated communities with the Boer to spearhead a resistance movement that leads to intense battles.
Plaatje’s heroine survives the violent battles and symbolizes belief in the aftermath of the chaos. Mhudi details South African politics in the story of the Transvaal kingdom. Plaatje’s Mhudi uses narrative complexity to show a failed recreation of South Africa, oppressive history at the time, violence, and pre-colonial contentment as well as peace.
Early Life
Before exploring the novel’s underlying philosophy, it is critical to understand where Sol Plaatje found himself physically and emotionally when he wrote Mhudi. Plaatje was a South African writer, journalist, and political leader born in 1875. He worked as a courier and as an interpreter, where he was dedicated to making African grievances known to many people. Plaatje abandoned his public service career and became a career journalist, famous for exposing white rule’s ruthlessness and discrimination of black workers. In the 1920s, Plaatje was in London for the second time when he began writing his book.
He had visited it first as a politician allied with the Native National Congress to help stop the 1918 Land Act. However, the second time, Plaatje aimed to help against discriminatory Union legislation that resulted in dispossession, destructive labor relations, and segregation. Through the knowledge gained as an interpreter about the meaning of justice, Plaatje was convinced that he would convince the British government to see how their structures were used oppositely (Plaatje, 2013). Plaatje knew black people were discriminated against in England.
It was clear that the law was misused to deny South Africans the most fundamental rights. Therefore, in London, Canada, and the US, Plaatje became a translator, negotiator, and cultural broker. His boundary-crossing could be read as the result of his consciousness of racial discrimination and divisiveness in South Africa. Plaatje worked as a linguist to protect the Setswana fables, oral history, and proverbs. He advocated for black people’s unity to promote national ethos resulting in inclusive Black Nationalism. Therefore, Plaatje wrote Mhudi in a heartbroken state. He felt that people should be given equal respect and justice.
Plaatje used Mhudi as an allegory that reflected his real life. For instance, he was dedicated to preserving the African languages, which apparently, he did by writing in ethnic languages, proverbs, and fables. For example, he uses the proverb ‘’Never be led by a female lest thou fall over a precipice’ to show how people ignored females’ views (Plaatje, 2013, p. 56). Ra-Thaga nearly pays for not listening to his wife by death after being warned about Ton-Quon.
Violence, Wars, and Hope for Reconstruction
Plaatje chose to explore a Ndebele narrative to depict the violence, wars, and hope for reconstruction. The instability depicted in Mhudi is evident in different narrative viewpoints and genres. When the book begins, the Ndebele kingdom is seen in character in the events of the king’s retaliation against his tax collectors’ murder. The whole city has to pay for the king to get revenge. Violence is ritualized as the basis of social order when victorious troops come back to the city and celebrate their victory. Armies and dancers move together to channel their energy to glorify the king, nation, and army. Successive disasters are depicted in the novel and slowly cripple the Ndebele rule.
The Dutch attacked the kingdom’s outskirts and were attacked by the Ndebele nation. However, the Ndebele nation retreated and fled to the north as the Ndebele capital is conquered by the Dutch, Barolong, Griqua, and Korana (Plaatje, 2013). While the Ndebele rule was seen as evil, tyrannical and cruel, Plaatje does not depict a defeated and broken nation. Plaatje shows Mzilikazi’s people reconstructing themselves together as a nation once more.
South Africans’ Contentment and Ignorance of Significant Historical Events
Plaatje uses the Ra-Thaga narrative to show South Africans’ contentment in little and simple things and how they ignore significant historical events. The Ra-Thaga story is explained by describing the Tswana world before colonialism. The Tswana world is depicted as an explicitly contented pastoral community. The Tswana world was governed by several chiefs and owed no loyalty to any emperor or king. The community satisfied their simple wants by relying on growing native corn, hunting, and herding cattle. Plaatje shows the standard way of life in the South African people before colonialism. People would own cattle, hunt, and grow corn for food.
According to Plaatje (2013), strangely, the Tswana community was contented with no money as well as silver watches. The absence of money and luxuries resulted in happiness and no orphanages, loneliness, and poverty (Plaatje, 2013). The narrative changes and Plaatje show that the Tswana community’s limited harmony is dangerous. Plaatje uses the Mississippi and Virginia harbors and plantations to remind South Africans of significant historical events that they ignore at their own risk.
Extreme Oppression and Alienation
The ending of the Ra-Thaga narrative is epitomized by extreme oppression and alienation. The Ra-Thaga narrative fulfilled the blacks’ wish as Kunana’s destruction by the Ndebele had been avenged through collaboration. As a result, blacks from Voortrekker mythology were expected to show gratitude to the Boers. After all, the Boers rescued the Tswana community from the Ndebele nation’s tyrannical rule.
Mhudi and Ra-Thaga remained refugees at the end in their neighbor’s land in the south. The physical novel ending depicts Mhudi and Ra-Thaga trekking an empty veld using a dilapidated wagon given to Mhudi as compensation for playing a part in Ndebele’s defeat. The dilapidated wagon is a synecdoche of blacks’ historical destiny in a nation where the Ndebele have been overthrown from power. The white rule is more oppressive and harsher than the Ndebele rule could have ever been. South Africans were socially segregated, politically powerless, and economically marginalized (Plaatje, 2013). Blacks would live their lives under the whims and dictates of the white economy, thankful for any rejected rubbish they could be allowed to have.
Reason for Plaatje’s Depiction of Nineteen Century South Africa
Plaatje criticized European rule because of the violence and oppression. Plaatje perceived the first years of the Act of Union as characterized by deprivation. Precolonial South Africa lacked vision, but people could live in peace and harmony. However, the arrival of whites marked the start of violence and unrest. The Act of Union created a metaphorical cage for blacks isolated from their land, past, and whites. The arrival of whites was not associated with nature and civilization but with exploitation and source of cheap labor as Mzilikazi had foreseen (Plaatje, 2013). Plaatje wrote the novel to show the world the whites and the government’s inhumanness.
Conclusion
In conclusion, Plaatje employs narrative complexity to show South Africa’s failed recreation, oppression, and pre-colonial peace and contentment. Plaatje employs the Ndebele narrative in Mhudi to show violence, wars, and hope for reconstruction. When the Ndebele rule is defeated, they rebuild. Through the Ra-Thaga narrative, Plaatje shows the Tswana world’s contentment and the danger of ignorance. Plaatje depicts a world that is serene and peaceful before colonialism. Plaatje shows a South Africa where blacks are alienated and oppressed. Plaatje wrote the novel to show a South Africa that needs redemption from oppression, violence, and ignorance.
Reference
Plaatje, S. T. (2013). Mhudi. Waveland Press.