The lore and the proverbs: Sol Plaatje as historian

Abstract

Sol T. Plaatje's Sechuana Proverbs (1916) is a small blue book containing 732 Setswana proverbs, their translations and their 'European eqvivalents'. At the University of the Witwatersrand , Johannesburg, this store of Setswana wisdom is kept under lock and key, not because it offends against any vicious South African censorship laws, but because it is an old book that needs protection. Notwithstanding the recent reprinting of much early African literature, scholars and publishers have not re-issued Sechuana Proverbs, nor do readers in libraries or the open market make any significant requests for it (1). This state, of affairs is, unhappily, not what Plaatje intended when he set out to save these proverbs from the likely oblivion of orality, by writing them down. This was the trap into which writing enticed many of its practitioners among the African elite. This article explores Plaatje's desire to preserve the proverbs, which he considered central to the continued regeneration of Tswana culture. The paper examines the interface between orality and literacy and the role of those who moved between these two forms of social communication. Sol Plaatje, South African nationalist, journalist, novelist, translator and cultural historian, lived from 1876 to 1932.