In the magisterial third and expanded edition of Reader's Digest Illustrated History Of South Africa: The Real Story, assembled with Christopher Saunders as the Consultant Editor and Colin Bundy as the Historical Advisor, Solomon T. Plaatje is memorialized as a South African intellectual giant: "He was an author, an intellectual and a lobbyist who counted cabinet ministers among his friends. He spoke eight languages, edited three newspapers and wrote several books, including the classic Native Life in South Africa.  Yet Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje's formal education did not go beyond primary school" (The Reader's Digest Association Limited, New York, 1994, p. 290). Also his intellectual colleagues felt the power of his genius, as we can judge from the following obituary note by H. I. E. Dhlomo, himself an intellectual giant: "A great, intelligent leader; a forceful public speaker, sharp witted, quick of thought, critical; a leading Bantu writer, versatile, rich, and prolific; a man who by force of characterand sharpness of intellect rose to the front rank of leadership notwithstanding the fact that he never entered a secondary school; a real artist, passionate, as siduous, alert, keenly sensitive----Such were the qualities of the late Mr. Sol. T. Plaatje whose death will be deeply mourned in literary, social, political, and religious circles throughout British South Africa" ("An Appreciation", Umteteli wa Bantu, June 25, 1932). That the high praise of Plaatje has continued throughout the twentieth-century can be seen in a memorial lecture of 1982 on him given Richard Rive at the University of Bophuthatswana (now University of the North-West): "A people desperately needs its past as well as its present and future to libe by. It desperately needs to see not only the road ahead but the road along which it came. Its vision is not only of the future but also of the past. And in its rediscovery of that past, names like B. W. Vilakazi, H. I. E. and R. R. R. Dhlomo and S. E. Mqhayi must assume a new significance. And if any one figure will loom larger than the rest, it could be that extraordinary person of mant talents, who was able to create out of the debris of wilful and deliberate denigration and emasculation, works of erudition and beauty' ("Sol T. Plaatje and Native Life In South Africa" in A Collection of Solomon T. Plaatje Memorial Lectures, 1981-1992, [no editor], Institute of African Studies, University of Bophuthatswana, 1993, p. 24). What is the basis of this high estimation! First and foremost, he was a great journalist fluent in eight languages, having published three outstanding Tswana-English newspapers between 1902 and 1915: Koranta ea Becoana (The Tswana Gazette), Tsala ea Becoana (The Friend of the Tswana), and Tsala ea Batho (Friend of the People). With the newspapers Plaatje achieved several things which were to be exemplary to subsequent generations of African journalists: following the example of his friend F. Z. S. Peregrino's South African Spectator, he commissioned several portraits of New African intellectuals like Alfred Mangena, Walter Rubusana, Richard Msimang, Harold Cressy; he gave ample coverage of the founding of the ANC in 1912 as the South African National Native Congress; he published the most trenchant critiques of the Natives Land Act of 1913 by New Africans such John Dube, Richard Msimang, Abdullah Abdurahman; although he was fascinated by the dialectic between modernity and tradition, his sympathies tended to be aligned with the latter, even though he constantly wrote that the triumph of the former was inevitable; he was intrigued by the role of the city in facilitating the possibility in the making of modernity; his passionate belief that education and Christian civilization were the essential instruments in the making of modernity. His landmark historical novel Mhudi (written in 1917 and published only in 1930) is fundamentally about the historical divide between tradition and modernity, with Mzilikazi delivering a great Shakespearean soliliquy in which he passionately pleads that belonging in the past, he is unable to cross the divide into the future. Plaatje's interest went deeper, as evident in his translation of four Shakespeare's plays into Tswana. His preoccupation with translation was an expression of his profound love of Tswana language, as can be adduced from two booklets he published in London: Sechuana Proverbs with Literal Translations and European Equivalents (Kegan Paul, 1916); A Sechuana Reader: An International Phonetic Orthography (With English Translations), written with Daniel Jones (St. Paul's House, 1916). Plaatje published them while in London appealing to the British Parliament repeal the Natives Land Act of 1913 (the other members of the ANC delegation had already returned to South Africa). While there, he also took the opportunity to publish Native Life in South Africa (P. S. King and Son, 1916), a book protesting the Land Act, thereby becoming arguably the greatest South African political book in the twentieth-century. The book's structure and form evidences the imprint of W. E. B. Du Bois' The Souls of Black Folk (1903). The relationship between Plaatje and Du Bois, and as much as that between John Dube and Booker T. washington, is the clear proof that without the exemplary nature of New Negro modernity, New African modernity in South Africa is inconceivable. Plaatje was enamored to great modern cities he had visited such as London and New York: so much so that his finest essay on modernity is about his voyage by ship to London. Native Life in South Africa was in many ways his absolute commitment to politics of our country. Not only was he a founding member of the ANC, he was its first Secretary-General. It would be difficult to find any South Africa intellectual who combined in such an extraordinary manner a remarkable intellectual prowess and a profound political imagination. The only figure who nearly approximates this astonishing combination is Jordan Ngubane, a very problematical historical figure. The fascination Solomon T. Plaatje holds for South African intellectuals from H. I. E. Dhlomo through Ezekiel Mphahlele to Njabulo Ndebele, is testimony to his unsurpassed combination of the political and the intellectual. In the late 1940s and early 1950s when he was writing his great prose poems in Ilanga lase Natal, while also writing his brilliant political essays attacking apartheid and dueling with his political enemies such as A. W. G. Champion, I. B. Tabata and others, H. I. E. Dhlomo approximated this ideal. The full amplitude and complexity of Solomon T. Platje's work and life have been analyzed by his outstanding biographer: Brian Willan's Sol Plaatje: South African Nationalist, 1876-1932 , University of California Press, Berkeley, 1984). His biographer has recently assembled some of his writings: Sol Plaatje: Selected Writings, (ed.) Brian Willan, Ohio University Press, Athens, 1997.