THE BOER WAR DIARY OF SOL T. PLAATJE. AN AFRICAN AT MAFEKING, edited by John L. Comaroff (1973)

Publisher's limited edition of two hundred and fifty specially bound and numbered copies. This is #12.

xli + 165pp. Illustrated.

Book is in fine condition.

'For decades Sol Plaatje's remarkable diary lay buried under a rubbish heap of old papers and documents in a Barolong village near Mafeking. When anthropologist John Comaroff told the villagers he was interested in written records, Plaatje's grandson rooted out an old scrapbook. At the back of this, miraculously preserved from the corrosions of dust and time, was Sol Plaatje's Boer War Diary. Even passages faintly written in pencil under heavy siege conditions were still legible. Examining the diary seventy years after the date of the first entry, Mr. Comaroff immediately realised that what had been handed to him was a historical document of rare value. The Siege of Mafeking was presented in an entirely new way: through the eyes of one of the many Africans who lived through grim months in the Boer-besieged town.

During the siege, Plaatje worked as interpreter to the Mafeking court. He could not have been in a better position to observe day-to-day life of the distressed town.

He tells the story with a gossipy humour that survives even the most desperate stresses. But his diary is not only a record of the Siege of Mafeking. It is also a portrait of a young African intellectual in an era during which the future of his people was being moulded.

Later, as a writer, a newspaper editor and a public speaker, Sol T. Plaatje became a leader of his people and played a key role in South African political history. He wrote a novel called Mhudi which is reputed to be one of the first written by an African in Southern Africa.

His diary is a piece of Africana of undisputed value.'