As diarist, novelist, pamphleteer, translator, linguist, journalist, musician, politician, and social critic, Sol T. Plaatje's impact on South African society is significant. His work is of interest to both literary and social historians; he is the only black South African to have kept an account of the South African War (1899-1902), and he is also the writer of both the first political treatise and of the first English-language novel by a black South African. Plaatje's linguistic analyses of his native language, Setswana (Sechuana, in older orthography), are still regarded as standard references by modern scholars, while his 1930 translation of The Comedy of Errors (1623) is the first play by William Shakespeare to be translated into an African language. As a founding member of the African National Congress, Plaatje's political importance lies primarily in his vociferous opposition to the Native Land Act of 1913. The political treatise Plaatje wrote on this...