SOURCE: A preface to Mhudi: An Epic of South African Native Life a Hundred Years Ago, Negro Universities Press, 1970, n.p.

In the following preface to Mhudi, Plaatje explains his reasons for writing the novel.

South African literature has hitherto been almost exclusively European, so that a foreword seems necessary to give reasons for a Native venture.

In all the tales of battle I have ever read, or heard of, the cause of the war is invariably ascribed to the other side.

Similarly, we have been taught almost from childhood, to fear the Matebele—a fierce nation—so unreasoning in its ferocity that it will attack any individual or tribe, at sight, without the slightest provocation. Their destruction of our people, we were told, had no justification in fact or in reason; they were actuated by sheer lust for human blood.

By the merest accident, while collecting stray...