SOURCE: "'Mhudi'," in Sol Plaatje: South African Nationalist, 1876-1932, Heinemann, 1984, pp. 349-71.

In the following essay, Willan offers an analysis of Mhudi.

'After ten years of disappointment,' Plaatje informed his old friend, Georgiana Solomon, in May 1930, 'I have at length succeeded in printing my book. Lovedale is publishing it. I am expecting the proofs any day this week.' The book to which Plaatje referred was Mhudi, the title of the manuscript he had completed in London in 1920, and somewhat modestly described at the time as 'a love story after the manner of romances … but based on historical facts'.

The Lovedale Press was certainly not the leading international publishing house which Plaatje had once hoped would take on his book, but after 'ten years of disappointment' and numerous rejections from publishers in England and America—'circumstances beyond the control of the writer', so Plaatje described them—he...