Abstract
In the early-to-mid 1920s, Solomon T. Plaatje, an African intellectual, screened films to African and ‘coloured’ audiences in South Africa. Drawing on both primary and secondary sources, this chapter discusses Plaatje’s perceptions of cinematic representation and race, how he acquired films in Britain, Canada, South Africa, and the USA, as well as a projector in the USA and a generator in South Africa. This provides the context for a discussion of Plaatje’s touring cinema exhibition, the wide areas he covered, the ‘uplift’ films he screened, with which his audiences could identify, as well as topicals and travelogues of the wider world and the responses of audiences. The chapter argues that Plaatje was a special kind of itinerant showman in that, unlike his early counterparts, his mission was to project modernity that he hoped his audiences would embrace.
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Notes
- 1.
Thelma Gutsche’s (1972) seminal historical work, The History and Social Significance of Motion Pictures in South Africa, 1895–1940, includes a discussion of films for Africans but makes no mention of Plaatje. Although key scholars have mentioned his interest in film, it has not been a central focus. Of these, Brian Willan (1984, 1996) is particularly valuable, as is Ntongela Masilela (2003). See Masilela (2003) and Litheko Modisane (2013: 5–6) for discussion on Plaatje and modernity; and Maingard (2007: 68) on Plaatje in the context of black audiences and modernity. The short film Come See the Bioscope (1994) is a fictionalised version of Plaatje’s touring cinema exhibition.
- 2.
See Marks and Trapido (2014 [1987]) for important scholarship on histories of land, particularly the introductory chapter and the contributions of Beinart and Bundy.
- 3.
It legislated against share-cropping, where African tenants of white-owned farms would typically give half their crops to the farmer in exchange for tenancy. The act required that for Africans to be considered ‘bona fide employed’ (Plaatje 1982 [1916]: 69), they would have to provide at least 90 days service to the farmer on whose farm they resided within each year. This had the effect of turning share-croppers into farm labourers.
- 4.
- 5.
The South African Native National Congress (SANNC) had found no sympathy from the Union government for its grievances and elected a delegation in 1914 that included Plaatje, who was the organisation’s Secretary-General, to travel to England and seek a hearing from the crown. The visit was unsuccessful and all the members except Plaatje returned to South Africa after WWI broke out. He remained there for a further two years. He was offered the presidency of the SANNC in 1917, which he turned down. The SANNC’s second delegation in 1917 met the British Prime Minister, David Lloyd George, who undertook to write to the South African government, but further British intervention was not forthcoming. The SANNC changed its name to the African National Congress [ANC] in 1923.
- 6.
Plaatje’s London residence, 25 Carnarvon Road, Waltham Forest, London E10, is marked with a Greater London Council blue plaque where he is honoured with the description: ‘Black South African Writer and Campaigner for African Rights’.
- 7.
The publication ‘A South African’s Homage’ is reprinted in Willan (1996: 210–12). The film was most likely From the Manger to the Cross (1912), in which an Italian-born actor, Robert C. Vignola, plays Judas Iscariot, whose appearance is indeed dark by contrast with the other actors. See Willan (2013) on Plaatje’s role in successfully preventing the screening of The Birth of a Nation in South Africa in 1915. It was first screened in South Africa only in 1931.
- 8.
His visit to the USA was initially thwarted by his inability to obtain a passport; see Willan (1984: 250–51).
- 9.
- 10.
See Willan (1984: 271–72) for more details on Plaatje’s friendship with Du Bois. Du Bois published an American edition of Native Life in South Africa in his journal The Crisis in 1921 and also invited Plaatje to attend the second Pan-African Congress in Paris in July and August 1921 (Willan 1984: 271). When Plaatje was unable to get there Du Bois himself read Plaatje’s speech (Willan 1984: 272).
- 11.
The Phelps-Stokes Fund had supported Plaatje’s tour of the USA to the tune of US$100 on condition that he visit Tuskegee, which, Plaatje confirmed, ‘was just what he was anxious to do’ (Willan 1996: 298).
- 12.
Tuskegee’s first director was Booker T. Washington, who was born into slavery in 1856, and completed his education at Hampton, before taking up the post at Tuskegee.
- 13.
Histories of what is termed ‘uplift’ film are a relatively recent addition to film studies, most notably through Allyson Nadia Field (2015). Her category of ‘uplift’ film includes the early films of Hampton and Tuskegee.
- 14.
Willan notes that awaiting him in Montreal were ‘some further educational films that he had somehow obtained from Mr. Henry Ford […] whom he had met personally’ (1984: 280). Plaatje himself confirmed that Ford had given him ‘many of his “topicals”’ ( Umteteli wa Bantu , 5 December 1925). A newspaper report on Plaatje’s exhibition of films in Pretoria includes Islands of St. Lawrence, a travelogue produced by the Ford Motor Company in 1919 and filmed in Canada. Since Plaatje also screened films of other places, for example, the West Indies and Cuba, the diversity of films screened at his events comes into sharp relief. See Grieveson (2012) on the Ford Motor Company’s educational film production. Since this chapter draws on several articles in Umteteli wa Bantu (‘Mouthpiece of the People’), it is worth noting that it was owned by the Native Recruiting Corporation of the Transvaal Chamber of Mines and took a liberal political stance. Plaatje, and other African leaders and writers, used the newspaper as a forum for comment on political matters of the day.
- 15.
Lattimore had been the manager of the African American jazz group, Southern Syncopated Orchestra that had played in London and Paris. He had leased the Philharmonic Hall for The Cradle of the World . Lattimore’s letterhead described the film as ‘[a] most wonderful and thrilling Travel Film’, but see Willan (1984: 288–89) for a discussion of the various reviews.
- 16.
She was the widow of Saul Solomon, a member of the Cape Legislative Assembly from 1854 to 1883, and was living in London when Plaatje first visited in 1914. A suffragette, and committee member of the Anti-Slavery and Aborigine’s Protection Society, she had also participated in protests against the exhibition of The Birth of a Nation in 1916 (Willan 2013).
- 17.
See McKernan (1993) for further discussion of the details of the cameramen and the different versions of the Lord Allenby footage.
- 18.
See South African Mining Journal (1914, March 28: 89), where Grimmer is referred to as Assistant General Manager of De Beers.
- 19.
On arrival back in South Africa, Plaatje’s films were held by customs while he found the money to pay customs duty, as well as Union Castle Company for his passage (Willan 1984: 294). He remained in Cape Town for a period, in which time he met the then Prime Minister, General Jan Smuts, before returning to Kimberley.
- 20.
Odendaal (2016: 124) provides a useful discussion of the importance of Plaatje’s networks.
- 21.
For some, Plaatje’s events were in fact less attractive to city dwellers, especially those in the larger cities and Johannesburg in particular, who had greater access to entertainment cinema than rural dwellers. In the case of migrant workers this was through the Mines Compound Cinema Circuit organised by Rev. Ray Phillips, of the American Mission Board.
- 22.
Plaatje used references to this research in his political speeches and letters to government officials.
- 23.
At Port Elizabeth, he was forced to use a venue that had very cramped and hot conditions, which underscores some of the difficulties he experienced in running his screening events ( Umteteli wa Bantu , 28 February 1925).
- 24.
- 25.
See Maingard (2007: 73–74) for more details of health and safety films.
- 26.
This was possibly the 1911 W. Butcher and Sons’ documentary film or as is more likely a similar but later film made in Serowe in 1922, 1923, or 1925.
- 27.
See Willan (1996: 358), where Plaatje refers to the reportedly ‘peculiar joy’ his ‘pictures’ had brought to the ‘inmates’ of the Basutoland leper asylum in one of his letters to Moton.
- 28.
Not only did Plaatje tour country towns but he also screened films at institutions including, in August 1924, the West Fort Leper Asylum in Pretoria. Rev. Ray Phillips of the American Mission Board, who had begun cinema screening on mining compounds in the early 1920s, had also screened films at the West Fort Leper Asylum.
- 29.
Plaatje was an accomplished singer and had three discs recorded by the British Zonophone Company in 1923 (numbers 4167, 4168 and 4169). On one side of the second of these he sings ‘Nkosi Sikelele iAfrika’ (‘God Bless Africa’), thought to be the first recording of this anthem, first sung at the SANNC Congress in 1912, and the official national anthem of South Africa since 1994 (Willan 1996: 290). See also the advertising leaflet between pp. 208 and 309 in Willan (1996). The records are housed in the British Library.
- 30.
There is some evidence that this format including film screenings was already developing in South African political organisations’ events as early as 1914. Plaatje records the fact that at the SANNC special Congress held in Kimberley in 1914 to elect the first delegation to Britain , ‘bioscope films were projected by Mr. I. Joshua, the chairman of the APO [African Political Organisation]’ and that ‘[t]he coloured people had attended in their hundreds’ (1982 [1916]: 213–14), providing a valuable sense of the size of the audience.
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Acknowledgements
Grateful thanks to Carolyn Hamilton, Research Chair, Archive and Public Culture Research Initiative (APC), University of Cape Town; all the participants in the APC Research Development Workshop, April 2017; Sue Ogterop for very helpful research assistance; the editors, especially Daniela Treveri Gennari; and Brian Willan for his encouragement, and generously sharing his research materials and references. Special thanks to Emma Sandon.
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Maingard, J. (2018). Projecting Modernity: Sol Plaatje’s Touring Cinema Exhibition in 1920s South Africa. In: Treveri Gennari, D., Hipkins, D., O'Rawe, C. (eds) Rural Cinema Exhibition and Audiences in a Global Context. Global Cinema. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-66344-9_11
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