Native Life In South Africa

latest news & developments

Women of the struggle: Artist Sue Williamson with works from her series of photo portraits from the ongoing series All Our Mothers.
Photo: Courtesy the artist and Goodman Gallery

The long and short of a 50-year artistic career

Sue Williamson’s new show opens in Joburg and a retrospective is coming soon

Charles Leonard

South African writer Sol Plaatje was aware of the irony that the British Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act was passed a year after the enactment of the Natives Land Act, says Sandra Swart in her book The Lion’s Historian: Africa’s Animal Past.

People and animals: A shared history, shared cruelties

An edited extract from The Lion’s Historian: Africa’s Animal Past

Professor Sandra Swart

Sol Plaatje and the back of the native mind

The author, reporter, editor and chronicler was both a man of his time and ahead of it

Darryl Accone

Bhekizizwe Peterson pictured with National Institute for Humanities and Social Sciences (NIHSS) awards judge Professor Hlonipha Mokoena in 2018, after a book he co-edited won a prize. (Image courtesy of NIHSS)

AFRICAN LITERATURE ASSOCIATION ALA

Great heart of African literature: Bheki Peterson’s expansive vision of the world

Having conducted the bulk of his study during apartheid, which informed his scholarship, Peterson left us with provocations for the future

Janet Remmington

Writer Sol Plaatje ‘constantly exploded the image created of him’. (SOAS Archives, University of London)

AFRICAN NATIONAL CONGRESS

Sol Plaatje and the antinomies of writing against ‘South Africa’

The renowned author’s foundational anti-colonial work deserves more than a dogmatic reading

V Njabulo Zwane