SOURCE: "Sol Plaatje's 'Mhudi'," in The Journal of Commonwealth Literature, Vol. VIII, No. 1, June, 1973, pp. 1-19.

One of the first novels written in English by an African, Mhudi, which was published in 1930 but probably largely written about 1917 or 1918, has not been considered worthy of major critical attention. In 1952, J. Snyman could dismiss the book fairly quickly and attack Plaatje for a lack of imagination:

In Mhudi (1930), Plaatje deals with the times of Mzilikazi, and especially with the war between the Matabele and Barolong. He has examined the causes of this war and finds that its origin lay in the murder of Mzilikazi's tax-collectors by the Barolong. He shows also that the Matabele had justification for some of their deeds. Plaatje takes pride in his people, and attempts here to interpret to the reading public 'one phase of the back of the native mind', as well as to gain sufficient money to arrest the lack of interest of his people in their own beliefs and literature, by collecting and printing Sechuana folk-tales which are in danger of being forgotten through the spread of European ideas.

Although Mhudi would seem to be authentic, it lacks the spontaneity of Mitford's Untúswa series. The reader is aware that the writer is recounting events which occurred a hundred years ago, and it seems as if Plaatje is unable to span the gap and live in the period about which he is writing. Little fault can be found, however, with his account of life at Mzilikazi's kraal in the Matabele capital.

Martin Tucker remains somewhat non-committal:

Plaatje's novel, Mhudi: An Epic of South African Native Life a Hundred Years Ago, written at least ten years before its publication by Lovedale Press in South Africa in 1930, is an attempt at blending African folk material with individually realized characters in the Western novelistic tradition; the result has been both admired and denigrated by commentators. Plaatje's story of the two Bechuana natives who survive a raid by a warring Zulu tribe, fall in love (one episode describes the admiration which the hero inspires in his female companion when he subdues a lion by wrenching its tail), and triumph over the mistreatment they endure from the Boers whom they have aided, is leavened by humour and sense of proportion. Although the novel contains idyllic scenes of native life, the hero Ra-Thaga, and Mhudi, who becomes his wife, are not sentimental Noble Savages but peaceful citizens forced to accept the harshness of the invading white world.

Tucker says too that 'Plaatje is not highly regarded by his fellow African writers today'. Janheinz Jahn has categorized Mhudi as being 'hedging or half-and-half writing and as 'mission' literature:

No hard-and-fast line, of course, can be drawn dividing 'apprentice' and 'protest' literature. Between them there is a wide field of 'hedging' or 'neutral' works. For, to avoid having to approve their tutelage, many writers glorified the traditional life of the tribe and the tribal chiefs and heroes: this can be interpreted as a form of indirect protest. The novel Mhudi, for (Jr instance, by Solomon Tzhekisho Plaatje (1877-1932), is a love story which has as its background the battles between Mzilikazi's Ndebele and the Baralong.

Jahn has also written of Mhudi that it is 'weak in comparison with other works, for Plaatje tries to individualize his characters in the European fashion and thus the African pathos of the dialogue becomes empty'. When critics largely ignore the social-historical milieu from which a work springs, the unfortunate situation can arise that a book is written off for its poor 'quality of writing' or for what at first sight seem to be clichaic ideas. Not only do arbitrary and vague (and often ethnocentric) ideas of 'taste' lead to hasty dismissals, they also conveniently allow the critic to avoid the attempt to find out the author's intentions in writing the book. Mhudi seems to be such a novel, which has been neglected for the lack of a little extra-novel research.

To characterize Mhudi as in any way being 'neutral', as Jahn does, may be in the interest of categorization, and may be the reasonable expectation set up by works of Plaatje's contemporaries, but it certainly cannot seriously be maintained in the light of Plaatje's character, his beliefs, his actions, and his other writings. This article argues that a study of these matters throws new light on Mhudi.

Since biographical information on Plaatje is not easy to come by, it seems desirable to quote a pen-sketch which Plaatje probably played a large part in writing:

Mr Sol. T. Plaatje was born at Boshof and educated at Pniel Lutheran Mission school. Married Elizabeth, daughter of the late Mr Mbelle, and sister of Mr I. Bud Mbelle, of Pretoria. Was interpreter to the Court of Summary Jurisdiction under Lord Edward Cecil. Rendered much service to the British Government during the siege of Mafeking in the Anglo-Boer War. Was editor of Koranta ea Becoana and Tsala ea Batho, Kimberley. Was war correspondent during the Anglo-Boer War. Foundation member and first general secretary of the South African National Congress when Rev. J. L. Dube was president. Went abroad twice on deputations in 1914 and 1919. Toured Canada and the United States during 1920-23. Founder and president of the Diamond Fields Men's Own Brotherhood. On attaining 50 years of age, in 1928, a group of Bantu, Coloured and Indian admirers started a Jubilee Fund and purchased his residence, 32, Angel Street, and gave it to him as a present in appreciation of his lifelong unsalaried work in the Non-European cause. Mr Plaatje is now engaged in writing Sechuana Readers for Native schools. He is the author of the famous book Native Life in South Africa. Has also written Mhudi—a novel, Sechuana Proverbs and their European Equivalents, The Mote and the Beam, Native Labour in South Africa, also Sechuana Reader in International Phonetics (the latter in conjunction with Professor Daniel Jones, M.A., University College, London). The latest of Mr Plaatje's books is the translation of Shakespeare's works in Sechuana. Is one of the best writers and speakers among Africans in S.A.

A founder member of the African National Congress (he refused its presidency on one occasion), a writer of a famous political book (Native Life in South Africa) and of two linguistic texts, Plaatje, the uncle of Z. K. Matthews, was in the forefront of the political defence of his people throughout his life and was certainly no Uncle Tom of the missions. Indeed, in a letter to the Administrator of Rhodesia in which he attacks the hypocrisy and knock-kneed quality of English liberals (particularly John Harris, the Secretary of the Aborigines Protection Society), he describes himself with characteristic humour and irony:

I am exceedingly sorry to encroach upon your precious time but, as the following lines will show the above controversy [between Harris and the Rhodesian Government] is of intense interest to me and the natives of the Union; you will perhaps be surprised to hear that I, a native of natives, immensely enjoyed reading the sound thrashing administered to Mr J. H. Harris by the logical pen of His Honour Sir Drummond Chaplin.

In this article I would like to examine three major issues relating to Plaatje's work in general and to Mhudi in particular: (1) the question of his language use, attempting a partial defence of it; (2) his distinctive ideas of history, the portrayal of which is virtually unique in South African literature; (3) the question whether Mhudi is something more than a love idyll with black heroes or an historical romance. I argue that Mhudi is a sensitive political novel, in which the historical moment of the 1830s was a carefully selected model for Plaatje's own situation in the period after Union and the Natives Land Act of 1913.

Janheinz Jahn talks of Plaatje's 'padded "Victorian" style', and it is true that Plaatje uses 'poetic' archaisms such as 'jocund lambs', 'eligible swains', and 'native gallantry', but these tend to be absent when Plaatje reaches the more significant moments in his narrative and, in any case, the phrases often seem to be used with that distinctive sense of irony which is seldom far from the surface in all of Plaatje's writing (as, for instance, in the probable pun in the last of the examples cited). This irony manifests itself in Plaatje's frequently used technique of reinforcing his argument by couching it in his opponents' own terms—whether their language or their beliefs. The technique can be illustrated by his use of a European (Scottish) proverb to illustrate the throwing-off from their land of two related 'native' families, described in his book Native Life in South Africa.

The father-in-law asked that Kgobadi should try and secure a place for him in the much dreaded 'Free' State as the Transvaal had suddenly become uninhabitable to Natives who cannot become servants; but 'greedy folk hae long airms', and Kgobadi himself was proceeding with his family and belongings in a wagon, to inform his people-in-law of his own eviction without notice, in the 'Free' State, for a similar reason to that which sent his father-in-law adrift.

The passion here is in no doubt, for his hatred of the Natives Land Act is implicit in all Plaatje's public actions after 1913, and the irony is savage. It is the irony of adopting what many South African whites would call the 'cheeky Kaffir' stance, by answering the opponent in his own language. To miss Plaatje's tone, and often his irony, will almost inevitably lead to patronizing his language. It would be well to remember that the great linguist Daniel Jones, in his preface to A Sechuana Reader which he and Plaatje compiled, found Plaatje in possession of 'unusual linguistic ability'.

For his use of Biblical and epic language, though perhaps not completely successful, Plaatje does at least give a justification, whether adequate or not. In the introduction to his Sechuana Proverbs he writes: 'The similarity between all pastoral nations is such that some passages in the history of the Jews read uncommonly like a description of the Bechuana during the nineteenth century.' There is here a concept of decorum, and the use of the metaphor of the Garden of Eden at the beginning of the novel to describe African traditional life is not accidental—for he is showing an idyllic society about to be shattered by forces which were the genesis of South Africa's problems, as Plaatje saw them after the Natives Land Act. What is more, Plaatje comments on the limitations of his own use of language within the novel itself. He says of the speech of Chief Moroka:

His speeches abounded in allegories and proverbial sayings, some traditional and others original. His own maxims had about them the spice of originality which always provided his auditors with much food for thought … The crowd pressed forward and eagerly hung on to every word, but it is to be regretted that much of the charm is lost in translation.

Plaatje was fully aware of all the problems of 'translation' which still beset the African writer, but once his decision was made he did not fuss unnecessarily about it. One of his minor themes, however, is the tragedy which frequently arises because of the lack of communication through mutual ignorance of respective languages, whether between man and man, or man and beast or nature.

But Plaatje does not simply use clichaic English of suitable decorum. Part of the richness of literature lies in deviation. And Plaatje frequently gives us a fresh idiom, stemming often from 'translation'; for example, his description of lions as 'making thunder in the forest', or when one speaker rebukes another for dissenting, by saying 'his speech was the one fly in the milk'. The language of the novel abounds also in localized South African imagery. Most interesting in the field of the figurative use of language, however, is his deliberate distribution of proverbs.

In discussing proverbs in both their oral and written form, Ruth Finnegan has written:

In neither case should they be regarded as isolated sayings to be collected in hundreds or thousands on their own, but rather as just one aspect of artistic expression within a social and literary context.

It is noticeable that in Mhudi there is a marked increase in the number of proverbs used by speakers during the crucial debate amongst the Baralong about whether they should help me Boers (five proverbs in five pages, three of them given to the man who is the ideal of justice, Chief Moroka, whose 'allegories and proverbial sayings' were both original and traditional). This debate reveals one of the major themes of the book, that the whites would scarcely have survived without the aid of the blacks, and the heightening of the language through proverbs, showing the traditional wisdom of the debaters, is both functional and significant. There is also, in the same scene, interesting confirmation of another of Ruth Finnegan's suggestions:

Though proverbs can occur in very many different kinds of contexts, they seem to be particularly important in situations where there is both conflict and, at the same time, some obligation that this conflict should not take on too open and personal a form.

A conflict situation arises in the debate, but is de-fused through a humorous proverb:

Some were for letting the Boers stew in their own juice, as the Barolongs had perforce to do years before; others were for combining with the Boers against the Matebele; some again were for letting the enemy well alone as long as he remained on the far side of the Vaal River—that river of many vicissitudes and grim histories—yet many believed that a scrap with the Matebele with the aid of the Boers would give each one an opportunity of avenging the blood of his relations before he himself joined his forefathers. Such were the conflicting views that found expression among the waiting throng. One grizzly old man with small jaws and very short teeth, touching his shins said: 'Oh, that I could infuse some youth into these old bones and raise my shield! I would march against the vampires with spear in hand. Then Mzilikazi would know that among the Barolong there was a man named Nakedi—just as the pack of lions at Mafika-Kgo-coana knew me to their cost.'

One man raised a laugh among the serious groups. 'What a truthful thing is a proverb,' he said. 'According to an old saying "Lightning fire is quenched by other fire." It seems a good idea then to fight the Matebele with the help of the women, for they always kill women in their attacks. If Sarel Siljay's women had not helped the Boers, they would not have defied Gubuza's army and Schalk would not be here to tell the tale.'

The 'sense of detachment and generalization inherent in proverbs' is clearly in evidence, mixed here with laughter in its conflict-avoiding function.

Plaatje's relationship with proverbs has yet one more interesting aspect. At the Matabele victory celebrations after the defeat of the Baralong near the beginning of the book, one man, Gubuza, stands out against the rest in warning of the possible consequences. His pessimism is rebuked by another speaker but Mzilikazi defends Gubuza.

If Gubuza had not spoken I should have been very sorry. You see a man has two legs so as to enable him to walk properly. He cannot go far if he has one leg … For the same reason he has two eyes in order to see better. A man has two ears so as to hear both sides of a dispute. A man who joins in a discussion with the acts of one side only, will often find himself in the wrong. In every grade of life there are two sides to every matter.

In this idiomatic passage, which is Plaatje at his best, the near-proverbs express the idea of the two-sidedness of arguments. The idea seems to interest him. In his collection of Sechuana proverbs Plaatje writes:

The reader will here and there come across two proverbs that appear to contradict each other; but such anomalies are not peculiar to Sechuana … The whole truth about a fact cannot be summed up in one pithy saying. It may have several different aspects, which, taken separately, seem to be contradictory and have to be considered in connexion with their surrounding circumstances. To explain the connexion is the work of a sermon or essay, not of a proverb. All the latter can do is to express each aspect by itself and let them balance each other.

It seems to me that he extends this idea into both the theme and technique of the novel. Although the book is clearly an epic praising the Baralong, through the technique of shifting perspective, we come to have a certain sympathy with the Matabele; we see, in fact, the final battle through their eyes not through those of the favoured victors (this is a technique which is probably reinforced by his translation of several Shakespearian plays, for though the crimes of Claudius and Macbeth are very similar, our response is different, but only because of the amount we see of their inner thoughts). The technique, then, in the novel, is of shifting perspective; that both sides are given through this technique is a reinforcement of one of the major themes—that there are two sides in every argument.

The merit of Plaatje's novel also lies in other directions. Because South African written history has been dominated by white historians and most of South Africa's imaginative writers have been white, South African history and literature usually display a bias of historical interpretation which seldom escapes complete ethnocentricity. Writers have endlessly extolled the courage of the Voortrekkers and the 1820 Settlers, but Plaatje is one of the few, and certainly one of the very earliest, who dealt with the events from 'the other side', from the side of the people who had to face dangers just as great, if not greater, for they ultimately came into contact with a people who had the advantage of those conveniences of civilization, the horse and the gun. (Indeed, without these two benefits, with, according to some historians, the Bible as a supplement, it is difficult to see how the whites could have survived at all in South Africa.) In Mhndi, the Great Trek is put into perspective, and is seen as a mere part of a much greater complex of events and activity. So that, in Mhudi, the whites appear only a third of the way through the book, and the course of South African history had already been as much determined by interaction amongst the blacks as anything the whites could do in the future. In other words, the blacks made history in South Africa as much as, if not more so than, the whites. Plaatje perceived that the Boers were simply a fourth force added to the existing groups of Baralong, Matabele and Korannas—not to mention Griquas, Bakwena, Bangwaketse, etc. The world of the novel is that of the relatively peaceful tribes inhabiting the areas around Transorangia who are, after the initial idyllic setting, thrown into turmoil as a result of the 'Mfecane', the great upheaval caused by the transformation of the tribes of Northern Natal into the Zulu military state, when tribes were sent fleeing all over Southern Africa and the effects of the upheaval were felt in areas as far distant as presentday Tanzania. J. D. Omer-Cooper has written of the 'Mfecane': 'It far exceeds other comparable movements such as the sixteenth century migration of the Zimba and Jagas and it positively dwarfs the Boer Great Trek.'

Life before the 'Mfecane', though not without its intertribal conflict, was fairly peaceful, and it is this life which Plaatje is describing at the beginning of the novel. The introduction of the terrible and warlike Matabele is clearly meant to be a contrast to the picture of the relatively peaceful Baralong—relatively peaceful because Plaatje's image of the Baralong has two sides to it. In his Sechuana Proverbs he took pains to describe his disagreement with prevailing historians over the character of the Bechuana, particularly the Baralong:

Historians describe the Bechuana as the most peace-loving and timid section of the Bantu. Their statements, however, do not seem to be quite in accord with the facts; for, fighting their way South, from the Central African lakes, some of the Bechuana tribes became known as 'the People with the Sharpspear'. And if I am not much mistaken they were the only natives who indignantly, though vainly, protested against the South African Defence Act which debars Native citizens from joining the Citizen Volunteer Force … But the proverbial phrases in this book do seem to support the view that they are by nature far from being bellicose.

Most of their proverbs, he points out, are of hunting or the pastoral and not concerned with war, but it is his clear intention to show that though the Baralong love peace they are brave if war is necessary. His concern here is not unreasonable. The leading historians of his time were explicit. G. W. Stow, for instance, wrote of the Baralong in 1905:

They seem however to have possessed the same natural timidity as the rest of the Bechuana, and as a race were not a whit more warlike than the cowardly Batlapin themselves, who, as we have seen, were only brave when they found their antagonists weaker than themselves, or when they had defenceless women and children to deal with.

The historian Theal concurred in 1915:

It is impossible to give the number of Moselekatse's warriors, but it was probably not greater than twenty thousand. Fifty of them were a match for more than five hundred Betshuana.

Plaatje's motive in showing the Baralong to be courageous when necessary was not only to counter white prejudice but also to indicate that the exclusion of his people from the army was one more sign of the inequality existing at the time of writing. (The whites' ability both to admire and condemn the bravery of the Zulu war-machine is a fascinating exercise in double standards; the whites' pride in 'bringing peace' yet their contempt for the Tswana 'cowards' is a similar contradiction and forces Plaatje to defend on two seemingly contradictory fronts.)

In keeping with this view of history, in which blacks contribute as much as whites, Plaatje does not sentimentalize the Boers as so many writers have done. Rather he views central South African history more in terms of what someone once described as 'a clash of rival cattle cultures'. De Kiewiet describes it in terms which would probably have appealed to Plaatje:

The native wars, from major campaigns to unheralded skirmishes, were spectacular phases in a lengthy process of encroachment, invasion, extrusion, and dispossession. For the most part the wars were not caused by the inborn quarrelsomeness of savage and warlike tribes, but by the keen competition of two groups, with very similar agricultural and pastoral habits, for the possession of the most fertile and best-watered stretches of land.

Plaatje gives a view of a Boer search-party in Mhudi which few white writers would ever have thought of at the time.

The search party looked foolish as they brought no news, but the climax of their incompetence came a few days later when a Basuto chief sent an ultimatum to the effect that the Boer party had killed two of his men and maimed two more who were peacefully hunting on the Vaal River … But thanks to the intercession of Chief Moroka, a satisfactory compromise was effected.

The only Boer who is sympathetically dealt with in Mhudi, Phil Jay, is described by the heroine, Mhudi, as 'the one humane Boer that there was among the wild men of his tribe', and even he, despite the general sentimentality used to describe him, is illiterate.

Not only is Plaatje able to correct what he regards as a mistaken bias in history, he is, at the same time, able to defend many traditional customs and beliefs of his people and to establish them as a coherent system within the novel. He praises his own people for the same things that Edward Blyden praised Africans for in his African Life and Customs (1908)—for their religion and socialism, their system of marriage, and the absence of orphans and prostitutes. From the beginning of the book he emphasizes the religion of his people, with the ancestral spirits at its core, and contrasts it with the broken-down Christianity of the Boers. And throughout the book he contrasts the basic justice of the traditional society with the arbitrary, dictatorial justice of Mzilikazi (and, implicitly, of modern whites, as we shall see). In Chapter Fifteen of Mhudi, Chief Moroka is seen to dispense justice in a manner far superior to any of the other characters, including the white men, and the function of the chapter is somewhat similar to that of Chapter Ten in Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart—in both books justice is established as central to the society and is given a central place in the book. De Kiewiet has described the tragedy of the whites' failure to see any merit in African society:

At least two generations of settlers grew up in ignorance of the ingenuity and appropriateness with which the natives in their tribal state met the many problems of their lives, in ignorance of the validity of many of the social and moral rules which held them together. European society most easily saw the unattractive aspect of tribal life. It saw the superstition and witchcraft and cruelty. But it failed to see, or saw only imperfectly, the rational structure of tribal life, the protection which it gave the individual, the comfort which it gave his mind, the surveillance which it kept over the distribution of food and land. European society condemned as stagnant and unenlightened a way of life in which happiness and contentment were, for the native, not difficult to find. Between soldier and settler, missionary and magistrate there was an unvoiced conspiracy against the institutions of the tribe.

Plaatje has clearly chosen to describe a time when these values and customs were most coherent, most unified, strongest, and yet also a time of transition when these values are about to change or disappear. He chooses a period where he can analyse both the values and the genesis of the causes of their disappearance.

It is Plaatje's view of history, then, which directs him to choose this particular period for his novel. But there is a possible further reason for his choosing this time. Omer-Cooper points to it:

The events of the Mfecane have moreover impressed themselves indelibly on the consciousness of subsequent generations. The memories and traditions of this period serve to maintain the sense of identity of peoples who were vitally affected by it, influencing attitudes within and between groups in many complex ways. In the context of white rule, this heritage has helped many peoples to keep alive a sense of pride and independence of spirit. Together with other factors it has contributed to that great reservoir of largely inarticulate feelings and attitudes which underlies the emergence of modern African political movements.

Plaatje returns to a time when (in the face of a common enemy, the Matabele) there are the beginnings of intertribal unity, when the seeds of the alliances of 1917 were first sown, when the possibility of a nationalism transcending tribalism was first conceivable (linked naturally to Plaatje's interest in the South African Native Congress). In this period of the 1830s Plaatje discovers 'a sense of pride and independence of spirit' whose incarnation is the heroine, Mhudi. Vladimir Klima has admirably hinted at these aspects of the novel:

The novel is remarkable for memorable portraits of Negro characters (mainly female ones are well characterized), and for Plaatje's original interpretation of historical facts. Both the Zulus and the Boers are shown as violent invaders but the author's compassionate detachment helped him in presenting a well-balanced historical fresco in which human fates can easily be traced. Mhudi's love story is especially successful and would provide a good piece of reading even outside the historical framework of the novel.

Mhudi, however, is not a novel interesting only for its concept of history and its defence of traditional custom. It is also an historical document relevant to the time it was written in, relevant to that period immediately following the Natives Land Act. It is also a comment on the conditions which resulted from that Act. Plaatje attacked the Act directly in his best-known book Native Life in South Africa, and in his pamphlet on the legal disabilities of Africans. I believe that Mhudi and Native Life in South Africa should be read in conjunction for they were not only written within a short time of each other, but they also show Plaatje's consistent and persistent preoccupations. The Natives Land Act was devastating in its effect, rendering homeless large numbers of Africans throughout the Union and causing untold hardship. Native Life in South Africa is an explicit, and Mhudi an implicit, attack on the Act and the hardship it caused. Mhudi, I believe, is a political novel relevant to 1917 or thereabouts.

South African history largely revolves around two problems: land and labour. The whites have usually solved both problems simultaneously: take land away from the Africans and they then need to sell their labour. The labour shortage can often be helped, too, by the levying of a tax. And, throughout Plaatje's writings, a single theme constantly recurs—the loss of the land the African loves and needs. 'To lose land,' writes De Kiewiet, 'was to lose the most important foundation upon which tribal life was built.' (So Plaatje's defence of traditional custom described above is an integral part of what follows.)

In Mhudi Plaatje's people are deprived of their land (after refusing to pay taxes) by the Matabele; in Native Life in South Africa they are deprived of their land by the whites. It seems to me, therefore, that Plaatje intends Mhudi to be, in addition to the true perspective of history discussed above, a model for events including and after the Natives Land Act of 1913. For, in Native Life in South Africa, the whites are described in exactly the same terms as are the Matabele in Mhudi. The Natives Land Act, for instance, is called 'the plague law', 'this Parliamentary land plague', 'the land plague' and 'the Plague Act'. Furthermore, he quotes with approval a speech by Dr A. Abdurahman:

Now let us consider the position in the Northern Colonies, especially in the misnamed Free State. There a very different picture is presented. From the days that the voortrekkers endeavoured to escape English rule, from the day that they sought the hospitality of Chief Moroka, the history of the treatment of the blacks north of the Orange River is one long and uninterrupted record of rapine and greed, without a solitary virtue to redeem the horrors which were committed in the name of civilization. Such is the opinion any impartial student must arrive at from a study even of the meagre records available. If all were told, it would indeed be a bloodcurdling tale, and it is probably well that the world was not acquainted with all that happened. However, the treatment of the Coloured races, even in the Northern Colonies, is just what one might expect from their history. The restraints of civilization were flung aside, and the essentials of Christian precepts ignored. The northward march of the voortrekkers was a gigantic plundering raid. They swept like a desolating pestilence through the land, blasting everything in their path, and pitilessly laughing at the ravages from which the native races have not yet recovered.

In Mhudi the Matabele are described as continuing 'their march very much like a swarm of locusts', and Chief Moroka later asks for help 'to rid the country of this pest'. Both the whites and Mzilikazi levy taxes and give little in return, and both have systems of justice arbitrary in the extreme. The Matabele in Mhudi are particularly loathsome because they are 'impartial in their killing', women and children are not spared. In Native Life in South Africa the whites share this trait:

When the Free State ex-Republicans made use of the South African Constitution—a Constitution which Lord Gladstone says is one after the Boer sentiment—to ruin the coloured population, they should at least have confined their persecution to the male portion of the blacks … and have left the women and children alone.

The implicit comparison in Mhudi is explicit in Native Life:

'This', says Mr Lüdorf, 'caused the Natives to exclaim: "Mzilikasi, the Matabele King, was cruel to his enemies, but kind to those he conquered; whilst the Boers are cruel to their enemies and illtreat and enslave their friends." '

If there are doubts that Mhudi provides a model for the situation created by the Land Act they should be assuaged by the dedication of the novel, to 'Our beloved Olive, One of the many youthful victims of "A Settled System"', a dedication very much against the land settlement scheme. Indeed, the whole theory that Mhudi is a model for 1918 can be checked by reference to pages 105 to 111 of Native Life, where the whole background plot of Mhudi is specifically recounted as leading up to and foreshadowing the Land Act.

What makes the behaviour of the Boers worse is the hospitality and generosity with which they are originally received by the Africans, in Mhudi and, according to Plaatje, in history. The leader of the Korannas for instance, says that for any man who enters his dominion: 'My home is his home, my lands are his lands, my cattle are his cattle, and my law is his shield.' And when the Boers arrive 'the Baralongs informed the Boers that the country round about was wide and there was plenty of land for all'. The Boers' hospitality does not show up well when Ra-Thaga tries to drink water from a vessel in the Boers' camp. Not only has the Boers' subsequent behaviour shown ingratitude towards original hospitality but it is shown to be even worse: for in Mhudi they even plead for help from the Baralong when hard-pressed by the Matabele. Their subsequent unification with the Baralong and Griquas against the Matabele also has its ulterior motive. 'Of course,' explains Plaatje in Native Life, 'Boers could not be expected to participate in any adventure which did not immediately lead to land grabbing.' The land question is not only vital in itself; it leads to another important problem, that of labour. As I have remarked, it has been a frequent device in South African history to cure labour problems by the confiscating of land, and allowing the Africans nothing to sell but their labour. This labour problem, too, has its model in Mhudi in the Boers' treatment of their Hottentot servants, as in the following episode:

Outside one of the huts close by she observed a grizzly old Boer who started to give a Hottentot maid some thunder and lightning with his tongue. Of course Mhudi could not understand a word: but the harangue sounded positively terrible and its effect upon the maid was unmistakable. She felt that the Hottentot's position was unenviable, but more was to come. An old lady sitting near a fire behind the wagon took sides against the maid. The episode which began rather humorously developed quickly into a tragedy. The old lady pulled a poker out of the fire and beat the half naked girl with the hot iron. The unfortunate maid screamed, jumped away and writhed with pain as she tried to escape. A stalwart young Boer caught hold of the screaming girl and brought her back to the old dame, who had now left the fireplace and stood beside a vice near the waggon. The young man pressed the head of the Hottentot girl against the vice; the old lady pulled her left ear between the two irons, then screwed the jaws of the vice tightly upon the poor girl's ear. Mhudi looked at Phil's mother, but, so far from showing any concern on behalf of the sufferer, she went about her own domestic business as though nothing at all unusual was taking place. The screams of the girl attracted several Dutch men and women who looked as though they enjoyed the sickly sight.

'Africa,' Plaatje writes in Native Life, 'is a land of prophets and prophetesses.' And the idea of Mhudi being a model for a future time fits neatly into the prophetic strain of much of the work. In fact, in a crucial prophecy, Mzilikazi specifically points to it. In one of Plaatje's most interesting and skilful adaptations of an oral literature technique, Mzilikazi takes a folktale from the past and says it applies to his own fate. He then says that his own story applies to the Baralong in the future:

The Bechuana know not the story of Zungu of old. Remember him, my people; he caught a lion's whelp and thought that, if he fed it with milk of his cows, he would in due course possess a useful mastiff to help him in hunting valuable specimens of wild beasts. The cub grew up, apparently tame and meek just like an ordinary domestic puppy; but one day Zungu came home and found, what? It had eaten his children, chewed up two of his wives, and in destroying it, he himself narrowly escaped being mauled. So, if Tauana and his gang of brigands imagine that they shall have rain and plenty under the protection of these marauding wizards from the sea, they will gather some sense before long.

Chaka served us just as treacherously. Where is Chaka's dynasty now? Extinguished, by the very Boers who poisoned my wives and are pursuing us to-day. The Bechuana are fools to think that these unnatural Kiwas will return their so-called friendship with honest friendship. Together they are laughing at my misery. Let them rejoice; they need all the laughter they can have to-day for when their deliverers begin to dose them with the same bitter medicine they prepared for me; when the Kiwas rob them of their cattle, their children and their lands, they will weep their eyes out of their sockets and get left with only their empty throats to squeal in vain for mercy.

They will despoil them of the very lands they have rendered unsafe for us; they will entice the Bechuana youths to war and the chase, only to use them as pack-oxen; yea, they will refuse to share with them the spoils of victory. They will turn Bechuana women into beasts of burden to drag their loaded wagons to their granaries, …

The folktale is seen as a model for Mzilikazi, and Mzilikazi in Mhudi is seen as a model for the twentieth-century black South African. Thus the folktale here is used not merely for its quaintness but for its model-like functions, a use which illuminates the technique of the whole novel.

There is a further and, I think, conclusive proof of this model-like function of the novel. Implicit in the model of Mhudi is the warning that, if a people like the Matabele oppress other peoples long enough, the oppressed will eventually unite and overthrow their oppressor, in open conflict if necessary—that such oppressors are, in a phrase from Native Life, 'courting retribution'. The whites are being warned in Mhudi that the kind of thing they are doing, as described in Native Life, could lead to ultimate revolution. What confirms it, I think, is his use of Halley's comet. Halley's comet appeared in 1835, and, though the Matabele were only driven out of the Transvaal at the beginning of 1837, Plaatje has conflated time so that the comet appears immediately before the Matabele exodus and is heralded by a 'witch-doctor' as presaging disaster:

Picking up his bones once more, he cast them down in different positions, and repeating the operation a few times, he critically examined the lay of every piece and, having praised his bones again, he said 'Away in the distance I can see a mighty star in the skies with a long white tail stretching almost across the heavens. Wise men have always said that such a star is the harbinger of diseases of men and beasts, wars and the overthrow of governments as well as the death of princes. Within the rays of the tail of this star, I can clearly see streams of tears and rivers of blood.' Having praised his bones once more, the wizard proceeded: 'I can see the mighty throne of Mzilikazi floating across the crimson stream, and reaching a safe landing on the opposite bank. I also perceive clear indications of death and destruction among rulers and commoners but no death seems marked out for Mzilikazi, ruler of the ground and of the clouds.'

Here probably is another reason why Plaatje chose the 1830s. For the next time Halley's comet appeared was in 1910, and it was specifically interpreted by many millenarian movements as heralding the overthrow of the whites (in the quotation above Plaatje uses the phrase 'overthrow of governments'). Not only that, but there were strong millenarian movements of this kind amongst the Baralong, which, as editor of a Sechuana newspaper and living in the area, Plaatje must have known about. The Rhodesia Herald newspaper reported events from Kimberley on the 18 April 1910. (Taungs is a town in the very heart of the country of the northern Baralong; it means 'place of the Lion' and is named after the great Baralong chief of the eighteenth century, Tau, mentioned in Mhudi. From his sons sprang the various sub-groupings of the tribe):

There are again rumours of unrest among the natives of Taungs, where it is stated two stores have been burned and a native, who was flogged as a result of the last disturbances, has been arrested for preaching sedition, the natives being told that when the comet appears is the time for wiping out the white man. The available police in Vryberg and Mafeking have been drafted to the district. Inquiry is being made into the truth of the statements going round.

This report tells of the persistence of the disturbance, the scale of it (to require so many police), and the unrepentant quality of its participants. The disturbances, which became known as the 'Bechuana Scare', continued. A report from Kimberley on 25 April went thus:

The Advertiser's Taungs correspondent reports that another native prophet has been arrested at Mogopella by the native headman. There is still one more prophet at large, but the police are vigilant.

In the same paper there is a further report:

The special correspondent of The Advertiser at Taungs, in the course of a review on the position in Bechuanaland says the sentences of five and six-and-a-half years' hard labour on the two natives last October for seditious teaching have evidently not had a salutary effect. To deal with the problem he suggests (I) that the chief and headmen be called together to a meeting at which should be impressed upon them their paramount duty of discouraging by every legitimate means seditious teaching; (2) a meeting should be called of all native missionaries, evangelists, and teachers in the affected area who should be appealed to to counteract the effect of seditious and superstitious teaching; (3) a strong, well-paid and efficient corps of native detectives should be organized and used to the utmost possible extent.

That the effect of Halley's comet was widespread and persistent and was interpreted as presaging the end of the white man is confirmed by events in 1921.

The second train of events involved the 'Israelites'. Gathered around their religious leaders on Bullhoek commonage near Queenstown, they had been deeply impressed by the appearance of Halley's comet and accepted this as a sign to abandon the New Testament as the invention of the white man. Returning to the Old Testament, they became fanatically indifferent to the threat of modern weapons in the belief that Jehovah was about to liberate his chosen people from the foreign yoke. After repeated warnings to abandon their recently erected huts and return to their various villages, and after leading congressmen had backed this up with a plea that they obey and avoid impending violence from the State, a strong police contingent was despatched to assert government authority. When the Israelites charged with home-made weapons, 171 were shot dead.

This prophetic concern of Plaatje's may also be influenced by the ideas of Marcus Garvey.

The final question to be asked is what is Plaatje's solution. The revolutionary solution is to be tried as a last resort only, it seems. The prior hope lies in what is symbolized by the womenfolk. Plaatje shows himself in his writings to be fully aware of the female emancipation issue, which critics who have condemned his Europeanizing of his characters have not taken enough account of. The old life has been partially destroyed in Mhudi, a woman is thrown out into the wilderness on her own and she acquires an independence manifested in her ability to face lions and other dangers. Mhudi herself is a symbol of the pride and spirit of her people, and circumstances have forced her into a measure of independence. She is the 'cradle of the race', as sceptical of the Boers as she is of the Matabele. On the individual level she comes to friendship with the women who are symbols of what is virtuous in the other peoples—Umnandi, favourite wife of Mzilikazi (significantly this first lady of the children-slayers is childless) and Annetje, the Boer girl. By splitting the friendship of the individuals from the hostility of the people for one another, Plaatje has been able to give us a glimpse of the possible ideal as well as a view of the real situation. His final warning seems to be contained in an opinion quoted from the Brotherhood Journal: 'For Brotherhood is not only between man and man, but between nation and nation, race and race.' In a prize-winning essay written late in 1910 and published in the Johannesburg Chronicle (it is otherwise unpublished), Plaatje considered the desirability of the separation or segregation of races and came to the conclusion it was desirable but impossible. The events since the 1830s had led to an 'economic interdependence' (to use a phrase of Peter Walshe's) which was unalterable and irrevocable. In the final passage of the essay he considers first the self-governing black state, then he rejects its possibility and directs his plea to South African liberalism (reflecting something of the naivety of the early Congress leaders), advocating only the banning of the bar and the side-bar.

They [the blacks] will not pay any taxes unless, as in Basutoland, the money is devoted solely for their use. This will result in a net loss to the Union Treasury of £2,000,000 annually and a large sum to the respective municipalities. Europeans will make the rude discovery that the Kafir was handy not only as a water carrier, but as the gold mine from which local and general exchequers drew heavily and paid the fancy salaries which helped to educate white children and keep white families in comfort. Millions of money now circulating amongst Europeans will be withdrawn to pay black officials and feed black storekeepers; the effect whereof will be wholesale dismissal of many white men, and then the trouble will begin. Oh, no! earlier still, for I am sure that when you tell the traders of the Transkei to relinquish their holdings and seek fresh pastures in white areas, they are not the Englishmen I took them for if they do not resist the order at the point of a bayonet. The ideal is sound, but how will you attain it? … Two things you need to give the native, and two things only must you deny him. Keep him away from liquor and lawyers; give him the franchise and your confidence, and the problem will solve itself to your mutual advantage.

Plaatje's plea is initially to reason, but if reason fails, there is his prediction.