Plotting South African History: Narrative in Sol Plaatje's Mhudi1

Abstract

Sol Plaatje's Mhudi can be read at several different levels, most obviously as an historical novel reconstructing events which had happened nearly century before.2 No historical novel, however, deals simply with the past, for its author commands the benefits of hindsight which knows the present consequences of past actions. In Mhudi contemporary South African politics are implicitly and explicitly present in the account of the rise and fall of Mzilikazi's Transvaal kingdom and therefore the novel observes some of the conventional effects of the historical novel. Mhudi is, however, far from being conventional narrative. The novel is curiously disjunctive, with multiple narrators, odd shifts of tone and no very clear resolution to the issues the narrative raises. Plaatje described Mhudi as: a love story after the manner of romances;