About Pricks and thorns: segregation and land legislation in sol Plaatje works, 1902-1930

• Grant number: 12/21160-3
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships abroad - Research Internship - Doctorate
• Start date: March 25, 2013
• End date: September 24, 2013
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - History - Modern and Contemporary History
• Principal Investigator: Omar Ribeiro Thomaz
• Grantee: Raquel Gryszczenko Alves Gomes
• Supervisor: José C. Curto
• Host Institution: Instituto de Filosofia e Ciências Humanas (IFCH). Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP). Campinas , SP, Brazil
• Institution abroad: York University, Canada
• Associated to the scholarship: 10/09779-2 - About pricks and thorns: segregation and land legislation in Sol Plaatjes works, 1902-1930, BP.DR

Abstract

Exploring the literary and political works of Sol Plaatje - South African writer, journalist and politician - it's my intention to establish the impacts of a legislation that, starting from 1902, was focused on controlling the social and political participation of the native in the Union of South Africa, intensifying the segregationist character of the recently built national state. Beyond the political and literary works of Plaatje, my analysis also covers official sources - particularly a series of reports produced by commissions that were created to study the South African native, establishing thus the means to restric the native participation in South African politics. In the imbrication of these sources - literature, political writing, press and oficial sources - my aim is to reveal the organization of political and social resistance to the segregation policies particularly through the work of an intellectual network exposing to the world the native situation in the Union of South Africa. I concentrate my argument on the debates around the elaboration and promulgation of the 1913 Natives' Land Act - an act that, despite having almost a hundred years, still remains a tension in the South African historiography. Besides, it is also my purpose to establish the articulation of what I call a "transatlantic intelectual network" between South Africa, the United States and Canada, debating the influences of W. E. B. Du Bois and Marcus Garvey's theories on the political and literary production of Sol Plaatje, as well as in the politics of segregation resistance in South Africa. (AU)