Twin Obligations in Solomon Plaatje's Diphosho-phosho

Since its publication in 1930, Solomon Plaatje’s Diphosho-phosho ¹ has been the subject of ongoing critical discussion and debate. Attention has focused on the play’s relevance to Plaatje’s early struggles with English colonial control in South Africa. Plaatje’s towering status in twentieth-century South African political and literary history ² has affected and effected diverse responses to the play, which have, nonetheless, been unified in their reliance on the biographical details of Plaatje’s life for their critical grounding. Plaatje’s staunch supporters have lauded Diphoshophosho’s landmark status in South African literature and for Setswana orthography because of Plaatje’s successful retranslation of Shakespeare’s The Comedy of Errors into Setswana. He has been praised for restoring Shakespeare’s “universal” appeal to Batswana audiences. These critics see Diphosho-phosho as championing the cause of the Batswana people in the wake of Plaatje’s unsuccessful attempts to urge the English to repeal the Natives’ Land Act of 1916 and to challenge the homogenization ³ of local Setswana dialect and orthography ⁴ by the English Committee on Orthography. ⁵ As part of his work for the South African ANC, Plaatje had traveled throughout South Africa in the winter of 1913, recording the dire consequences of the Act on the lives of black South Africans. When the English delegation returned home to England, Plaatje stayed in London for more than 2 years in order to see his account of these experiences put in print and to bring the plight of his people to the attention of the British public. ⁶