‘Through dustless tracks’ for African rights: Narrative currents and political imaginaries of Solomon Plaatje’s 1914 sea voyage

Abstract

Remmington provides a rich analysis of black South African journalist Solomon Plaatje’s under-studied sea narrative written en route to imperial London as part of the African National Congress’s 1914 deputation to protest against the Natives’ Land Act. The chapter, drawing in part on Gilroyan and Foucauldian conceptualisations, examines Plaatje’s figuring of the open seascape, the integrated ship and an idealised cosmopolitan destination as symbolic of freedoms across colour lines against the backdrop of South Africa’s increasingly racially constrained socio-political landscape. It explores Plaatje’s navigation through the darker historical and metaphorical territory of the ocean-slavery, colonial conquest and shipwrecks-and his negotiation of maritime domains claimed by white mastery-management of seasickness, time and travel. Published in South African newspapers, the narrative situates Plaatje’s maritime journey as part of a larger mission for African rights at home and within the imaginary of a ‘world empire’.