CELEBRATING FIFTY YEARS OF SOL PLAATJE'S MAFEKING DIARY.

2023 marks the fiftieth anniversary of the first publication of Sol Plaatje's Mafeking Diary, one of the best-known episodes of the South African War of 1899-1902. This article sets out the reasons why this should be celebrated. We look at how Plaatje's diary came to be written, at the ideas and assumptions that Plaatje brought to the task of writing it, and we describe its most important qualities and characteristics. Why is it that, compared with his other writings, Plaatje's diary has been relatively neglected and under-appreciated? We look for the answers in the inclination of historians to approach the diary as a source of evidence rather than as a work in its own right; of literary scholars to focus on literary forms more familiar than the indeterminate genre of the diary; and the way in which the weight of subsequent South African history has made it difficult for a wider reading public to appreciate the nuances of a work written over a century ago. We argue that the Diary needs to be understood in the context of the particular circumstances of the late nineteenth-century Cape Colony, and that it should be celebrated and enjoyed--as a piece of writing of the highest order. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]