Abstract
Using Sol Plaatje as a representative figure and his Native Life in South Africa as its primary text, this article explores the political and ethical imperatives that informed the act of writing amongst the first generation of African writers in South Africa. Native Life in South Africa was written as an appeal to the British government and public to denounce the passing of the Land Act of 1913 and the book is a fascinating manifestation of the layered aims, ambiguities and paradoxes that inhere in petitioning. The article examines the petition as a genre that allows Plaatje to inscribe his imagined multiple readers of the text and their mutual obligations to each other. The act of petitioning also allows Plaatje to engage in modes of self-definition that include a critique of colonial modernity and laying claim to his status as a modern African.