While still at the post office, and before taking up his work as a translator and interpreter, Plaatje hurried to Mahikeng to see his father who had moved to the area and had set up a cattle post in Ditlharapa near Mahikeng.

INCORPORATION OF BRITISH BECHUANALAND INTO CAPE COLONY

It was exactly at that time that the Cape Colony parliamentarians Sir Hercules Robinson, Cecil Rhodes and Sidney Sheppard visited Montshiwa (the Barolong kgosi), and Mankurwane (the Batlhapa kgosi), to persuade and prevail on them to annex their land of British Bechuanaland to the Cape Colony. At that time the dikgosi did not know what annexation would mean but they agreed, and immediately thereafter changed their minds, then agreed again, all because of conflicting and confusing discussions and advice. Plaatje spoke against Barolong land being annexed to white land but because he was only eighteen years of age they did not heed him and let the whites do what they liked with the land. They only realised much later that they had been deceived, and cheated of their land.

DELEGATION TO SEEK BRITISH PROTECTION

Around the same time, in 1895, the dikgosi Sebele, Kgama and Bathoeng of Bechuanaland (the northern Batswana) went to London to ask Queen Victoria to stop Rhodes, who was determined to annex their land to the chartered company's land which he had taken from the Matabele. Montshiwa had the idea of sending his son Besele to join the delegation from Bechuanaland to request nullification of the annexation of his people's land at Mahikeng to the Cape Colony.

JAMESON RAID

Other momentous events happened while Plaatje was in Mahikeng. In one fell swoop of trickery and treachery, Dr Jameson, friend of Rhodes, gathered to himself soldiers, cannons, guns, bullets and horses on Silas Molema's farm at Mabete or Pitsana Phatloko. Then, at the end of December, he declared war and attacked the place of gold, Gauteng, claiming that he wanted to liberate his fellow English from Paul Kruger and the discriminatory laws of the Transvaal government. Unfortunately, when they were close to Krugersdorp the Boers ambushed them, arresting Jameson and his forces. Rinderpest outbreak When Plaatje returned to Kimberley there was a rinderpest outbreak. It was in the year 1896 that the rinderpest struck, starting in the north.