Convening Black Sociability Over a Corpse: Obituaries in the Early South African Black Press

This article explores the significance of obituaries in the early 20th-century black press in South Africa, particularly focusing on how they served as a medium for memorializing black excellence within a context of colonization and oppression. Through textual and discourse analysis of obituaries that appeared in Solomon T. Plaatje’s newspapers Koranta ea Becoana and Tsala ea Becoana , the study explores how these tributes functioned as sites of resistance against historical erasure and affirmed black agency. This is done, in part, in the context of the global cosmological phenomenon of Halley’s Comet in 1910. The research situates obituary writing within the broader framework of memory, oral tradition, and entextualization, demonstrating how editorial choices and narrative structures elevated exemplary individuals as role models amidst systemic oppression. The findings reveal that these obituaries not only preserved collective memory but also actively contested colonial narratives by asserting black subjectivity and personhood. The study concludes by advocating for the inclusion of such commemorative texts in historical inquiry, recognizing their significance in the ongoing struggle for narrative authority and identity formation.