On Mahikeng’s Martin Street throngs of traders and workers walk daily past a painting of Solomon Plaatje, the town’s most famous literary citizen. It is one of the last remaining pieces of history in a fast-changing town; that change isn’t positive. With chronic unemployment and failing infrastructure Mahikeng, the capital of South Africa’s North West Province, has come to resemble the collapse of so many of the country’s towns. Plaatje is the only thing about the town that still feels intact.

The Mahikeng Museum wall is one of several places where his face is immortalized in paint. On the walls of the Lotlamoreng Cultural Village in Magogoe Village, a few kilometers out of town, he occupies his place amongst the great tribal chiefs of the Barolong Bo-RraTshidi, Mahikeng’s founding tribe. Plaatje wears a formal black blazer and white shirt complete with a bow tie; it is a colonial image that attempts to appeal to the town’s conservative residents. But if the idea behind painting the image of Plaatje is to provoke some form of patriotism and pride in the town’s history the results are often the opposite.