SOLOMON TSHEKISHO PLAATJE, Morata Baabo

135pp., illus., paperback, Midrand, 2022

Text in Serolong, a dialect of Setswana. 

A biography of Sol Plaatje written by Seetsele Modiri Molema, who died shortly after submitting the manuscript to Botswana Book Centre.

When Molema was seven years old, Plaatje, who had accepted a job as a court interpreter in Mafikeng, was invited by Molema’s father to stay with them. Their friendship lasted until Plaatje’s death.

In 2012, the manuscript, held in the University of the Witwatersrand archives, was translated into English by DS Matjila and Karin Haire and published as Lover of His People: A biography of Sol Plaatje.

Medical doctor Seetsele Modiri Molema (1891-1965) completed his medical degree at the University of Glasgow in 1919, and lived in Dublin, Ireland, where he wrote Bantu Past and Present: An ethnographic and history study of the native races of South Africa (1920). He later returned to Mafikeng where he worked as a doctor.