SENKATANA, African Treasury Series no. 12

105pp., paperback, New Edition, Johannesburg, (1952) 2021

A play based on a Basotho legend. Text in Sesotho.

Includes a new introduction in both Sesotho and English by Mike Mahase.

Essayist and dramatist S. Machabe Mofokeng was born in 1923 in Fouriesburg in the Eastern Free State. In 1944 he was appointed as part-time Language Assistant in the Department of Bantu Studies at the University of the Witwatersrand and the following year became a full-time Junior Language Assistant. Senkatana, and the volume of essays, Leetong: On pilgrimage, were published in 1952. In 1954 he became the first scholar in South Africa to receive a PhD in Sesotho from the University. He died from tuberculosis in 1957. A collection of essays and autobiographical writings, Pelong Ya Ka, was published posthumously.