SENKATANA, translated from Sesotho by JM Lenoke

88pp., paperback, First English Language Edition, Cape Town, 2018

"This book forms part of a series of eight texts and a larger translation endeavour undertaken by the Centre for Multilingualism and Diversities Research (CMDR) at the University of the Western Cape."

This play was originally published in Sesotho in 1952.

"How can people in pursuit of social justice save themselves from their own evils? In this play, which he published in 1952, four years after the system of apartheid was established, Sophoni Machabe Mofokeng throws this vital question at contemporary South Africans from his grave. Decades after South Africans created a visionary constitutional democracy on the hot ashes of apartheid, Mofokeng's question will haunt them with the brilliant prescience of a twenty-nine year old seer, a gifted dramatist. In Senkatana, Mofokeng grounds the search for an answer to this potentially redeeming question in a popular legend, exploring its capacity to peer deeply into the human condition." Professor Njabulo Ndebele, former Vice-Chancellor and Principal of the University of Cape Town and author of Fools and Other Stories