African Treasury

For nearly a decade Nontsizi Mgqwetho contributed poetry to a Johannesburg newspaper, Umteteli wa Bantu, the first and only female poet to produce a substantial body of work in isiXhosa. Apart from what is revealed in these writings, very little is known about her life. She explodes on the scene with her swaggering, urgent, confrontational woman's poetry on 23 October 1920, sends poems to the newspaper regularly throughout the three years from 1924 to 1926, withdraws for two years until two final poems appear in December 1928 and January 1929, then disappears into the shrouding silence she first burst from. Nothing more is heard from her, but the poetry she left immediately claims for her the status of one of the greatest literary artists ever to write in isiXhosa, an anguished voice of an urban woman confronting male dominance, ineffective leadership, black apathy, white malice and indifference, economic exploitation and a tragic history of nineteenth-century territorial and cultural dispossession. The Nation's Bounty contains the original poems alongside English translations by Jeff Opland. It was the first of a number of new titles planned for release in the African Treasury Series, a premier collection of texts by South Africa's pioneers of African literature and written in indigenous languages. First published by Wits University Press in the 1940s, the series provided a voice for the voiceless and celebrated African culture, history and heritage. It continues to make a contribution by supporting current efforts to empower and develop the status of African languages in South Africa.

Senkatana, a Sesotho play first published in 1952 in the Bantu (later, African) Treasury Series by the University of the Witwatersrand Press, contextualises an old Basotho legend, passed down for many centuries by word of mouth. Mofokeng may have heard it from his grandmother, as storytelling was the task of grandmothers. The play was written during the time of apartheid, a challenging era in the history of South Africa when people were divided by race and forced to live separately from one another. The legend of Senkatana concerns a monster called Kgodumodumo which swallowed all the people and animals that lived, except for one pregnant woman who gave birth to a baby boy and named him Senkatana. When the boy became a young man, he killed Kgodumodumo and saved all the people and animals. The people were very grateful and made him their king, but not too long afterwards they killed him, at the instigation of a member of their society whose wife wanted to settle a family score. Mofokeng tells the story in dramatic form, allowing the perspectives of the opposing characters to be voiced through a range of subsidiary characters: the protagonist, Senkatana, is supported by three other characters, and Bulane, the antagonist, is urged on by his wife, Mmadiepetsane, supported by others, to kill the king. This drama, apart from telling a story, also portrays something about the life of Mofokeng, a committed Christian who believed that those who fight against justice are eventually defeated by it.

Pelong ya ka is a volume of twenty essays and stories written by Sophonia Machabe Mofokeng and first published in 1962 in the Bantu (later, African) Treasury Series by the University of the Witwatersrand Press. In his short life Mofokeng, an expert on African folklore, was also regarded as a gifted exponent of African languages, in particular Southern Sesotho, and this assessment is still valid today. The essays and stories in this collection are largely autobiographical, with the author being both the writer and the main character in them. Their style is in turn meditative, descriptive, narrative and polemic, and the tone of voice of the narrator is characterised by melancholy, humour and satire. The themes span a wide range of human experiences, and reflect Mofokeng's deep personal convictions and passion for freedom, as well as his Christian beliefs . As he says in 'Nako' ('Time'), 'we are worried because we want to live for a long time, as if the most important thing is to live for many decades, but the fact is that we must live our life to the fullest'. His descriptions of his time spent in hospital are filled with insights into the experiences of the patients, doctors and workers he met there, and reflect his gift for observing the details of everyday life, and recounting them with both depth and simplicity.