The carrier of Setswana legacy

Sabata Mpho Mokae has become a well esteemed Setswana writer

By:  Onalenna Jantjie

Kimberly- award winning Setswana Author Sabata Mpho Mokae has undoubtedly managed to make an ineffaceable mark in the world of literature. As a creative lecturer at Sol Plaatje University, Sabata not only teaches the art of creative writing but he also encourages his students to write in their first language.  “Setswana language introduced life and the world to me; it defined human relationships before English came to disrupt that. It is beautiful. It is idiomatic. Each proverb and idiom is a granary of wisdom, not ancient wisdom but wisdom that can be applied in today’s life,” he said

He says it is a pity so see many black people, mainly educated blacks who have abandoned African languages for English and other European languages. “Many of them even prefer their children to speak these European languages. At school African languages are also relegated to ‘additional first language’ status. I battle to understand how an African child’s own language becomes his additional first language. Only Gods and the education authorities know. This I believe is based on a flawed argument that the ability to speak European languages is the indication of sophistication, of one’s attainment of education,” he said.

Mokae believes that each language is imperative. “A language is a way of knowing, of seeing the world and interpreting life. When one can understand and speak more than one language it means one has more than one way of knowing, of viewing the world and interpreting life.  Abandoning that means being unfair to one self. It means losing access to a massive archive,” explains Mokae. Speaking on where he learnt the art of storytelling Mokae gives credit to his family for having imparted the love of storytelling unto him.

“Telling stories around the fire was a norm at home. My late grandmother would tell me stories of her early adulthood in Sophia town while my grandfather loved narrating stories of Lesotho and the Free State Goldfields,” he said adding that he discovered his love for story telling at school.

“I don’t remember at what age or time did I start telling stories but the first time I wrote stories was when I was writing ‘compositions’ at school. I had fun doing that in both English and Setswana. To his day, I still have lots of fun creating and telling stories.”  Fusing the oral storytelling with the so-called modern literature is his ideal writing style. “I am the inheritor of both Setswana and English storytelling traditions – one suckled from my mother’s breast and another one having violently entered my life.

My stories, though told mainly in an African language and tapping into an African idiom, are urban and post-apartheid. But they, I would like to think, are globally relevant too. I have the certitude that Black activist in Brooklyn, New York will find my work relevant if she reads it in English,” he explained. When asked about the message he tries to bring across in his books Mokae said: “Readers take whatever they can out of my books. I tell stories of the times I am living in. I think there are multiple messages in the stories, some obvious and some not so obvious.”