Pelong ya Ka (Paperback)

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.