Mukurukuru Media’s arts and heritage writer Mokgadi-Mogy Mashako reflects on award-winning author and academic Sabata-Mpho Mokae’s latest work – a powerful historical novel that revisits one of South Africa’s darkest chapters, the 1913 Native Land Act.
Released on June 20, 2025, Lefatshe ke la Badimo (The Land Belongs to the Ancestors), published by Xarra Books, tells the story of the Kgobadi family, who are forcibly removed from their ancestral land and forced to bury their young daughter secretly as they seek a place to grieve and rebuild.
Along their journey, they encounter Solomon Plaatje, the writer and political activist who documented the trauma of land dispossession in his seminal work Native Life in South Africa.
“This land doesn’t belong to anyone privately — it belongs to all of us. It is handed down from generation to generation. My hope is that we begin to understand land not just as an economic issue, but one deeply tied to dignity and belonging,” Mokae told Mukurukuru Media.
He wishes that through the characters in Lefatshe ke la Badimo, people will see at close range how the Native Land Act affected individual families, just like the family in his novel.
“None of us was naturally living in a township. Townships were set up as labour reservoirs and we had nowhere else to go. We ended up in townships, but that’s not where we belong. We did not even create them. We are kept in pockets of land, and the bigger portion was taken away,” he said.
The 48-year-old author notes that many South African families have their loved ones buried far away from where they live due to the land issue. On the last day on the farm, the characters in the book are chased away and go to the graveyard to symbolically bid farewell to the three generations that came before them, as they may never see them again.
The novel’s release coincides with the 112th anniversary of Plaatje’s famous words, written on the morning of June 20, 1913: “The South African Native found himself, not actually a slave, but a pariah in the land of his birth.”
“So, it is my hope that people will see the gravity of being landless… nobody deserves to be landless in the country where you are born,” reflected Mokae.
“I hope it adds to the debate about land ownership in South Africa, but that we start seeing the land beyond the economy,” Mokae stated.
The book is his latest exploration of land, language, and memory, themes that run through his body of work, from his debut novel Dikeledi and The Story of Sol T. Plaatje, a biography of the man who remains his literary and ideological luminary.
“Sol Plaatje’s work opened my eyes,” Mokae reflected. “When I read African literature, I try to imagine each story in Setswana and thus I read it slowly… eventually I read the story in my language.”
Mokae’s admiration for Plaatje (who was the first black South African to translate Shakespeare into an African language and the founder of one of the earliest vernacular newspapers, Koranta ea Becoana) is more than academic.
It informs Mokae’s own decision to write and teach in Setswana, a choice that stands out in a country where, despite having 11 official languages, English still dominates literary and academic spaces.
As a lecturer at Sol Plaatje University in Kimberley, Mokae teaches creative writing and African literature in both English and Setswana.
“Language is a set of eyes through which I interpret and understand the world,” he said.
His commitment to Setswana also honours his late uncle, Dr Gomolemo Mokae, a political activist, writer, and medical doctor who was murdered earlier this year in Ga-Rankuwa.
Dr Mokae’s novel Masego, based on the 1976 student uprisings, became a Grade 12 setwork. He was a vocal supporter of mother-tongue education, storytelling, and access to healthcare for the poor.
In 2011, Mokae won his first award, the South African Literary Award for Journalism, a milestone that helped cement his literary standing.
“It was a stamp of approval. But I also asked myself: would this be the last time? Would I be a one-hit wonder?”
Instead, he has gone on to become one of the country’s most respected Setswana-language authors. Over the years, Mokae has published a range of literary works that span genres and audiences. His second novel, Ga Ke Modisa, offered a reflection on leadership, morality, and greed in a rural setting. His poetry, essays, and short stories have appeared in numerous publications, further broadening his contribution to South African literature.
Mokae’s work resonates in a country still grappling with the legacies of colonial land dispossession.
A 2025 report by Statistics South Africa titled Cultural Dynamics in South Africa shows that 72.8% of people in the North West province speak Setswana, a staggering number, considering neighbouring Botswana does not offer the language at senior certificate level. He believes South Africa’s 11 official languages present a unique opportunity to protect linguistic heritage.
With Lefatshe ke la Badimo, Mokae adds to an already impressive body of work that blends historical inquiry, cultural memory, and linguistic pride. As the country continues to interrogate questions of land, identity, and justice, his voice remains a steady reminder that language and story are part of what makes a nation whole.
news@mukurukuru.co.za
