The works of Bennett Makalo Khaketla

(MENAFN- The Post) B.M. Khaketla was arguably the most significant writer from Lesotho after Thomas Mofolo. I realise this is a difficult call, and many readers will be asking 'But what about [author of choice]?'

There is, of course, David Cranmer Theko Bereng, whose 3 000 line poetry sequence Lithothokiso tsa Moshoeshoe le tse Ling (The Poems of Moshoeshoe and others) of 1931 is a beautiful work and a highly influential one, displaying great stamina and poetic imagination. Although Bereng lived until 1973 Lithothokiso remained his only work. Other major writers such as A S Mopeli-Paulus and Zakes Mda had very strong affiliations with Lesotho, but are classified as South African.

Having said that, the distinction between Basotho writers from Lesotho and those from South Africa is, of course, a tenuous one. In a few weeks' time I shall be reviewing in these pages the play Senkatana, an English translation of which has, like Khaketla's novel Mosali a Nkhola (She's to Blame), recently been published in the African Pulse series. The author of the play, S M Mofokeng, was born in Fouriesburg in the Free State and spent his working life in Johannesburg, but to all intents and purposes his play reads as the work of an author from Lesotho.

But back to Bennett Makalo Khaketla. He was a relatively prolific writer, publishing two novels, three plays and a poetry collection. As a public figure, he was a member of the Executive Committee of the Basutoland National Congress and a member of the Executive Council of Lesotho. And in the 1950s he founded and edited a newspaper, Mohlabani (The Warrior). Perhaps more than the other authors I have mentioned he can be thought of as a creative writer and also as a public intellectual.

Writing in the essay collection Translating Mofolo and regretting the lack of translations of texts in southern African languages, Antjie Krog has asked 'What hoards of wisdom are in effect locked away from Southern Africans who cannot read or hear a particular language?' And words of wisdom, sheaves of ideas, are what we expect from a public intellectual such as Khaketla.

I happen to know that when Khaketla died, he left behind a carton of unpublished manuscripts and notes that, when assembled and edited, would form an autobiography. This is a task that really should be carried out, as the resulting book would form an important addition to Lesotho's literary corpus and to the history of ideas. Let readers bear in mind the word 'ideas' when next week I turn to review the recent English translation of Mosali a Nkhola.

Regarding Khaketla's work as newspaper founder and editor, my insights are largely second-hand (note to thepost: please don't reduce my fee on that account). Some years ago, together with Molefi Mokuku, I did a lot of work on the earlier Lesotho newspapers Naledi ea Lesotho and Mochochonono, but I have never studied Mohlabani systematically.

I shall quote just one of Khaketla's editorials, which clearly shows him as an African nationalist, at least to some extent influenced by the writings of Frantz Fanon, and one concerned with the role of African intellectuals in the continent's anti-colonial and revolutionary movements.

This is from 1957, the year of Ghana's independence, which spearheaded decolonisation across sub-Saharan Africa. Khaketla notes: 'The victory of Nkrumah and Ghana is a victory for the whole of Black Africa, and for that reason we wish him double success in everything he undertakes, for his failures will be the failures of Black Africa, and his success will be the success of Black Africa.'

An inspiring but also poignant piece. Nkrumah's achievement did, of course, set up a beacon for Africa. But there was also failure, in Nkrumah's later heavy-handed concentration of executive power. And there was his entrapment in the ruthless machinations of the Cold War powers. At the same time, when the relevant issue of Mohlabani hit the news-stands one would have loved to have seen the faces of the censors across the border in apartheid South Africa. In another useful 'up yours' gesture to the South African authorities, Khaketla had his paper publish the complete text of the Freedom Charter.

One of the thumbnail sketches I have seen of Khaketla refers to his 'remarkable grasp of international politics as well as of the interrelationship between culture and politics.' This is fine, as long as we treat the word 'culture' with great caution, especially bearing in mind the fact that the stuff it refers to shifts and changes all the time.

On that note, an account of Khaketla's novel Mosali a Nkhola by T Selepe in the Cambridge History of South African Literature ends by referring to the dilemmas explored in the novel and summarises them by saying 'this is in short what deculturation amounts to.' With all respect to Professor Selepe, the novel doesn't seem to me to be at all about deculturation. As to what I think it is about, readers will have to wait until next week, when I review the novel's recently published English translation.

Chris Dunton

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