Revisiting Sol Plaatje’s Mafeking Diary: Reconsideration and restoration

Sabata-mpho Mokae is an academic and writer who teaches Creative Writing at Sol Plaatje University in Kimberley. He writes in both Setswana and in English. He is the author of The Story of Sol T. Plaatje (SPET, 2010) and the prize-winning novels Ga ke Modisa (Oxford University Press, 2012), Dikeledi (Oxford University Press, 2014) and Moletlo wa Msnong (Xarra Books, 2018). He also co-edited, with Brian Willan, Sol Plaatje’s Mhudi: History, criticism, celebration (Jacana, 2020), and Sol T. Plaatje: A life in letters (HiPSA, 2020), which won the National Institute for the Humanities and Social Sciences and South African Literary awards respectively.
Brian Willan is an Extraordinary Professor at Sol Plaatje University and Senior Research Associate, Rhodes University. A former publisher, he has written extensively on the life and work of Sol Plaatje. His biography, Sol Plaatje: A life of Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje, 1876–1932 (Jacana, 2018), won an award for non-fiction (biography) from the National Institute for the Humanities and Social Sciences in 2020. He also co-edited, with Sabata-mpho Mokae, Sol Plaatje’s Mhudi: History, criticism, celebration (Jacana, 2020), and Sol T. Plaatje: A life in letters (HiPSA, 2020), which won the National Institute for the Humanities and Social Sciences and South African Literary awards respectively.