Sabata-mpho Mokae is an academic, novelist and translator who writes in Setswana and English. He is the author of a biography The Story of Sol T. Plaatje (2010) and Setswana novels; Ga ke Modisa (2012), Dikeledi (2014) and Moletlo wa Manong (2018). He is also a co-editor of three academic publications; Sol Plaatje’s Mhudi: History, Criticism, Celebration (2020), Sol T. Plaatje: A Life in Letters (2020) and Revisiting Sol Plaatje’s Mafeking Diary: Reconsideration and Restoration (2023). He has translated two children’s books by Gcina Mhlophe from English to Setswana; Semaka sa Dinaane (from Our Story Magic, 2016) and Dinaane tsa Afrika (from Stories of Africa, 2016). He has won the South African Literary Award three times (2011, 2019 and 2021), M-NET Literary Award for Best Setswana Novel (2013), M-NET Film Award (2013) and the Humanities and Social Sciences Award (2021). In 2022 he was awarded the PanSALB Multilingualism Award for his body of work, which includes writing, translating and teaching in two languages at university level. In 2014 he was a Writer-in-Residence at the University of Iowa in the United States where he was subsequently awarded an Honorary Fellowship in Writing. Mokae is an affiliate of the Tsikinya-Chaka Centre at Wits University. He is currently teaching Creative Writing in African Languages at the Sol Plaatje University in Kimberley where he is also coordinating a literary translation programme called the Repatriation of Letters.
