Mr Sebata-Mpho Mokae

Title: "With whose eyes do we see? Writing Africa in African languages"

Sabata-Mpho Mokae teaches Creative Writing at Sol Plaatje University. He is also a novelist and translator. He is the author of a short biography, "The Story of Sol T. Plaatje" (2010) as well as three Setswana novels: "Ga ke Modisa" (2012), "Dikeledi" (2014), and "Moletlo wa Manong" (2018). Together with Brian Willan, he has edited three academic publications, namely "Sol T. Plaatje: A Life in Letters" (2020), "Sol Plaatje’s Mhudi: History, Criticism, Celebration" (2021) as well as "Revisiting Sol Plaatje's Mafeking Diary: Reconsideration and Restoration" (2023). He has translated two of Gcina Mhlophe’s children’s books from English to Setswana: "Our Story Magic" to "Semaka sa Dinaane" (2015) and "Stories of Africa" to "Dinaane tsa Afrika" (2015). Mokae has won several literary awards, including the M-NET Literary Award for Best Setswana Novel, M-NET Film Award, the Humanities and Social Sciences Award for Best Edited Volume, the South African Literary Award for Best Novel as well as the PanSALB Multilingualism Award for his oeuvre. He is an Honorary Fellow-in-Writing at the University of Iowa, where he was a writer-in-residence in 2014. He is an affiliate of the Tsikinya-Chaka Centre at Wits University.