Words of Batswana: Letters to Mahoko a Becwana, 1883-1896 by Part T. Mgadla & Stephen C. Volz

ISBN: 9780958513418 / 0958513414 - Words of Batswana: Letters to Mahoko a Becwana, 1883-1896, translated and edited by Part T. Mgadla and Stephen C. Volz. Published by Van Riebeeck Society, 2006. Hardcover. Used, As New condition. 374 pp.

Words of Batswana presents a selection of letters that were written by Batswana, writing in their home language, to Mahoko a Becwana (News/Words of Batswana), a Setswana-language newspaper published by missionaries of the London Missionary Society at Kuruman between 1883 and 1896. The majority of the writers were members of congregations in what are today South Africa’s Northern Cape Province and North West Province. Many also wrote from as far away as the Transvaal, Orange Free State and the Bechuanaland Protectorate. Most of the writings were letters to the editor, but their intended audience was primarily other Batswana readers of the newspaper.

The letters provide a lively treasure-house of insights into what Batswana thought of the escalating changes - religious, social, cultural, intellectual, political and economic - that were overtaking their society in the last two decades of the nineteenth century, a critically formative period in the history of southern Africa.

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