Thomas Mofolo

Thomas Mokopu Mofolo was born on December 22, 1876, in Khojane, Basutoland (modern Lesotho). Educated at the Paris Evangelical Missionary Society school in Morija, he worked as a proofreader, translator, and editor at the famous Morija Sesuto Book Depot.

In 1907, Mofolo published Moeti oa bochabela ('The Traveler of the East'), the first novel published in Sesotho. His crowning masterpiece, Chaka, completed in 1910 and published in 1925, was a towering psychological tragedy dramatizing the rise and moral disintegration of King Shaka Zulu. Depicting passion, power, and ancestral destiny, the novel was acclaimed internationally as a world literature classic. Mofolo later operated independent trading posts in South Africa and Lesotho.