Languages: 
WSU EMPLOYEE PUBLISHES TWO BOOKS TO REVIVE AFRICAN LITERATURE
Kabelo Cornelius Maduna, a Peer Assisted Learning (PAL) coordinator at WSU’s Learning and Teaching Directorate at the Mthatha Campus recently published a novel in two vernacular languages.
The 2nd edition of UMoleboheng, a novel written in both IsiXhosa and SeSotho is about the dishonesty between parents in raising their children.
The book sends a stern warning, in the form of Moleboheng, to young pretty girls that beauty would not necessarily take one far. After his several years of experience as a teacher at high school level and a lecturer at WSU, Maduna has had engagements with his students and got to learn about their lives and that resulted in him writing the book.
Moleboheng as pretty and intelligent as she was, she ended up living in shacks in Gauteng after she left her home and lied that she was going to university in the Eastern Cape meanwhile she was following a boyfriend and later discovered that the boyfriend has a partner.
“When I studied for Catholic priesthood in the mid-90s with Missionaries of Mariannhill in Pinetown, the novices were asked to contribute to the novitiate booklet; I was surprised that only my article was chosen, an article where I interviewed our priest who later became a bishop. That article was later translated into German. Therefore, the spark to be a writer was lit from that moment,” said Maduna.
He added that Moleboheng was written in 1995 when he entered training for priesthood. He then shelved it because he did not think it was worth publishing until when he was in Pinetown in 1996, that he sent it to Lesotho to a renowned SeSotho editor- Ntate Mohlala. Mohlala edited and pushed Maduna to publish the manuscript. However, he got too engrossed in religious life that he shelved it again, only to publish the first edition in 2014.
“As much as I have two degrees in English, I have always felt that local languages are not given the place in the sun that they deserve. I decided to write in Sesotho in order to bring back adages in Sesotho that are no longer being used by Sesotho speakers. I also decided to get Moleboheng translated into isiXhosa when I learnt that students at African Languages here at the university were using the Sesotho one. I thought it would be fitting to get it into isiXhosa given the demographics,” he added.
Maduna got the idea for his novel from his teaching days both in Mthatha high schools and Walter Sisulu University where he interacted with young people a lot and got hear about their stories.
Besides his obvious interests in writing novels about socioeconomic issues, he's a geopolitical social commentator who regularly contributes to the Daily Dispatch's opinion section.
Anyone who needs one of the books, either Sesotho or isiXhosa can contact him directly on 0838940067 or
- Anita Roji
