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For the first ten days of June we will be significantly marking down a different book each day that is special to the Bridge Books journey.

Today is Chaka: Centenary Edition by Thomas Mofolo (Sesotho).

When we were brainstorming for another classic to republish, Chaka was honestly not even on the list. Copies of Chaka were readily available in English, and online I found copies in Afrikaans, French, Italian, and German. But then I realized that the original Sesotho edition was no where to be found.

Even getting a copy to work from took months. The special collection at the library at the University of Pretoria had one, but it’s so precious, you can’t check it out. I had to sit with a librarian and photograph each page. Then we ran the images through character recognition software, and found that the computer couldn’t read the old orthographies, which had diacritical marks that aren’t in use any more – at least, not in South African standard Sesotho.

Cleaning up the text took months. Much of the work was done by people working on the Social Employment Fund through the Johannesburg Inner City Partnership. Fiona O’Connor advised on the design work. Architect Joshil Naran designed the cover.

Altogether, it took three years to put the book together.

Joshil Naran discussed designing the cover at our Chaka Launch in 2025.

This book is another part of our project to bring back into circulation works that were destroyed, lost, or suppressed under colonial rule and Apartheid in South Africa.

We are committed to honouring the past, present, and future of South African literature. A Bridge Books logo on a book is a sign of celebration – celebration of literature, of South Africa, and of the dynamic ways in which the two meet.