History by Paratext: Thomas Mofolo’s Chaka

Thomas Mofolo’s Chaka was first published in Sesotho in 1925 by the Morija Sesuto Book Depot under the auspices of the Societé des missions évangéliques de Paris. It has been translated into several languages, including English, French and German. In this article, I present a reading of the multiple stagings of Mofolo’s novel by assessing the changes in the material and paratextual production of the text. By following the fortunes of Mofolo’s Chaka, I elucidate the various shapes it has taken and meanings it has accrued on its journey through time and space. Four distinct lineages of Mofolo’s Chaka are identified: the mission text, the English colonial text, the French colonial production and the post-colonial text; thus tracing the historical passage of an African-authored text through colonial, apartheid, post-colonial and post-apartheid contexts. The article sheds light on the particular ways in which the novel and African literature more generally have been made to signify, what interpretive frames have been privileged, and what kinds of genre categorisation have predominated. In advancing the notion of ‘history by paratext’, I also argue for the shifting paratext as an important historical index of the tensions, contradictions and inconsistencies of particular historical contexts.