Monwana wa bosupa (Setswana) | Young Adult Fiction

Kabelo Duncan Kgatea

Monwana wa bosupa is the Silver winner in the 2008 Sanlam Prize for Youth Literature in the Sotho-languages category.
This is what the judges had to say:

According to the title, as you point an accusing index finger at another person, your other three fingers are pointing back at yourself, while your thumb remains stuck up, pointing ominously at the Heavens. This refers to the fact that Grandfather Tau Mere blames everybody else for things that go wrong, while it is in fact himself who is to blame and ends up being shamed.

The novel deals with a quest and a struggle to break with a tortured past and a search for a new beginning. It takes us gradually through the hardships and heroics of the boy Thebe as a poor but hardworking herdboy and a deprived schoolboy who excels in the performing arts and as an athlete. He has lost his mother at birth, and his father is away in North Africa. He is left in the care of his grandparents in an abusive farm setting. There is a tug-of-war between his maternal grandfather and his paternal grandfather for his custody. This becomes complicated when his father sends for him through his new Senegalese wife and a friend. He runs away, gets seriously injured and becomes hospitalised. A hunt for him ensues, and in the meantime he grapples with his unfolding troubled past. All this leads to a final scene at the court, where Thebe’s fate will be decided.

This teenage novel deals with the kind of issues many youngsters today have to contend with – in both rural and urban settings. It serves to deepen the understanding of the hurt a child may experience when adults fight their battles at the expense of that child.