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Atwell Sidwell Mopeli-Paulus
Born1913
Died1994
OccupationWriter etc.
Notable works

Atwell Sidwell Mopeli-Paulus (15 January 1913–1994) was a Mosotho writer from South Africa who published works in Sesotho and co-authored works in English. During the 1950s he completed several novels, novellas and the first draft of his autobiography.

He is best known for the novel Blanket Boy's Moon, which was co-authored with Peter Lanham (the pen name of Cecil John Lanham Parker). The book was an international bestseller and widely translated.

Life and major works

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Men get your lifebelts ready!
We sons of the Black Mother,
Now are to die!
Down in the sea's dark stomach,
The Grave of the Africans,
Black men of Africans
Deep lies our doom!
Men die life men!
So saith the Wagon Captain.

No Last Post was blown,
No signal was given,
No scriptures were read,
No horn was sounded!
Down "Mendi" descended.
She stirred the Blue Waters
And the Waves of her Passing
Cried on the Rocks
Of the English Shore!

'Mendi'—where are you gone?
Cattle! Rain! Peace to the son of Thesele!

The only surviving record of Mopeli-Paulus' long poem Mendi, which appears in Blanket Boy Moon.'[1]

Atwell Sidwell Mopeli-Paulus is often incorrectly referred to as a 'Lesotho author' when in fact he was born and spent much of his life in South Africa, in areas confiscated following the Basuto Gun War. He did, however, maintain a strong identification with Lesotho.[2]

The son of Sidwell Mopeli and 'Mathota Mopeli-Paulus, Mopeli-Paulus was born in 1913 in Monontsha in the then Witzieshoek Native Reserve of the Orange Free State (later known as QwaQwa). He was the direct descendent of Moshoeshoe I and would go on to inherit his father's chieftaincy in Witzieshoek.[3][4][5]

He was educated at Edendale Teacher's College and the University of the Witwatersrand, before serving in the Second World War in Egypt, Abyssinia and Kenya with the Cape Corps.[4][5][6]

Following the war, Mopeli-Paulus moved to Johannesburg and began working at a law firm. While there, he wrote a long poem on the sinking of the SS Mendi in the First World War. This appears to have been lost, apart from a short excerpt that was included in his later novel Blanket Boy Moon. [4][5][7]

Mopeli-Pualus' first publication was a small collection of Sesotho poems entitled Ho Tsamaea Ke Ho Bona (To Travel is to Learn) in 1945. These poems reflect on his experiences during the war, his family, and black consciousness.[5][8][9]

Five years later he published his first Sesotho novel, Liretlo (Medicine Murder), and a short story Lilahloane wa batho (The Poor Lilahloane). Liretlo deals with the practice of removing body parts from living victims, which are then used to prepare medicine that was believed to strengthen the powers of those who commission the murder. Liretlo has often been misunderstood as the original text for the English language Blanket Boy Moon.[8][10]

During 1949-1950, Mopeli-Paulus was involved in the Witzieshoek Revolt, including a battle at Namoha that left a number of people dead. He fled over the border to Lesotho, but was soon sent to prison. The subject of his imprisonment is included in both Turn to the Dark and The World and the Cattle.[11][12]

Mopeli-Pualus later returned to QwaQwa, taking up a teaching post and serving on the Legislative Assembly. He published a biography of Moshoeshoe I, Moshweshwe moshwaila, as well as a translation of Shakespear's Macbeth.[5][13]

Blanket Boy's Moon (1953)

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Blanket Boy’s Moon was an international bestseller and is the most widely read work by a Mosotho writer after the novels of Thomas Mofolo. The first United Kingdom edition had a print run of 47,000 copies alone. In the United States it appeared under the title Blanket Boy and was translated into Dutch (Dekenjongen, 1952), Danish (Sort mands måne, 1953), French (L'homme noir sous la lune, 1953), German (Blut hat mur eine farbe, 1953), Swedish (Svart mans måne, 1953), Hebrew (הירח של מונארה) and later Italian (Fuoco nero, 1960). The book was also serialised in a Swahili periodical. Several paperback editions have subsequently appeared, most recently in 1984 from David Philip Publishers in Cape Town.[14]

The authorship of Mopeli-Paulus' best known work has received considerable attention. While there remain uncertainties, it is likely that Mopeli-Paulus wrote a draft manuscript in English, before sending it to Lanham who had advertised his services as an editor and publisher. Lanham then revised the text, quite considerably it seems, and then published it. The first UK edition describes the result as being by 'Peter Lanham based on an original story by A.S. Mopeli-Paulus'. Mopeli-Paulus sought legal advice from his attorney, Hyman Basner, which resulted in a lump sum payment and assurance that the American edition would be credited to 'Peter Lanham and A.S. Mopeli-Paulus'. Despite this, the ownership of Blanket Boy's Moon was held by Lanham and passed to his heir after he died.[15][16]

Upon its release, Blanket Boy's Moon was widely likened to Cry, the Beloved Country, which has appeared five years earlier.

Blanket Boy’s Moon is considered the first novel by an African to depict homosexuality among black men, and is all the more remarkable for the ambivalent way it treats the topic. It includes the suggestion that male–male sex or intimate physical contact was known in rural settings and thus was not a purely urban, modern phenomenon as often claimed. 407, Routledge Encyclopedia of Queer Culture; Hoad)

Turn to the Dark (1956)

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xx

Review here in a Marxist nespaper: https://www.marxists.org/subject/africa/periodicals/new-age/1956/na-2-43.pdf (page 6; left hand side)

The World and the Cattle (2008)

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He continued to work on his autobiography The World and the Cattle, three excerpts from which were published in Drum magazine, including one on his time in Pretoria Central prison – an exposé that may later have caused him political embarrassment[11]

This was jointly written with Miriam Basner. Only published posthumously, but "excerpts from it appeared in Drum in 1954-1955, and it has been widely cited as a primary source for the Witzieshoek Rebellion of 1950" (Jones 602) 

To resolve:

SA Gazette from 1982 about a liquor license, proof of life after 1960: https://archive.gazettes.africa/archive/za/1982/za-government-gazette-dated-1982-01-22-no-7999.pdf ;https://snl.no/A._S._Mopeli-Paulus - suggest birthdate of 15 January 1913; confimed by this page http://historicalpapers-atom.wits.ac.za/mopeli-paulus-attwell-sidwell; this confirms he was alive 17/04/1994: https://open.uct.ac.za/server/api/core/bitstreams/aa70ea98-663c-41c1-b6a1-a429501833ac/content



Macbeth trans: https://search.worldcat.org/title/122287835

Also Newspapers.com is unavailable, but seems to have results. Need to find more promo photos including Lanham.

Complete works

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  • Mopeli-Paulus, A. S. (1945). Ho Tsamaya Ke Ho Bona (in Southern Sotho). Morija: Sesuto Book Depot.
  • —— (1950). Lilahloane wa batho (in Southern Sotho). Bloemfontein: Via Afrika.
  • —— (1950). Liretlo (in Southern Sotho). Bloemfontein: Via Afrika.
  • Lanham, Peter; Mopeli-Paulus, A. S. (1953). Blanket Boy's Moon. London: Collins.
  • Lanham, Peter; Mopeli-Paulus, A. S. (1953). Blanket Boy. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell Co.
  • Mopeli-Paulus, A. S.; Basner, Miriam (1956). Turn to the Dark. London: Jonathan Cape.
  • Mopeli-Paulus, A. S. (1964). Moshweshwe moshwaila (in Southern Sotho). Johannesburg: Bona Press.
  • —— (1985). Moshanyana se llele ho disa (in Southern Sotho). Pretoria: De Jager-Haum.
  • —— (1993). Makebete (in Southern Sotho). Midrand: Educum.
  • —— (2008). The World and the Cattle. Johannesburg: Penguin.

In addition to his published works, several unpublished texts exist in archives. These include Tongaland, a novel dated 1952, a short story At the Crossroads written after 1960, and Histori ya Kereke ya Zion Christian Church, dated 1972. (Dutton and Masiea 50, 54)

References

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  1. ^ Lanham & Mopeli-Paulus 1953, p. 57-58.
  2. ^ Dutton & Masiea 2021, p. 48-49.
  3. ^ Dutton & Masiea 2021, p. 48.
  4. ^ a b c Gérard 1971, p. 162.
  5. ^ a b c d e Maphike 1991, p. 62.
  6. ^ Dutton & Masiea 2021, p. 49.
  7. ^ Dutton & Masiea 2021, p. 49-50.
  8. ^ a b Gérard 1971, p. 163.
  9. ^ Dutton & Masiea 2021, p. 50.
  10. ^ Dutton & Masiea 2021, p. 51.
  11. ^ a b Dutton & Masiea 2021, p. 54.
  12. ^ Aerni-Flessner & Magaiza 2024, p. 8.
  13. ^ Dutton & Masiea 2021, p. 58.
  14. ^ Dutton & Masiea 2021, p. 52.
  15. ^ Dutton 1990, p. 109.
  16. ^ Jones 1995, p. 604.

References

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