FOREWORD BY OMOSEYE BOLAJI

Omoseye Bolaji wrote this Foreword to the book, Omoseye Bolaji's Tebogo Mokoena...

FOREWORD BY OMOSEYE BOLAJI

(Creator and author of the Tebogo Mystery series)

In the western world essentially, over the course of time certain fictional characters become larger than life and assume lives of their own far beyond the ken of their creators (writers) - like the Rabbit series created by John Updike. Or Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn. Or Charles Dickens' Uriah Heep...             

In the genre of detective fiction we think about Agatha Christie's Hercule Poirot or Miss Marple and hundreds of thousands of readers believe these fictional characters more or less exist! And the literary world has noted that when author Conan Doyle dared to kill his own great creation, Sherlock Holmes, the readers "revolted" and the author had to resuscitate the character!     

And so it goes on in the western canon. Shakespeare - imagine just two or three of his major protagonists - Othello, Macbeth or Hamlet, how many countless studies have been written and published on these characters over the centuries? 

Or if you are a lover of the James Bond series – the novels or the movies - when author Ian Fleming created Bond he could have never imagined the world wide fame he would go on to command; or the legion of studies that would focus on the character, often conflated with author Fleming himself...           

Not many works created by African authors can enjoy this type of global fame – but certainly Chinua Achebe's Things fall apart is world renowned. Okonkwo, the central character of the novel is known around the world. There is the fact of a young student in Europe who identified with Okonkwo so much that he even shouted: "Okonkwo is my father!"...never mind the fact that the student in question was white and had never been to Africa in his life...

When I started writing the Tebogo Mystery series (2000) of course I did not envisage writing eight adventures (books) at the time. Actually between 2004 and 2008 I did not write any pertinent adventures, and probably thought it "was all over bar the shouting". Yet I would go on to write four more adventures - the last one came out in 2012 (Tebogo and the bacchae). Since then I have not written any major fiction, but it's not something that worries me!    

Certainly I am satisfied and proud that I have published eight adventures of "Tebogo Mokoena, so-called detective" (I can be sarcastic, you know). I find it even more satisfying that many readers enjoy the series, and a fair number of critics/pundits/reviewers have written fairly extensively on the character and his adventures over the years.

Here I must commend - and say a big thank you to the ever-dynamic Charmaine Kolwane who decided that a work containing many essays and perspectives on Tebogo Mokoena deserves to be published. She has selflessly scoured through such pertinent essays and articles and put them all together for readers, scholars and researchers - and for posterity. 

I must thank all the contributors to this work; it is gratifying that their studies and impressions can now be found in a single monograph like this. Raphael Mokoena, Pule Lechesa, Paul Lothane - they have written many fine essays on the character, Tebogo Mokoena, over the years. Others like Ishmael Mzwandile Soqaga, Peter Moroe, Mpikeleni Duma and Leke Giwa have also weighed in with powerful write-ups in this wise. On behalf of Ntate "Sleuth" Tebogo Mokoena, we dedicate this book to all the contributors!

- O Bolaji (below)