In the short life of Dr Sophonia Machabe Mofokeng (PhD) (1923–1957) he wrote three books: Senkatana (1952), Leetong (1954) and Pelong ya ka (1962). He also co-authored a Textbook of Southern Sotho Grammar (1967) with Professor C.M. Doke.

He wrote Pelong ya ka while hospitalised in Rietfontein for eighteen months. Though he was sick, he wrote it with the humour he was known for. A reader may be led to believe that Mofokeng had a premonition of his imminent death; twelve essays in this collection deal with the themes of life and death.

The book can also be viewed as an autobiography. M.M.R. Dube (1996: vii) writes: ‘we trace the link between his writings and his real lived life because we have a hunch that his works are autobiographical. Our informants about his real lived life are his family, friends and associates’. In the essay ‘Noka’ (‘River’), Mofokeng writes:

This confirms that he was writing about himself: his birthplace, Fouriesburg, is on the border of the Free State and Lesotho.

Besides associating a river with a border which separates provinces and countries (as a child he had a firm belief that boundaries of provinces and other countries are always rivers - when he grew up, he was amazed to find that was not always the case), Mofokeng compares the river with human beings. In ‘Noka’ he makes this striking comparison of the river to time in human life: