Matseliso Motsoane

OCLW’s Global Majority and Underrepresented Writers’ Programme is a highly competitive initiative offering eight scholarships to life-writers whose voices have historically been marginalised in publishing and academia. Alongside dedicated seminars and lectures, scholars receive skills training, mentorship, and community support. The Programme aims to ensure that the future of life-writing more fully reflects the broad and diverse range of voices that surround us.

Agents and publishers are warmly encouraged to contact scholars directly.

Matseliso Motsoane is a historian, cultural worker, and PhD candidate from Lesotho. Their research focuses on the politics of memory, photographic archives, and cultural heritage in Southern Africa. With a background in creative writing, editing, and oral history, her work explores the intersections between personal, familial, and collective narratives. She approaches life-writing as a form of narrative repair, drawing on archival fragments, vernacular storytelling traditions, and everyday experiences—particularly those often omitted from official historical records. Her practice foregrounds narrative voice, subjectivity, and the power of naming as a means of reshaping historical consciousness.

Project details:

Motho, Botho, Batho: A Biographical Tapestry of Lesotho’s Urban Creatives, 1950s–1980s is a biographical project that examines the lives and cultural practices of Basotho writers, photographers, and musicians whose contributions shaped Lesotho’s cultural landscape during a period marked by regional liberation struggles and shifting postcolonial dynamics. The project combines oral life histories with archival research to construct a multifaceted narrative of cultural life in Lesotho from the 1950s to the 1980s.

Framed through the concept of Botho—a Southern African philosophy emphasising collective humanity—the project challenges the reductive tendencies of conventional historiography. It instead offers an intricate, relational approach to biography that foregrounds interconnectedness and community.

During her time at OCLW, Matseliso will develop her project into a multimedia publication that weaves together text, imagery, and memory to animate these biographical narratives. This publication will be launched through an immersive exhibition, combining historical ephemera with installation and collaborative reminiscence as a curatorial methodology.

Selected Publications/Projects:

Matseliso is the author of the essay ‘Mohlouoa T. Ramakatane: Resilience, Affluence and Collective Empowerment’, published in Portraits of a Nation: The Studio Portraits of Mohlouoa T. Ramakatane (Backline Press, 2022, pp. 14–18). She was also a researcher and interviewee for the documentary film Ma Hashe (2023), directed by Tokoloho Africa Masemene. In addition to her academic and creative work, Matseliso leads ongoing community archiving initiatives through the Mabalane Archives and its associated publication, the Mabalane Digest.

Contact details:

Email: tselimotsoane@gmail.com

Instagram: @tselimotsoane