Ntšeliseng 'Masechele Khaketla

Ntšeliseng Caroline Ramolahloane was born on 1 January 1918 at Ha Majara, in Berea District of what was then Basutoland.

She then continued her studies at the University of Fort Hare where she became the first Mosotho woman to graduate, obtaining a Bachelor of Arts degree in History and English, in 1940.

While Khaketla is often regarded as the first woman to be published in Lesotho, her debut, Mosali eo u ’neileng eena, appeared three years after Emely Amy Selemeng Mokorosi's 1951 poetry collection, Bolebali.

[11] Mosali eo u ’neileng eena, or "The woman you gave me", is a biblical reference to the fall of man, and reflects Khaketla's frustration with men blaming their mistakes on their wives.

It tells the story of a shell-shocked seminarian who returns to Lesotho from the First World War, and the work has been described as a "pioneering psychological romance".

[1][12] While I'm gone, white mother, kill the fattened oxen And feed your dear ones well, prime meat and curds Overspilling so the dogs too lap the juice, And still enough is left to throw a surplus To your close kin across the seas.

In 1976, a poem by Khaketla was included in Joanna Bankier's The Other Voice: Twentieth-century Women's Poetry in Translation,[14][15] and "The White and the Black" also appeared in Daughters of Africa (1992; reprint 1993), edited by Margaret Busby.

[14] Despite Khaketla's work spanning the missionary, apartheid and post-apartheid eras, she received scant attention from western academics or later African-language writers.

One of the few interviews on record from her most productive period was with the Voice of America's "Conversations with African Writers" series, but this was omitted from the published collection that appeared in 1981.