Praise poetry of the Bakwena ba Mogopa of Jericho

M.A.This research is based primarily on the praise-poems of the Bakwena ba Mogopa of Jericho. Other genres of verbal art of this tribe are briefly described. The study is divided into six chapters. The first chapter contains the aim and objectives of this study and includes methods, fieldwork, approaches to verbal art and an overview of verbal art among the Bakwena ba Mogopa. The second chapter is a brief outline of the history of the Bakwena ba Mogopa tribe and their heroic poems. The historical background of these poems as well as performances on different occasions, are outlined. The third chapter focuses on the clan poems as the preservation of the history of the Bakwena tribe. The fourth chapter focuses on praise-poems of the divining bones and shows that the actual divination and the praises of divining bones is performed by traditional doctors of the Bakwena ba Mogopa upon consultation. The fifth chapter concentrates on the structural features of the poems, such as imagery and parallelism. The sixth and last chapter is a general conclusion and references