Dr. Ntantala-Jordan

Dr. Phyllis P. Ntantala-Jordan, maiden name Priscilla Phyllis Ntantala, was born into a relatively privileged Transkei family in the 1920. Her father, George Govan Ntantala was a prosperous farmer who served on the Transkei General Council, iBhunga. Her mother, Ida Balfour, was a descendant of the earliest African Christian community, founded by the prophet Ntsikana during the second decade of the 19th century in the Eastern Cape.

From the local primary school, she was sent to Healdtown College, outside of Fort Beaufort. She went on to continue her education at the University of Fort Hare, in Alice, where she attained a BA and became one of the first African women graduates of that college.

In 1939, she was recruited to teach English at the Bantu Secondary School in Kroonstad, Free State, by the late Reginald Cingo and married a fellow teacher, Archibald Campbell Jordan that same year. Their first two children were born in Alice. Among her pupils in Kroonstad were the recently deceased Dr. Daniel P. Kunene, Professor of African Languages and Literature at the University of Wisconsin, and Dr. Samson Guma who led the African Studies Department at the University of Swaziland until 1996. It was the proud boast of persons like Dr. Gabriel Setiloane that they were not taught English by an Englishman, but learnt that language sitting at the feet of Phyllis Ntantala.

In September 1962, Phyllis, and her family, left South Africa as political refugees to escape Apartheid, and settled in the United Kingdom. In September 1963, travelling on a British Passport, she emigrated to the United States with her late husband, Professor A.C. Jordan. They settled in Madison, Wisconsin where he was employed as a professor in African Languages and Literature. She became a permanent resident of the United States in 1972.

Phyllis was perhaps more widely known as 'Mrs. A. C. Jordan,' her late husband was a pioneer Africanist scholar who was among the founding faculty of the University of Wisconsin's African Studies program. However, she established herself as a woman of extraordinary intellect in her own right by the time she arrived in the United States in 1963.

Like other remarkable women of her generation: Ellen Kuzwayo, Epainette Moerane- Mbeki, Albertina Sisulu, Cissy Abdurahman-Gool and Janub Gool; it was through active participation in the liberation movement striving to create a democratic South Africa that she won her spurs. Her forte was writing and in her published work that first appeared in Ronald Segal's quarterly journal, Africa South during the mid-1950s, she amplified and expanded on the plight of African women and women's rights.

Phyllis' politics and feminism persuaded her to focus on the position of women in apartheid South Africa. Her essay, "Widows of the Reserves" won critical acclaim and was republished first in Langston Hughes' An African Treasury in 1963, then as a pamphlet issued by the United Nations Center on Apartheid in 1972.

In the years following her husband's death, Phyllis attended to family and continued to write, but soon became restive. In 1975, she moved to Michigan to take a post teaching English Literature and Composition at Wayne State University in Detroit. As a result of budget adjustments, her post was terminated in 1983. That year, she moved to New York and worked as a translator and news analyst at the United Nations Center on Apartheid. Growing weary of the city, she took a post as a home health worker in the more bucolic surrounds of Poughkeepsie, NY and began work on her autobiography, A Life's Mosaic, which was published by the University of California Press in 1991. In that same year, she returned to Michigan, settling in the Detroit suburb of Taylor where she would live until her death.

Throughout her life Phyllis worked as a teacher, a healthcare worker, and a translator, but she was, first and foremost, a writer and continued writing until her last days.

"It is one of the ironies of history that the most pervasive and total oppression, the oppression of women, has been to a large extent neglected by scholars within the ranks of the movement. This can be explained, in part, by the male chauvinism, which has been the bane of colonial liberation movements, and also the imprecise terms in which we discuss the future socio-economic order we envisage for a free South Africa. And yet, the success or otherwise of our struggle may depend on the extent to which we are able to involve as wide as possible a front of liberation forces against the oppressor regime. Women, specifically the Black women, will and must form a central pillar of such a front. We submit, Black women have no cause to commit themselves totally to the liberation struggle, unless the freedom to be achieved will in turn grant them equality and human dignity."

She wrote in an article titled, "Black Womanhood and National Liberation," published in Sechaba, the official organ of the African National Congress, in December 1984.

In recognition of her life's work, her alma mater, the University of Fort Hare, awarded her an honorary Doctorate of Philosophy in 1996. In addition to her autobiography, republished in South Africa in 2006, she has authored a numerous articles and essays. She recently completed a translation of Samuel Mqhayi's anthology, Inzuzo - which she translated as "The Harvest". That manuscript is presently with a South African publishing house.

From the 1970's on, Phyllis Ntantala-Jordan became a regular feature on speaking circuits and spoke to audiences across the United States and Canada about issues of African literature, gender, African history and South African politics. As an elder within the South African exile community in the Americas she was awarded two prizes and came to be regarded as a mother figure.

At the age of ninety-six her physical frailty had become as stressful challenge because her mind was still sound. On the morning of Sunday, July 17, 2016, she passed away at the Beaumont Hospice in Taylor, Michigan.

Dr. Phyllis Ntantala-Jordan was preceded in death by her parents, George G. Ntantala and Ida Balfour; her husband, AC Jordan; her daughter, Nandipha; and her son, Lindi. She is survived by her adopted daughter, Agatha Ninzi; her son, Pallo; her grandchildren, Thuli, Samantha, Margaret and Nandipha; as well as six great grandchildren.