‘Firing with the pen’: Centring the intellectual legacy of Phyllis Ntantala-Jordan

Abstract

This article celebrates the eclectic and politically engaged oeuvre of Phyllis Ntantala-Jordan, one of South Africa’s foremost and insurgent black women intellectuals. She lost her mother at a tender age and was single-handedly raised by a value-oriented father who consciously instilled humanistic values in her that later served as her moral compass. Her father’s pivotal nurturing role gave her life meaning and purpose. I argue that throughout her rich and politically engaged intellectual life, her home in rural Transkei surfaces as a ‘site of resistance’ that ignited and nurtured her political and moral consciousness. Women’s issues featured prominently in her scholar-activism.