When was a.c jordan born

But rewind to , the year Jordan was born on Mbokothwana Mission Station in the Tsolo district of the Eastern Cape, where his father was an Anglican minister. After completing his primary and secondary education, Jordan won a scholarship to Fort Hare University College where he obtained a teacher's diploma in and BA degree in He also started publishing poetry in the Imvo Zabantsundu newspaper.

In he began working on the novel that was to become a landmark in Xhosa literature, Ingqumbo Yeminyanya The Wrath of the Ancestors , an epic about the conflict between Western-style education and traditional beliefs.

He later translated this into English and it was later translated into Afrikaans and Dutch. In he submitted his master's thesis on the phonetic and grammatical structure of the Bhaca language to UCT. It was a short-lived association; in he came to UCT as a senior lecturer, a career that lasted until His response was:. But politics interfered with scholarship. In Jordan was awarded a Carnegie Travelling Scholarship but denied a passport.

He went into exile in , a final denouncement of apartheid and particularly the introduction of Bantu Education at tertiary level, through the ironically named Extension of Universities Act of He was But Jordan's name and voice continued through his literary works.

In addition to The Wrath of the Ancestors he published a critical study of Xhosa literature in Three of his books were published after his death: Kwezo Mpindo zeTsitsa ; an English translation of his anthology of short stories: Tales from Southern Africa ; and Towards an African Literature: The emergence of literary form in Xhosa In the AC Jordan Chair in African Studies was established to provide meaningful study of Africa by integrating African Studies into research, teaching and learning at undergraduate and postgraduate levels in UCT's faculties.

Professor Lungisile Ntsebeza, chair and director of the Centre for African Studies, said the move paved the way for UCT to be a leader in developing Africa's intellectual resources by promoting African studies not only across disciplines and faculties at UCT, but the rest of the continent as well. The current mission of the AC Jordan Chair is thus to champion the integration of African studies into research, teaching and learning at undergraduate and postgraduate levels within the university's various faculties.

In the South African government honoured AC Jordan for exceptional contributions to literature by posthumously awarding him the Order of Ikhamanga Gold. Please view the republishing articles page for more information. In , he started working on his only novel, Ingqumbo Yeminyana , a tragic epic about the conflict between Western-style education and traditional beliefs. This novel was to become a landmark in Xhosa literature.

While at UCT, he developed a new method of teaching Xhosa to speakers of other languages and became an inspirational teacher of Xhosa culture and language, as his students were later to testify. Like many others, he became involved in opposition to the government's racial policies. Jordan opted to leave South Africa on an exit permit with his son Zweledinga Pallo Jordan , who would later become the Minister of Arts and Culture, post Jordan and his son reached London in October via Botswana and Tanzania.

There, after a long illness, he died 20 October Yet his voice continued to be heard long after his death. In , his critical study of Xhosa literature was published, and in , a collection of short stories in Xhosa was translated into English under the title, Tales from Southern Africa.