We Will Be Heard: A South African Exile Remembers

A Xhosa from Pondoland (now Transkei) who became a schoolteacher like his father, Jordan was known to his students as ""Mdengentonga'' (``Tall by Sticks'') a short person with big brains, in celebration of his feistiness and inspirational teaching. Dismissed because of political activism, he became a houseboy-gardener and lawyer, but when he was put in jeopardy after the Sharpeville-Langa massacres of 1960, he crossed the border, was arrested, escaped, then taught in Botswana and Zambia. This plainly told story of his life up to 1965, when he arrived in America and became an anti-apartheid agitator (he now lives in Albany, N.Y.)describes life in a Xhosa village, witchcraft, circumcision rites, the effects of apartheid on black education. The book is padded with long extracts from speeches by Jordan's political and ideological mentor Mangaliso Robert Sobukwe, founder of the Pan-Africanist Congress. (October 1)