The Individual, Auto/biography and History in South Africa

apartheid history exhibition in which resistance lives formed the basis of heritage
recovery.
From these biographic activities in the late 1950s, popular political biography went on to
acquire an important position in international solidarity work and political mobilisation
through a variety of ANC‐aligned ‘struggle histories’ produced in exile in the 1960s and
1970s. 54 Political biography also became a medium of political mobilisation, solidarity and
propaganda by exiled and underground political movements. A key text in this vein was
the biography of Communist Party and ANC leader, Moses Kotane written by Brian
Bunting. 55 Written to commemorate Kotane’s 70 th birthday, and published by SACP
publisher, Inkululeko Publications, this study sought to trace the “immense contribution”
of a “revolutionary” leader to the cause of “national liberation”. Kotane’s life was
constructed as the story of South Africa’s resistance to apartheid and racial oppression,
and as a “monumental” case study in the indigenisation of Marxism. Kotane was seen as
the embodiment of the “consistency between proletarian internationalism and healthy
nationalism”. 56 In the late 1970s and early 1980s, an unobtrusive, scaled‐down, pocket‐
sized, blank covered version of the first edition of Bunting’s biography of Kotane was
circulated illegally in South Africa. 57
This biographical study of Moses Kotane was part of a long line of solidarity
auto/biographies that were produced either by political movements or as part of political
mobilisation. Some were of a popular nature, while others laid claim to a more scholarly
character. Possibly the first of these biographies was R.K. Cope’s study of the life of labour
54 The publishing work of IDAF was perhaps the most significant.
55 Brian Bunting, Moses Kotane: South African Revolutionary, London: Inkululeko Publications, 1986 (First
Published in 1975), pp 1‐2. This study was first published to commemmorate Kotane’s 70th birthday. It
was presented to him at a special birthday ceremony in a Moscow hospital, attended by members of
the ANC Executive Committee, the SACP Central Committee and members of the Central Committee
of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. At this ceremony, Kotane was also awarded the
Isithwalandwe award for his “wise and patriotic leadership and statesmanship”, and his “combination
of national patriotism with a true sense of internationalism” (p 278).
56 Brian Bunting, Moses Kotane, pp 1‐2.
57 I have a copy of this publication in my possession.
209