The Individual, Auto/biography and History in South Africa

deliberate biographical work on Tabata’s life, especially by Taylor, the most
important way in which the significance of the documentary collection was
understood was as evidence of black political statements and decisions, and of black
leadership. The documents were merely collected, placed into a sequence, and mined
to construct a story of the life of a leader. The preoccupation was with
documentation as source of ideas and politics, with chronological narration of lives,
which seemed unmediated, natural and objective, and not with cultural questions
about the production of lives, genealogies of narration, biographical relations and
biographical contestation.
Indeed it would be interesting to ask questions about the very process of ‘collecting’
itself here, especially since it seems as if the documents associated with the ‘Unity
Movement’ and I.B. Tabata had deliberately been lodged with Gwendolen Carter
and Tom Karis as part of a strategy of organisation‐building in exile and to influence
the historical record on the history of resistance. 18 The lodging of these documents
had also sought to counter any criticisms contained in printed materials that Carter
in author’s possession); Dora Taylor (ed), The Dynamic of Revolution in South Africa: Speeches and
Writings by I.B. Tabata (Unpublished manuscript, c.1969, in author’s possession).
18 Correspondence and communication with Gwendolen Carter and Tom Karis were deliberately
preserved and archived by Dora Taylor as part of the work of building the Unity Movement in exile.
These notes and letters of introduction and explanation (mainly by Taylor), with compilations of
biographical information of Tabata began before Tabata left South Africa (with Jane Gool and
Nathaniel Honono, President of the AAC) in June 1963 (and when Carter was still based in the Asian
and African Studies Program of Smith, Amherst and Mount Holyoke Colleges and the University of
Massachussetts). It seemed to have been spurred on by the need to respond to Carter’s book, The
Politics of Inequality: South Africa since 1948 (New York: Praeger, 1958). This communication also
included notes from the first meeting that Carter had with Tabata, Honono and Gool in Swaziland in
July 1963. See Dora Taylor to Gwendolen Carter, 16/3/63, I.B. Tabata Collection, BC 925, also
reproduced in Carter‐Karis Microfilm Collection (2:XT1:92/1); see also ‘Tabata, Honono, and Miss
Gool, near Mbabane, Swaziland, July 25, 1963 [notes of Gwendolen Carter’s discussion with Tabata,
Honono and Gool]’, I.B. Tabata Collection, BC 925. But see, especially, Dora Taylor to I.B. Tabata, 17
August 1963, I.B. Tabata Collection, BC 925, in which Taylor expressed fear that information that
Carter requested Tabata “write up” (which related to the period that Carter had “distorted through
ignorance and liberal informers”) would be “very much for her benefit”, thus subsidising “her
requirements in writing up proper stuff”. While expressing the view that it would be unwise “to put
gifts into her hands”, Taylor nevertheless felt that it was “worthwhile to get the record straight”.
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