The Individual, Auto/biography and History in South Africa

and Karis may have received from Tabata’s Anti‐CAD opponents with whom he had
cut ties in Cape Town in the late 1950s. 19
This methodological preoccupation with documents as seemingly transparent
windows upon political policies and with uncovering real lives of political leadership
were also central characteristics of Allison Drew’s collections and research on South
African socialism, in which I.B. Tabata was accorded some attention. In the mid‐to‐
late 1980s, Drew travelled to a number of archives, libraries and private collections in
the United States, Britain and South Africa, and travelled to Zimbabwe and Namibia
to conduct interviews with socialists about the history of socialist politics in South
Africa. This research to collect and establish the evidence of South African socialism
led to a doctoral dissertation and a few published articles. These sought to
comprehend the political policies, theoretical positions and social analyses that
divided and united different socialist formations in South Africa as they faced a
number of challenges and dilemmas, sometimes framed as ‘questions’, such as the
‘national question’ or the ‘land question’. As we have seen, another significant set of
publications which emerged from Drew’s work was the two‐volumed ‘Karis and
Carter’ of South African socialism, a collection of contemporary records of socialist
thought and politics in South Africa. 20 For these volumes, Drew had gone beyond
her dissertation research collection to incorporate documents from the UMSA/Tabata
Collection held at UCT and the Workers’ Party of South Africa Papers at UWC.
19 After receiving a 1964 list of documents pertaining to the Unity Movement held by Gwendolen
Carter indicating that she had a copy of the document ‘What has happened in the Non‐European
Unity Movement’ (Issued by Joint Secretaries, NEUM, 1958), which attacked the AAC leadership for
“desertion”, Taylor seemed to have gone out of her way to ensure that Karis and Carter had a copy of
the reply to this document penned by Tabata, ‘The Wreckers of Unity at Work’. Tabata himself had
urged her to ensure that the material that Ben Kies “had surreptitiously sent her” be countered. See
‘Materials on Unity Movement Presently Held by Dr Carter’ (1964); Thomas Karis to Dora Taylor, 11
September 1964; Gwendolen Carter to Dora Taylor 23 September 1964; I.B. Tabata to Dora Taylor, 3
January 1964, I.B. Tabata Collection, BC 925.
20 For details on Drew’s dissertation and publications, as well as a critical examination of Drew’s
documentary history project, see Chapter Three.
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