The Individual, Auto/biography and History in South Africa

appealing for financial support for his legal defence. Amid political explanations of the
AAC’s federal methods of mobilisation, and the importance of Africans needing to turn
their backs on all structures of segregation (including Advisory Bodies, Bungas, Native
Representative Councils and Native parliamentary representatives), Jordan
foregrounded Tabata as an AAC foundation member who deserved support because of
his “unselfish devotion to the cause of his people”. 2
Referring to Tabata, Jordan argued that from the time of the AAC’s birth in 1935,
no‐one has carried out the spirit and ideals that gave
birth to that federal political organisation more faithfully
and loyally and conscientiously than himself. 3
Tabata had “written more than one treatise” on the land question, Jordan went on, and
had “brought out clearly its relationship to the cheap labour policy”. “No‐one was better
qualified to address a gathering of Africans, whatever their intellectual level, on the
‘Native Policy’”. Jordan ended his appeal by inviting people to read Tabata’s pamphlet,
‘The Rehabilitation Scheme: A New Fraud’, which could be acquired from him. This
letter contained the earliest intonations of a narrative of Tabata’s life, and seemed to be a
fairly isolated case of biographic narration of a Unity Movement leader in the 1940s. 4
Eight years later, at the time of the imposition of a five year banning order on Tabata in
1956, 5 the idea of Tabata as a man with a biography that could be reflected on made
another tentative reappearance in biographical tributes sketched out in speeches at
2 Circular Letter from A.C. Jordan, 27 September 1948, I.B. Tabata Collection, BC 925.
3 Circular Letter from A.C. Jordan, 27 September 1948, I.B. Tabata Collection, BC 925.
4 Circular Letter from A.C. Jordan, 27 September 1948, I.B. Tabata Collection, BC 925; this early
biographical treatment by Jordan, may have been an expression of a more definite ‘nationalist’, and
even ‘liberal’ (as opposed to socialist) tendency, which some (at the time, and subsequently) have
associated him with (Interview with Benita Parry and Irwin Combrinck, Cape Town, 19 October 1995).
5 I.B. Tabata was banned for five years on 10 March 1956, after being served by the Minister of Justice
with a notice under the Suppression of Communism Act and another in terms of the Riotous
Assemblies and Criminal Law Amendment Act. In terms of these restrictions, Tabata was banned
from attending gatherings, and from leaving the magisterial districts of Cape Town, Wynberg,
Simonstown and Bellville. See Cape Times, 13 March 1956; I.B. Tabata Pocket Diary, entry for 10 March
1956, I.B. Tabata Collection, BC 925.
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