The Individual, Auto/biography and History in South Africa

special protest meetings in convened Cape Town to condemn his banning. 6 These were
reproduced in cautious form in print in organisational publications. 7 These
developments culminated in more definite biographic assertions at the national
conference of the AAC held in Queenstown in December 1956, from which Tabata had
been restricted. In condemning the “fascistic ban by the Herrenvolk” on Tabata, the
conference placed on record its “lasting debt of gratitude” and that of “the whole
oppressed peoples”, which was owed to Tabata for his “unremitting loyalty and
devotion” to the cause of the national liberatory movement since the inception of the
AAC. 8 Reiterating the conception of the AAC’s position as the “Parliament of the
oppressed”, the conference statement went further to declare its duty
to place on record that his name shall occupy one of the
highest places of honour in the list of fighters known and
unknown who are being silenced for their services in the
cause of liberation. 9
These increasingly assured biographic statements were put forward significantly at the
same time as Tabata’s banning and the attempt by the state to render him silent and
invisible. Tabata’s banning was an occasion for him to think about his political and
personal relationships, the social significance of his suffering, and how much his
“incapacity” had weighed on him. He expressed his anguish at being “kept out of the
battle‐field”, which was like “consigning a man to a morgue”. This loss of freedom was
however “softened by the knowledge that millions before [had] suffered worse”. It
united him “with the vast pain suffered daily by the Great Humiliated”. While Tabata
understood that “each person is in the final analysis alone”, the anguish and suffering
occasioned by his ban were mitigated by the political significance it gave him. “It helps
to know”, Tabata wrote to his comrade and brother‐in‐law, Wycliffe Tsotsi “that now
one has qualified to belong to that great fraternity on whose ideas and sufferings has
6 Jane Gool and Minnie Gool as well as then SOYA members, Gwen Wilcox and Benita Parry (then
Teper) recalled these protest meetings (personal communication).
7 See The Soyan, April 1956, on “The Banning of Mr. I.B. Tabata, Dismissals and Banishments”, Carter‐
Karis Microfilm Collection, 2:ES1:85/1.
8 Copy of Telegram From Conference, All African Convention, 19 th December 1956, Queenstown, I.B.
Tabata Collection, BC 925.
9 Copy of Telegram From Conference, All African Convention, 19 th December 1956, Queenstown, I.B.
Tabata Collection, BC 925.
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