The Individual, Auto/biography and History in South Africa

portrait with a fairly relaxed, informal character. It is nevertheless quite a rare image in
that the group included I.B. Tabata, Jane Gool, Alie Fataar, Ben Kies, Edgar Maurice and
Helen Abrahams, who gathered with Dora Taylor who had come to present a lecture on
South African literature. In spite of its informal nature, it was an exceptional group
image of the participants in one of the official activities of a Unity Movement affiliate.
For a brief moment, those who ‘shunned publicity’ and who ‘disliked photographers’
posed willingly for a photograph that marked their political participation, albeit in an
educational programme of a teachers’ organisation.
It is not surprising that this rare image of NEUM leaders was a group photograph, for if
the camera could not be avoided, then individual attention could be sidestepped
through immersion in a group. And in any event, the photograph had no official status,
and the group depicted had a distinct air of informality. Informality was also the
hallmark of a group photographed outside Thabisano, the home of A.C. and Phyllis
Jordan in Crawford, Cape Town in April 1951 (Figure 3). In one photograph from this
series, the seated, smoking Tabata was depicted alongside a car, with his comrades,
including Leo Sihlali, Jane Gool, Phyllis Jordan, Wycliffe Tsotsi, Halima Gool and A.C.
Jordan standing around him. Tabata was flanked by a group of seated children
including those of the Jordans, whose presence added to the ‘extended family’ character
of the group. 48 The only hint of any formality was the attire of the adults, who had
probably just returned from the NEUM National Conference held in the Woodstock
Town Hall. It is likely that the photographer was Hassen Abrahams, who was with the
group on the day, and was someone in Unity Movement circles known for an interest in
photography.
Someone else who had a camera for occasional personal use was Goolam Gool, who was
the photographer of an extremely rare image of Tabata. This photograph was taken
sometime in the late 1940s, on a motoring excursion out of Cape Town. The occasion
possibly occurred in December 1947, during a stop en route to Bloemfontein, via
48 For a discussion of the family character of politics, see Chapter Eight.
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