The Individual, Auto/biography and History in South Africa

of individualised leadership may have enabled the public performance of collective
leadership as a means of rejecting older political approaches. However, Tabata became
increasingly committed to writing and authorship, and these provided ambiguously for
individualising modes of communication which seemed to contradict notions of
‘selflessness’ and the collective.
Having immersed himself in the intellectual worlds of the clubs and fellowships
connected to the WPSA from the 1930s, it seems that I.B. Tabata’s writing began to take
off in the early 1940s. It seemingly began as notes made for lectures to the New Era
Fellowship in which ideas were carefully set out, surveying the historical development
of African political organisation through a sequence of stages. 62 Soon this gave way to
official written submissions on behalf of the AAC (WP) to the Native Affairs
Commission on major questions that affected the daily lives of African people. 63 These
presentations resulted in some of Tabata’s earliest writings, which were published in the
independent intellectual magazine and critical review, Trek, 64 and also generated his first
substantial political pamphlet, the ‘Influx’. What is noteworthy about these early pieces
of writing is that almost all of them were published under pseudonyms. 65 During the
62 Lecture to the NEF on the AAC, 14 June 1941, I.B. Tabata Collection, BC 925. In the organisation of
the Collection, Dora Taylor tried to establish Tabata’s “first attempt” at writing, and this resulted in an
incomplete document, ‘Manifesto of the AAC’, marked as 1939 in spite of its clear references to events
of 1943‐44.
63 All African Convention Committee (WP), ‘Memo on the Proclamation restricting the entry of
Africans into the Cape Town Municipal Area’ (June 1941); ‘Memo of the AAC Committee (WP) for
submission to the Native Affairs Commission on the Beer Question’, n.d, I.B. Tabata Collection, BC
925. The latter was in response to a Notice from the Department of Native Affairs, in which the AAC
(WP) was asked to submit a memorandum as part of the Native Affairs Commission’s enquiry into the
production, supply and sale of ‘kaffir beer’. It is interesting that this brief co‐operation with the
procedures of the Native Affairs Department occurred at an early stage in the evolution of the policy
and meaning of non‐collaboration. Considered together, these pieces of writing constituted a veritable
social survey of Langa.
64 B Ywaye (I.B. Tabata), ‘We don’t want Beer Halls’, Trek, 24 October 1941; ‘Commissioning Native
Affairs’, Trek, 8 May 1942; ‘From him that hath not’, Trek, 23 October 1942; ‘The Native elections: a
post‐mortem’, Trek, 20 November 1942.
65 Tabata used the pseudonyms B Ywaye and B Somvinane. The exceptions were the address on the
history of the AAC which Tabata delivered to the 1941 AAC conference, and the address on ‘The
Building of Unity’ which Tabata presented to the Third Unity Conference of the NEUM in 1945. These
addresses were published and circulated under his own name, probably because they had been
presented as part of the official quasi‐parliamentary proceedings of the AAC and NEUM conferences.
In addition, the latter address was published alongside B.M Kies’ address on ‘the Basis of Unity’. See
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