The Individual, Auto/biography and History in South Africa

Whatever it might have been, they worked on it together. [Their’s]
was a most unusual collaboration. 91
Quite anomalously, at the end of 1945, a few months before his correspondence with
Mnguni and Tsotsi over the Inyaniso request, the AAC Committee published a 16‐
page pamphlet written by Tabata (undoubtedly with Taylor’s assistance) under his
own name. 92 It is not clear why this authorial decision was made in strategic terms.
Perhaps the prior publication of the ‘Building of Unity’ address under Tabata’s name
was an influencing factor. The purpose of the pamphlet was “to enlighten the
people” about the government’s ‘rehabilitation scheme’ for the reserves, and to
provide an analysis of the scheme in relation to the political economy of labour
supply and rural relations. 93 The publication of the pamphlet was also meant to
enhance “the prestige of the organisation in the eyes of the people”, and to raise
funds for the AAC. 94
The rural areas of the Eastern Cape and Transkei were seen as important areas for the
distribution of the pamphlet, especially in areas like Butterworth, Mount Ayliff and
Pondoland, which had been earmarked for the implementation of betterment. This
distribution occurred through the structures of the AAC, with office‐bearers and local
activists sent batches of 50 or 100 to be sold. 95 The distribution of this pamphlet with
Tabata’s name on its cover would assist in foregrounding his planned speaking and
organising tour of the area in October 1946. By 1947, the pamphlet had gotten into the
hands of state officials in Umtata and Pondoland, who were concerned about its possible
“subversive results” in “creat[ing] dissention among the native people”. The view was
expressed that instead of suppressing it, the arguments of the pamphlet needed to be
counteracted by “intensified propaganda” by officials about the “true aims” of
91 Ciraj Rassool, Interview with Doreen and Michael Muskett, 22 March 1992.
92 I.B. Tabata, ‘The Rehabilitation Scheme: “the new fraud”’ (All African Convention Committee, Cape
Town, December 1945).
93 For subsequent studies of the history of rehabilitation and betterment schemes, see Fred Hendricks,
The Pillars of Apartheid: Land Tenure, Rural Planning and the Chieftaincy (Uppsala: Studia Sociologica
Upsaliensa, 1990) and Clifton Crais, The Politics of Evil.
94 I.B. Tabata to George Padmore (London), 25 May 1950, I.B Tabata Collection, BC 925.
95 List of names with amounts of ‘The Rehabilitation Scheme’ sent, n.d., I.B. Tabata Collection, BC 925.
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