The Individual, Auto/biography and History in South Africa

egan to include copies of the letter in his correspondence with his comrades and local
cadres in different affiliates of the AAC, deploying it as a document which gave a much
needed “historical survey” of political “schools of thought”, and the emergence of “a
principled basis of struggle”. 107 In July and August 1948, among the people he sent it to
were Nathaniel ‘Tshutsha’ Honono, Wycliffe Tsotsi, Leo Sihlali. 108 Tsotsi, in turn, had
half a dozen copies made to be sent, with Tabata’s permission, to Livingstone Mqotsi
“and his small group” at Fort Hare, and to others “in our camp” in Queenstown,
Grahamstown and elsewhere. In addition, Tsotsi discussed it “with several people” in
Port Elizabeth, as he saw it as a document “so full of important matters”. 109
During the following year, Tabata also sent copies of his letter to Mandela to a number
of young people, including members of the Congress Youth League. One such young
activist was Robert Sobukwe, to whom he wrote congratulating him on the stand he
took at the Cape ANC conference, defending the boycott of NRC elections in the face of
the ANC leadership. In circulating the letter to Mandela outside the AAC, Tabata had
removed Mandela’s name, and simply called it a letter ‘to a friend’. 110 During 1949,
Tabata had been “inundated with correspondence from people eager to know more
about Convention and what it stands for”. The copying and circulation of the letter to
Mandela was a temporary means of responding to these requests. The letter, written as
part of the politics of discussion and persuasion between individual activists, one of
whom (Mandela) was almost ten years younger, was raised to the status of an
organisational document that was widely circulated as a clarificatory text. But
ultimately, it was seen as insufficient for the purposes of historical explanation and
Tabata resolved to write “a fuller picture” of the history of Convention. 111
107 I.B. Tabata to N. Honono (Nqabara Secondary School, Idutywa), 21 July 1948, I.B. Tabata Collection,
BC 925.
108 I.B. Tabata to N. Honono (Nqabara Secondary School, Idutywa), 21 July 1948; W. Tsotsi to I.B.
Tabata, 25 July 1948; L.Sihlali to I.B. Tabata, 6 August 1948, I.B. Tabata Collection, BC 925.
109 W. Tsotsi to I.B. Tabata, 25 July 1948, I.B. Tabata Collection, BC 925.
110 I.B. Tabata to R. Sobukwe, 13 August 1949, I.B. Tabata Collection, BC 925.
111 I.B. Tabata to Wycliffe Tsotsi, 25 July 1949, I.B. Tabata Collection, BC 925. In that same month,
Tabata had received a letter from a student in Johannesburg, E.J. Vawda, who complained about the
“paucity of material about the Convention”. What people knew was “merely a superficial idea”. He
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