The Individual, Auto/biography and History in South Africa

“colour and strength” were important, a hard cover was out of the question. 121 Soon,
copies of the book went on sale, with all moneys returned directly to Tabata.
The circulation of the book was seen as providing a theoretical and historical
explanation of the basis of the AAC’s federal structure and argument for principled
unity. CATA expressed its appreciation for “the first book, in the long history of South
Africa, to be written by a Non‐European, of the Non‐Europeans, from a Non‐European
liberatory point of view”. Tabata went beyond Plaatje’s writings in expressing “not only
the sufferings of the people”, but also “the aspirations of a reawakened people”.
Whereas Plaatje’s work reflected a time when “Non‐European intellectuals were still
ideological slaves of the British Empire and of White Liberalism”, Tabata’s work
reflected the “new age” of “an entire people … breaking with the mental slavery of the
past in order to throw off their material chains”. The book represented “completely
independent thinking”, based “exclusively on the needs and aspirations of the
oppressed peoples”, without “the faintest trace of dependence on the reigning ideas of
even the most subtle thinkers of the World Herrenvolk”. 122
Indeed, Tabata saw this book as a manual of principled resistance methods, complete
with historical explanations of the significance of the AAC, outlines of political obstacles
and forms of disruption, and discussions of “new methods of struggle”. 123 In creating
this ‘manual of struggle’, he felt he had “perhaps exaggeratedly emphasised the
consciousness and clarity of the AAC”. His generation, he argued, “had started at a
disadvantage”, with “no body of literature, no set of principles to guide us in our
political struggles”. They had “to start from scratch”. With The Awakening, he suggested,
121 I.B. Tabata, Diary entry for 9 December 1950; I.B. Tabata to Seymour Papert, 12 May 1950, I.B.
Tabata Collection, BC 925; Interview with Baruch Hirson, 11 September 1991.
122 Teachers’ Vision, Vol 18, No 4, December 1951, p 12. A review of Tabata’s book was headed ‘A
Historic Book by Mr. I.B. Tabata’.
123 I.B. Tabata, The All African Convention: The Awakening of a People, Cape Town: All African
Convention, 1950, pp 89, 101.
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