The Individual, Auto/biography and History in South Africa

Elsewhere on the left, Tabata’s book was subjected to trenchant criticism for its
“amazing preoccupation with the Federal Structure”. The Forum Club, associated with
the remnants of the Fourth International Organisation of South Africa (FIOSA), the other
Trotskyist faction that had emerged out of the old Lenin Club, provided a record of its
lectures and debates in its journal Discussion. It was in this forum that former FIOSA
member, Arthur Davids, presented a lengthy critique of The Awakening for its
propagation of a “federal fetish”. Tabata himself was slammed for failing to turn his
back on the Three Pillar Structure, a “concession to racialism”, of which he had been
“the architect”, and for failing to understand that the boycott was “a tactic and not a
principle”. 128
The Forum Club published Davids’ lecture as a “basis for a general discussion” and
committed itself to arranging a few meetings to discuss the contents of Davids’ review.
Tabata’s book was “the first book which seriously [undertook] the study of the problems
of our movement”, and it was “of equal significance” that “a prominent participant in
the democratic movement” had written it. Davids’ critical review had “shown young
people entering the movement how to deal with such an important book by objective
criticism [and] separating the cheese from the chalk”. Everyone was invited to present
his or her views on the book and on the critical review to the open meetings of the
Forum Club. 129 Both sympathetic and critical public reviews of the value and merits of
the book thus served to confirm Tabata’s prominent public profile as author, public
intellectual and political leader, whose ideas required serious consideration.
128 Arthur Davids, ‘A Critical Analysis of I.B. Tabata’ Book “The All African Convention or The
Awakening of a People”’, Discussion, Vol 1, No 2, 1951, pp 21‐38. Tabata and FIOSA activists had
disagreed in public before, at the 6 th Unity Conference held in Cape Town in 1948, when FIOSA
attempted to express its opposition to the federal structure as the organisational basis of unity. While
the conference dismissed FIOSA’s unitary position, Tabata went further to argue that FIOSA
“performed the same tasks as the Communist Party and other enemies of the Unity Movement – they
were disrupters of Unity”. See Proceedings of the 6 th Unity Conference, 28 th , 29 th and 30 th March 1948,
Rondebosch Town Hall (Issued by the NEUM), Crowe‐Rassool Papers.
129 Discussion, Vol 1, No 2, 1951, editorial comment; pp 50‐51 (Chairman’s comments).
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