The Individual, Auto/biography and History in South Africa

occurred in which Tabata was subjected to a political enquiry. Amid the programme of
public meetings in 1951‐52, which mobilised people to boycott the Van Riebeeck
Tercentenary Festival, special meetings of the NEF were convened to discuss Tabata, and
in his pocket diary for 1952, Tabata noted that in the NEF, an “incipient conflict” had
reared its head. 132
In the midst of internal strife and in the aftermath of the campaign against the Van
Riebeeck Festival, Tabata published ‐ again under his own name ‐ a pamphlet on the
boycott, one of the most contentious questions that divided different political
tendencies. This was a follow‐up to The Awakening in presenting an explanation of “the
meaning of the Boycott weapon, its effectiveness and … proper use”, the “positive part”
it played in “Building the Nation”. 133 Once again, the pamphlet was published under
Tabata’s name, with the AAC named as the publisher. Constituting a second manual of
resistance methods, Tabata considered it necessary to outline the proper terms of the
boycott, as the opponents of the NEUM had
sneered at it, pretended to adopt it in order … to debase it
and render it ineffectual, and finally they have
misrepresented it to the people with the express purpose of
making it appear meaningless and ridiculous. 134
One of the significant elements of Tabata’s 1952 pamphlet was an analysis of the fear of
the boycott on the part of intellectuals, who often “stand guard over the population as
policemen in the interests of their masters”. As a “specific application of the policy of
Non‐Collaboration”, the boycott exposed the “voluntary acquiescence on the part of the
132 I.B Tabata Pocket Diary entries, 17 & 21 January 1952, I.B. Tabata Collection, BC 925. The people
whom Tabata felt were leading the accusations against him were S.A. Jayiya and Ben Kies. Later,
Tabata would also name Hosea Jaffe as one of the protagonists. See I.B Tabata to Dora Taylor, 6
February 1952; 23 July 1952, I.B. Tabata Collection, BC 925. Jaffe, of course, led the political critique
against Tabata at the time of his banning (see earlier). See also a copy of a letter from Soyan, G.S.
Govindasamy (Fort Hare), complaining of “nonsensical, babyish political backbiting” on the part of
Victor Wessels, who had approached him at the TLSA conference in Port Elizabeth in June 1953, and
who had tried to “create in [him] an attitude of mind against Soya” (Letter from G.S. Govindasamy, 25
July 1953, I.B. Tabata Collection, BC 925).
133 I.B. Tabata, ‘The Boycott as Weapon of Struggle’, published by the All African Convention
Committee (W.P.), Cape Town, June 1952.
134 I.B. Tabata, ‘The Boycott as Weapon of Struggle’, p 2.
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