The Individual, Auto/biography and History in South Africa

no less than the life of the Unity Movement itself that [was] being discussed and
undermined”, and indeed that “its fate” hinged “on the outcome of present disputes”. 150
Ikhwezi also became a vehicle for Tabata’s continued written analyses, and he wrote a
series of articles in the first six issues under the broad title, ‘The national situation: the
real problems in the liberatory movement’. The intention was to give readers “a general
picture of the struggles of the peasants against oppressive measures”, and “to show the
manner in which the national crisis affects the different groups of political parties”. 151
Ikhwezi tended to come out irregularly, and Tabata spent the entire duration of its
existence pestering the editor, Leo Sihlali, with letters about the value of its timely
publication in building political capital. Tabata concerned himself with the health of the
newspaper as the medium of a reconstituted collective will, and with his own polemical
writing once again published anonymously.
Tabata’s banning was also an opportunity for more extended analytical writing about
the pressing issues of South African society, and in the late 1950s, he began to do some
reflection about the system of Bantu education that had emerged as policy in the
1950s. 152 In 1957, Tabata prepared a text on university education that was premised
upon an analysis of Bantu education policy of “regimentation and indoctrination” and
“the debasement of education”. In 1958, Tabata replied under a pseudonym to a letter
from UCT’s Professor A.H. Murray published in The Observer in Britain and reprinted in
the Cape Argus in 1958, which had suggested that Bantu education was acceptable to
Africans and “indeed that they had begged for it”. In his letter, Tabata challenged
Murray by asserting that “not a single well‐known African organisation of the African
people [had] asked for this thing”. He reminded Murray that CATA had submitted a
memorandum to the Commission, which had been “drawn up by a body of African
150 I.B. Tabata to Leo Sihlali, 7 May 1958, I.B. Tabata Collection, BC 925.
151 Ikhwezi Lomso, Vol 1, No 1, July 1958, p 4; Vol 1 No 2, September 1958, p 5.
152 See I.B. Tabata, ‘University Education in South Africa’, text prepared for publication overseas, 23
April 1957; A Jericho (I.B. Tabata) to The Editor, The Observer, 23 April 1958, copy in I.B. Tabata
Collection, BC. 925. Tabata also informed readers of The Observer that Murray achieved notoriety for
having given evidence for the Crown at the Treason Trial.
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