The Individual, Auto/biography and History in South Africa

Education for Barbarism marked Tabata’s unambiguous, commercial entry into the world
of authorship and publishing. This time the publication was not directly in the service of
a collective cause or geared towards building a national movement, as had been the case
before. Not only was no political organisation mentioned as having some interest in the
publication, but also at no stage in the contents of the book did Tabata advocate a
particular programme of political mobilisation, as was the case with other publications.
This was Tabata the author engaged in social analysis and public scholarship at a level
removed from direct party political objectives. No doubt this was partly because of
deepening repressive circumstances, and because his ban prevented him from
advocating political action. But this was also because Tabata was now free from the
controls of collective leadership, and felt able to stake a claim to an authority as a writer
and intellectual in his own right.
Indeed, John H MacCallum Scott, a member of the editorial and production office at the
Pall Mall Press in Essex in England, which was preparing an edition of Education for
Barbarism for release in Britain, wrote to Tabata in 1960 that through his writing, it was
now possible “to give the ‘feel’ of South Africa … from the point of view of an educated
and cultured African”. 162 No sooner had Tabata, the author, emerged in his own
individuated name, than his authorship niche was being fashioned in the domain of
professional publishing. And as much as he was opening up to individually authored
analytical writing, the publishing industry was defining, determining and limiting the
potential of his written expression as presenting a ‘cultured’ African view. Scott
reported that the Americans were reluctant to bring out a version of Education for
Barbarism because of its modest length. Instead they had enquired about whether Tabata
would be willing to write “a real book”, in “the same vein and style” about “the life of a
colored man in South Africa in all its aspects, not just about education”. Scott put this
proposal to Tabata, saying that such a book “should not be too polemical”. Instead it
should be “an objective, straightforward account of conditions, embracing education,
opportunity, social life, politics, etc., etc.” For this, Tabata was offered ₤100, 10% royalty
162 John H. MacCallum Scott, Pall Mall Press Limited (Essex, Britain) to I.B. Tabata, 27 June 1960, I.B.
Tabata Collection, BC 925.
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