The Individual, Auto/biography and History in South Africa

the pamphlet put emphasised the necessity of “pooling the resources of the Nation‐wide
organisation under the guidance of the unified leadership of the National Movement”.
And the leadership needed “to stress unceasingly the sustained national aspect of the
struggle”. Part of the lessons learnt applied also to “the renegades” who had “turned
their backs” on the NEUM, and who had “organised campaigns of slander” and
organised “disruptive activities”. After having “[flung] swear‐words, accusations of
‘Africanists’, etc. at the core of the Movement”, when “the real Pan‐Africanists” came
along, “they did not know what [had] hit them”. They “had lost anchorage” and had
become “political flotsam and jetsam”, sent “into the political wilderness” by the new
crisis. The people needed to be in a position “to weigh and discriminate in choosing
their leadership”. The tasks of the leadership were “to bring this knowledge to the
masses” and to teach the people “the meaning of organisation and all that is involved in
belonging to it”. 169
Presidentialism and biographic politics
As soon as his ban expired in 1961, Tabata began to focus on rebuilding and
restructuring the organisation. After “all the weaknesses in the Movement were
thoroughly probed and reasons for past failures ruthlessly exposed”, a conference called
by the NEUM’s executive of the movement’s leadership decided “to sponsor the
formation of a political organisation on a nation‐wide scale”. This finally took shape as
APDUSA, set up to be an organisation that individuals could join directly. APDUSA
would not only be “a weapon of defence or attack”, but would be “a vehicle for ideas
that have to be carried to all corners of the country”. I.B. Tabata was elected to
APDUSA’s presidency, the first time he held any central officiating position in a national
organisation. 170
The “high point” of APDUSA’s first conference was “the importance given to the role of
the peasants and workers”. APDUSA needed to lift “the nameless masses from their
169 ‘The Pan African Congress Adventure in Perspective’.
170 Ilizwi LeSizwe, Vol 1, No 1, September 1961.
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