The Individual, Auto/biography and History in South Africa

of persecution and state harassment on the part of more than thirty officials of the
national and branch structures of the Unity Movement, the AAC and APDUSA. In
addition to this biographic catalogue of persecution, it was argued that “a whole crop of
ordinary members – workers and peasants” had been arrested and prosecuted or
“subjected to intimidation” throughout South Africa. “Practically every official” of the
Unity Movement, the AAC and APDUSA had “either been put under house‐arrest,
banned and gagged or simply banned and deported”. 177
In 1965 this biographic list was followed up by a more detailed account of the “tale of
persecution” of Leo Sihlali, Louis Mtshizana and Livingstone Mqotsi, who had been
systematically persecuted “over a long period”. Not only was it necessary to publicise
these experiences of state brutality, but it was also necessary to establish the credentials
of these leaders of the Unity Movement for material support. Each person’s experiences
of persecution were presented in elaborate detail alongside descriptions of their
professional and educational achievements, and their political track records. 178 These
extended biographies of persecution also placed on record a catalogue of facts about
lives of resistance and victimisation, which gave authority to the claims of the Unity
Movement to being a liberation movement in need of material support. These were
claims put simultaneously to African governments as well as to solidarity structures that
had begun to emerge such as the Alexander Defense Committee in the United States.
As the Unity Movement struggled for recognition and support from governments and
solidarity movements, another biographic element began to take root alongside the life
stories of persecution. The Unity Movement’s representation of its institutional
structures took on an increasingly presidential character. Not only was its organisational
name streamlined and made more specific and identifiable, but I.B. Tabata was also
177 ‘Verwoerd lets loose terror on All‐African Convention and Unity Movement of South Africa’, Issued
by the Lusaka Office of the All‐African Convention and the Unity Movement of South Africa,
December 1964, I.B. Tabata Collection, BC 925.
178 ‘In Verwoerd’s South Africa: A tale of persecution’, Issued by the Head Office Abroad of The All‐
African Convention and Unity Movement of South Africa, 8 March 1965, Carter‐Karis Microfilm
Collection, 2:DA13:84/10.
387