The Individual, Auto/biography and History in South Africa

to‐president basis, and he asserted presidential authority in his communication with
official solidarity bodies in African states. 183 Tabata also undertook his tour of the United
States under the auspices of the ADC in late 1965 as the president of UMSA. And the
ADC ensured that Tabata’s itinerary would be complemented by certain formalities and
protocol arrangements, with someone to meet him at airports, accompany him wherever
he went and to be at his “disposal at all times”. Tour organisers were reminded that
“under no circumstances” was Tabata to be placed “in the position of having to make a
collection speech”. 184
The promotion of presidentialism also required evidence of leadership and authority,
and this was provided in Tabata’s speeches and writings. Tabata’s 1948 letter to
Mandela, which had become a key statement on the historical evolution of political
forms and structures at the time, was turned into evidence of the Unity Movement’s
interactions with other political bodies, as well as of Tabata’s communication – “in the
best spirit of brotherliness” ‐ with a “mentally restless young intellectual who was …
groping for political clarity”. Unlike with its prior circulation in the late 1940s, Mandela
was specifically mentioned as the recipient of the re‐edited and republished version of
the letter, and many would have been familiar with Mandela from the widely publicised
Rivonia trial as someone “now serving life‐imprisonment in Robben Island”. 185
The promotion of Tabata as a liberation movement president made use of the image‐
building process that had begun around Nelson Mandela. The letter to Mandela was
reproduced as evidence of a relationship of political mentorship, as it was “designed by
one who knew Nelson Mandela closely to help him solve his basic dilemma: to make the
183 I.B. Tabata (President, UMSA) to The President, Republic of Ghana (Kwame Nkrumah), 25 January
1965; I.B. Tabata to The Director, Bureau of African Affairs, 23 January 1965, I.B. Tabata Collection, BC
925.
184 Robert H Langston to Friends (Circular Letter), 23 September 1965; RL & BG (Robert Langston and
Berta Green) to Friends (Circular Letter to All Chapters and Organisers of Tabata Tour), 4 November
1965, Alexander Defense Committee Records, 1962‐1971, SML Microform, Sterling Memorial Library,
Yale University.
185 I.B. Tabata, ‘Letter to Mandela on The Problem of the Organisational Unity in South Africa’,
Published by the All‐African Convention, Unity Movement, Lusaka, March 1965, I.B. Tabata
Collection, BC 925.
390