The Individual, Auto/biography and History in South Africa

Taylor’s efforts were decisive in the production and moulding of I.B. Tabata as the
political leader with a biography. In this perspective, it also becomes possible to look at
reciprocal constructions and the ways in which people have narrated each other in
relationships, especially ones that have been ongoing and formative.
Mutuality, history and culture
I.B. Tabata and Dora Taylor encountered each other for the first time in the circles of the
WPSA in the mid‐1930s. In 1936 or 1937, Tabata was engaged by Dora Taylor to sing in a
cultural production for the Spartacus Club. Shortly after coming to Cape Town from the
Eastern Cape in the early 1930s after the death of his father, Tabata had begun to sing in
the Reverend Gow’s choir, along with Cadoc Kobus, who had also come to Cape Town
from the Eastern Cape. 1 Tabata took his singing talents into the Spartacus Club, the public
culture, lecture and debating forum of the WPSA, and sang songs that had been composed
by Dora Taylor. 2 In a letter Taylor wrote to Tabata in the late 1930s, Taylor made reference
to their emerging common interests of cultural performance and social and political
analysis:
Dear Comrade Tabata, JG suggests coming in to our new
hall next Saturday at 7 o’clock, allowing an hour at least for
rehearsal before the lecture. That will save you the trouble of
coming out this way. Please be on time and know the words
of the songs. You know those which are quartets. Let us
know if the time does not suit you. Did you look for the
article? Yours comradely, Dora Taylor. 3
1 Ciraj Rassool, Interview with Cadoc Kobus, Qumbu, 19‐20 July 1993; Interview with Amina Gool, 13
July 1993.
2 Cadoc Kobus still remembered revolutionary songs composed by Taylor that he had sung with
Tabata in the late 1930s in the Spartacus Club. He sang one of these songs for my recorded interview
with him (Ciraj Rassool, Interview with Cadoc Kobus, Qumbu, 19‐20 July 1993). Kobus became a
member of the WPSA after his application was submitted in June 1936. See Cadoc Kobus, Application
for Membership of the WPSA, 11 June 1936, WPSA Papers, UWC Robben Island Museum Mayibuye
Archive/Cullen Library, University of the Witwatersrand (Hereafter, WPSA Papers). I have copies of
this collection in my possession, and personally ensured that a section entered the then Mayibuye
Centre at UWC. The collection had by then been separated into two sections, the other of which was
deposited in Cullen Library at Wits. Here, I deliberately cite them together to indicate that they are one
collection separated into two sections after it had been found in the attic of Claire Goodlatte’s former
home in York Street, Woodstock.
3 Dora Taylor to I.B. Tabata, nd, (1936?), Tabata Collection, BC 925. This letter in the Tabata Collection
was later annotated and accorded significance by Taylor as “my first letter?” as she inscribed herself
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