The Individual, Auto/biography and History in South Africa

It was also out of Taylor’s research on the killing of Hintsa that the wider project on the
‘role of the missionaries’ was initiated. In 1952, in the aftermath of the campaigns against
the Van Riebeeck Festival, Taylor spent time writing a history of missionaries and
colonialism in South Africa. In the middle of 1952, while Tabata was travelling in the
Eastern Cape, Taylor wrote to him extensively about her feelings of “profound depression,
even despair”, and her frustrations with the process of writing The Rôle of the Missionaries.
Tabata replied, agreeing with her that there were aspects of writing this book that may
have been like “a dull duty” that had been imposed on her, one that did not give her
“scope to unfold [her] wings”. However, he impressed upon her the importance of
completing this project before she returned to her “own particular field” of creative
writing. Tabata put it to her that she had “no idea how necessary” the work was. “The
Missionaries must come out within the next few months. The people are hungry for
literature”. 9
In another letter written by Tabata to Taylor from Engcobo on the same day, Tabata
expanded upon his argument about the value of The Rôle of the Missionaries. This he did
from the experience of doing readings from the first part of the manuscript to his sister
Jocelyn, Wycliffe Tsotsi and others:
Every evening they would gather around the fire and clamour
for a reading. You know D the work has sequence. One is
conscious of shape and form even in these few pages…. You
have managed to get over the dryness of a presentation of
historical facts, without resorting to floweriness of language
or facile journalese. 10
Tabata tried to put her mind at ease by advising her to “cease to be self‐conscious about
[her] new garb, and just write straight on”. Then she would “do this job” in a way that
9 I.B. Tabata to Dora Taylor, 1952 (c.23 July 1952), I.B. Tabata Collection, BC 925. Tabata wrote this
letter from Lady Frere, and his pocket diary puts him in Lady Frere on 23 July 1952.
10 I.B. Tabata to Dora Taylor, 23 July 1952, I.B. Tabata Collection, BC 925.
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