The Individual, Auto/biography and History in South Africa

useful purpose in exposing missionarism”. Even the response from inside missionary
institutions, where it was being sold, was “encouraging”. 15
Obviously aware of its authorship, Leo Sihlali wrote an anonymous letter to an
anonymous recipient – obviously Taylor – upholding the book’s anonymity. He
expressed how much he had enjoyed it, for its good timing, its “readability” and
sparingly used footnotes. In an obvious reference to Eddie Roux, who had authored
Time Longer than Rope a few years before, Sihlali expressed his relief that this book
refused to “pander to the chauvinists among the oppressed” by “clamouring for a
history ‘written from a Black Man’s standpoint’”. In response to the book’s definition of
“Western Civilisation” as “Christian Capitalist Civilisation”, Sihlali declared that he
“simply hugged that definition to my heart”. Going further than Tabata’s assessment,
Sihlali concluded his letter by suggesting that The Missionaries, ‘The Boycott’ and The
Awakening formed “one compact whole”, and should be read “over again in that order”.
He ended by saying, “I’m certain Nosipho would not feel I was detracting from the
value of her history by putting it side by side with those two other publications of the
Movement”. 16
Sihlali was placing Taylor’s book into a body of texts for the learning of history and
politics, and as part of a body of writings that was beginning to be thought of as a canon,
mainly of publications in Tabata’s name. Sihlali may have known of Taylor’ authorship,
but he may not have been completely aware of how appropriate his inclusion of Taylor
in the Tabata canon might have been, in that The Rôle of the Missionaries was also a
creation of the single knowledge‐producing unit constituted in Taylor and Tabata’s
relationship. Elsewhere in the movement, The Rôle of the Missionaries had been treated to
what Taylor thought was a “spiteful review” by Hosea Jaffe in The Torch. Jaffe, who had
published Three Hundred Years under the pseudonym Mnguni in the same year, had
implied that Taylor’s book had been “based on a part of his”. Taylor later recalled that
15 Andrew Lukhele (National Secretary of SOYA) to I.B. Tabata, 10 June 1953, I.B. Tabata Collection, BC
925.
16 L (Leo Sihlali) to Unnamed Recipient (Dora Taylor), 14 June 1953, I.B. Tabata Collection, BC 925.
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