The Individual, Auto/biography and History in South Africa

out of the strains and pressures of the last six months”. “Oh, the joy of reading it to him!
And his joy in the work!” 36
And in the 1950s, Taylor continued to write ‘for B’ alongside the varied forms of support
she gave him with his political work and political writing. And in return for these
services, Tabata continued to encourage Taylor’s authorship, and to champion the cause
of its dissemination and publication. In 1957, while he was banned, Tabata wrote to The
London Magazine with a short story, ‘Tread Softly’, written by Taylor, which he asked to
be considered for publication. In interceding for Taylor, Tabata introduced himself as
“an African … deeply involved in the activities of my people in their struggle for
liberation”, and as an author, who had “written a history of the movement” in South
Africa. This position, he implied, qualified him to explain the significance of Taylor’s
text. 37
Up to the first half of the twentieth century, he suggested, South African writers had
been “mainly Europeans”, who wrote “from a particular distorted angle and presented
us as less than human – objects of pity or laughter – or as the noble savage”. While some
white writers since 1950 had written with “a certain amount of sympathy for the
African”, they wrote as “onlookers seeing us as from a distance”. Dora Taylor, on the
other hand, had transcended this distance, and according to Tabata, the story written by
her in her own name indicated that she “writes for us”, not “about us”. 38 Through this
authorial location, Tabata contended that Taylor gave “artistic expression to our feelings
as human beings plunged in the various situations of the complex racial system of South
Africa.” Taylor wrote “simply”, he argued, “without the intrusion of any extraneous
attitudes”. Those outside may not understand how difficult this was because of “the
constant pressures imposed by the racial situation in this country”. 39
36 Dora Taylor, Extended Diary, entry for 5 October 1953, Dora Taylor Papers.
37 I.B. Tabata to Mr Lehmann (The London Magazine), 29 June 1957, I.B. Tabata Collection, BC 925.
38 I.B. Tabata to Mr Lehmann (The London Magazine), 29 June 1957, I.B. Tabata Collection, BC 925.
39 I.B. Tabata to Mr Lehmann (The London Magazine), 29 June 1957, I.B. Tabata Collection, BC 925.
409