The Individual, Auto/biography and History in South Africa

A bond of mutual longing and personal desire underpinned these political and cultural
yearnings. It is not apparent when exactly Taylor and Tabata’s political and cultural
mutuality and reciprocity also became a relationship of love. But it is clear that
emotional dependence and sexual longing became an unmistakable aspect of their
attachments, with all the difficulties and complexities that this entailed. Out of this love
came Dora Taylor’s absolute devotion and unconditional loyalty to Tabata. In the 1960s,
this devotion lay behind Dora Taylor’s monumental biographic work on Tabata’s
political life, which was the decisive element in the construction of an aura of
presidentialism around him in the 1960s. It is this that saw Tabata emerge as a leader
with a biography of gifted leadership, survival of repression and heroic resistance.
To suggest that Tabata and Taylor’s relationship was one of love and devotion may be
interpreted by some as sacrilege against the memory of Jane Gool, who is conventionally
seen as the person with whom Tabata had established “a life‐long personal and political
partnership”. 44 At the same time, historians of the Unity Movement have continued to
refer to Dora Taylor simply as Tabata’s Workers Party comrade and political secretary,
and a movement supporter. These conceptions have failed to understand the nature of
Tabata and Taylor’s relationship and Taylor’s significance in Tabata’s political and
personal life. They have also imposed a monogamist moral framework for
comprehending these issues. Tabata certainly had a personal relationship with Jane Gool
since at least 1938. 45 But they only started living together from May 1953 when Tabata
44 Robin Kayser, ‘Land and Liberty!’, p 25.
45 This was a few years after Tabata and Gool had met, and after Tabata had persuaded her not to leave
the shores of South Africa for France with the artist Ernest Mancoba who had asked her to leave with
him by ship. Mancoba was one of Tabata’s friends from Fort Hare, where he had acquired the
nickname ‘Stereo’ on account of his capacity to identify stereotypical thinking. He had visited Cape
Town in 1935‐36 and had spent many days and nights in discussion with Tabata in District Six and at
Woodstock Beach about Marxism, religion and literature. During this time, Mancoba also came into
contact with the WPSA through Tabata and Gool, and he and Gool had a brief relationship. In 1938,
Gool’s brief consideration of the idea of departing with Mancoba for France was a significant factor in
precipitating a new phase in her and Tabata’s relationship when they became lovers in addition to
being comrades (Ciraj Rassool, Notes of Interview with Jane Gool, Cape Town, 20 April 1993; Ciraj
Rassool, Interview With Jane Gool, Cape Town 17 October 1993, assisted by Bridget Thompson; Ciraj
Rassool, Interview with Ernest Mancoba, Cape Town, 25 April 1995, assisted by Wonga Mancoba;
412