The Individual, Auto/biography and History in South Africa

moved into Gool’s newly rented house in Milan Street, on the edge of District Six. In the
early 1940s, Jane Gool had acquired a special emotional place in Tabata’s life as someone
who “knew she could hurt me”. 46 Tabata and Gool were certainly comrades and lovers.
Taylor, on the other hand, was married to psychologist and fellow WPSA member, J.G.
Taylor, with whom she had three daughters, Sheila, Muriel and Doreen. Apart from
Tabata and Taylor’s immersion in other long‐term relationships, the 1950s were also a
time of the absolute legal prohibition of sexual relations between black and white.
Even though both Tabata and Taylor were involved in long‐term relations, the intensity
of their political, intellectual, cultural and literary exchanges spilled over into the
domain of the heart, and from the late 1940s, they began to acknowledge the depth of
their feelings for each other. They had already become each other’s sounding board by
the mid‐1940s, and during Taylor’s travels, she was moved to report in detail to Tabata
on her experiences and observations. 47 In 1948, Taylor undertook an extensive research
visit to Bechuanaland, Johannesburg and Basutoland at the same time as Tabata set out
for the Transkei. At this time, her need for Tabata as a confidant had become more
urgent. She kept an almost daily journal of descriptions, analyses and observations,
which she wrote specifically for Tabata. In addition, Taylor recorded her anxieties and
emotions wrought by their separation:
My B, I now know to the full the tricks which time plays during
separation, with no means of communication. The gap of time
does not bear description. And it has the effect which falling
must have, it paralyses the whole being, feeling, memory,
imagination, perhaps in self‐defence. I know what happens to
you in this respect when you go out. I have said: “Do you
‘Artists’ birthday calendar, 1993’ (Johannesburg: Fuba Academy, 1992); Elza Miles, Lifeline out of Africa:
The Art of Ernest Mancoba, Cape Town & Johannesburg: Human and Rousseau, 1994; Ernest Mancoba
to Claire Goodlatte, 21 October 1936, Workers Party of South Africa Papers).
46 In the late 1930s and early 1940s, Tabata also showed a fleeting interest in Jane Gool’s sister, Minnie,
who he liked for her “open‐heartedness” and “joviality”. After all, it was Minnie Gool who first met
Tabata in the library of the Liberman Institute in Hanover Street, District Six, and introduced him to
her sister Jane and brother, Goolam. (I.B. Tabata, ‘Brutality: Yes, Brutality of man’, Private journal
entry, c.1941, I.B. Tabata Collection, BC 925; Ciraj Rassool, interview with Amina Gool, 13 July 1993).
47 One such occasion was her detailed letter to Tabata about her visit to a Johannesburg mine
compound in 1944, which she had undertaken as part of her general research on the political economy
of African lives. See Dora Taylor to I.B. Tabata, 24 July 1944, I.B. Tabata Collection, BC 925.
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