The Individual, Auto/biography and History in South Africa

continued to rework and re‐edit Tabata’s biography, 76 making use of the first‐person
dictated text as the raw material. Out of this, Taylor developed a five‐page biography in
the third person, which largely followed the narrative structure and emphases of the
first person text. This document also stressed Tabata’s capacities as author and orator,
and concluded with a foregrounding of Tabata’s presidency of APDUSA, a “new body”
created for the purpose of building “mass organisation”. 77
This was the biography sent by Taylor to the Yugoslav official, M. Tomac and the
Algerian, M. Verges, on Tabata’s behalf. Tomac had indicated that he was “preparing
material on political movements and leaders in Africa”. The “brief political biography”
that Taylor had written was sent partly as a means of overcoming the “conspiracy of
silence” against the Unity Movement. Taylor feared that the biographic document may
have been “too long” for Tomac’s purpose, and offered to “write a shorter biography” if
he needed one. In her covering letter to Verges, Taylor apologised that the biography of
Tabata she had written was “very short” and that in all likelihood, it did not
“adequately cover either the complex political background or his work”. She repeated
her hope that it may “in some degree” break the “conspiracy of silence” against the AAC
and NEUM and “their influence in South Africa”. 78
It is significant that these letters were sent by Taylor under her own name, and in the
absence of Tabata, who had departed two weeks before for South Africa via London,
Belgrade, Nairobi, Dar‐es‐Salaam and Salisbury. With Tabata unable to continue this
communication directly because of the need for secrecy, these responsibilities fell to
Taylor in England, who now engaged publicly on behalf of the Unity Movement under
her own name. Following on from her period of being Tabata’s proxy during his ban in
the late 1950s, these communications and the meetings that she conducted at Tabata’s
76 See for example, Dora Taylor, Pocket Diary, entries for 11 June & 2 November 1962, I.B. Tabata
Collection, BC 925.
77 ‘I.B. Tabata – South Africa: A Founding Member of the All‐African Convention (1935) and the Non‐
European Unity Movement (1943), President of the African Peoples’ Democratic Union of Southern
Africa (1961)’, I.B. Tabata Collection, BC 925.
78 Dora Taylor to M. Tomac, 1 December 1962; Dora Taylor to M. Verges, 5 December 1962; Dora
Taylor, Pocket Diary, entries for 3 & 7 December 1962, I.B. Tabata Collection, BC 925.
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