The Individual, Auto/biography and History in South Africa

speaking tour. 100 Taylor also continued reworking and developing Tabata’s biography,
and prepared a typescript about his political career especially for the New York ADC. 101
Taylor also reworked part of Tabata’s “profile” to “fit in the coloured front”. 102 By this
time, the biographical sketches that she had constructed and circulated for diplomatic
purposes a few years before had grown into a substantial biographical article or
document that befitted a president of a liberation movement. It was printed and widely
circulated under the auspices of the ADC and to members of the Unity Movement in
Africa and Europe. This document acted as the main source for the cryptic biographic
pamphlets of Tabata that were circulated around the United States to different ADC
chapters as part of their resource packs, as preparations were made for Tabata’s
speaking tour of the United States in 1965‐66. 103
In this narrative Tabata was described as having “devoted a lifetime to one single
purpose, the liberation of the oppressed people of South Africa”. The biographic article
began by establishing “the foundations of his search for liberty” as lying in Cape Town,
where he encountered “the harsh impact of city life in the segregated slums set aside for
non‐Whites”. It was this that “equipped him with the political understanding of the
nature of that society which oppresses and exploits his people”, and “it steeled” him to
become a “political leader of integrity and unswerving resolve”. Alongside a discussion
of the emergence of the AAC and its federal strategy of mobilisation and political unity,
and of the birth of the NEUM out of a call for unity sent out by the AAC, the document
also made mention of Tabata’s special attributes and contributions. Tabata was “an
indefatigable organiser, concentrating especially in spreading the idea of a united, co‐
ordinated struggle for liberation amongst the peasants of the Transkei”. He also
100 Dora Taylor, Pocket Diary, entries between 3 April and 5 June 1965, I.B. Tabata Collection, BC 925.
101 Nosipho Majeke, ‘I.B. Tabata, President of the Unity Movement of South Africa: For Full Democratic
Rights’ (1965), Manuscripts and Archives, Sterling Memorial Library, Yale University, also found in
Carter‐Karis Microfilm Collection, 2:XT1:92/3. Another version of this text is to be found in the Tabata
Collection. See Dora Taylor, ‘I.B. Tabata: President of the Unity Movement of South Africa’, n.d. (c.
1965), I.B. Tabata Collection, BC 925.
102 Dora Taylor, Pocket Diary, entry for 9 June 1965, I.B. Tabata Collection, BC 925.
103 See Chapter Six.
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