The Individual, Auto/biography and History in South Africa

their political exchanges. 9 Later, in Chicago in 1965, Dora Taylor framed the relationship
that she and Tabata had with Neville Alexander as parental, in spite of the political rift
that had emerged between him and Tabata: “Neville was always our son”. 10
These family relations of politics deepened when Tabata and Jane Gool went into exile
with Nathaniel Honono in 1964. With the leadership by this time in their mid‐to‐late
fifties and sixties, the family character of political organisations and the duties and
obligations that were exercised became more acute and exaggerated. When the leaders
and members of the Unity Movement entered a Lusaka studio in 1965 for an official
photograph, the assembled group bore more than a passing resemblance to a large
family commemorating a family occasion, with the elders seated in front. 11 A critical
area where the obligations of movement membership and loyalty were experienced in a
family‐like way was in the controversial injunction that organisation members who
earned a salary hand this over to the central leadership to be deployed in the
movement’s interests. 12
As much as these relations and rituals were familial, they were also educational.
Tabata’s correspondence with Mnguni and Inyaniso in 1946 also enables us to
understand the educational and knowledge‐producing character of formations like the
AAC and the Unity Movement. A number of scholars have drawn attention to the ways
in which the Unity Movement and its associated bodies had been influenced by teachers
and teacher organisations. 13 Many of the leadership of the NEUM, AAC, Anti‐CAD and
9 Tabata expressed this almost parental affection for Papert in letters of political engagement and counsel
by ending off with his “love”, and not merely his ‘regards’, ‘greetings’ or ‘best wishes’. See for example
I.B. Tabata to Seymour Papert 22 & 23 January 1953, I.B. Tabata Collection, BC 925.
10 Transcript of Interview with Dora Taylor (probably conducted by Gwendolen Carter), Northwestern
University, 20 November 1965, Carter‐Karis Papers, Melville J Herskovits Library of African Studies,
Northwestern University.
11 See Chapter Six.
12 Ciraj Rassool, Interview with Alie and Ursula Fataar, Harare, 19 July 1991; Elma Carolissen‐Essack to
Yousuf Rassool, 31 July 2001. I would like to thank Elma for sending me a copy of this letter.
13 Linda Chisholm, ‘Education, Politics and Organisation’; Jonathan Hyslop, The Classroom Struggle:
Policy and Resistance in South Africa, 1940‐1990 (Pietermaritzburg: University of Natal Press, 1999),
Chapter Two; Crain Soudien, ‘The City, Citizenship and Education’, Inaugural Professorial Lecture,
University of Cape Town, 11 September 2002. See also Alan Wieder, ‘They Can’t Take Our Souls:
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