The Individual, Auto/biography and History in South Africa

where “fierce debates and discussions … took place about citizenship, rights and
struggle”. 18
Here, I suggest that the discussion about the Unity Movement and education needs to be
extended beyond the influence of teachers, teacher organisations and educational
fellowships. Indeed, I suggest that the entire institutional edifice of the AAC and Unity
Movement can be understood as a massive initiative in public education, which saw the
creation of a body of symbolic expressions, rhetorical strategies, methods of analysis and
an entire repertoire of research, knowledge creation and dissemination. I.B. Tabata was
centrally involved in an ambitious programme of public education, with its own
pedagogy, methods, idiom and canonical texts. And as I suggested in Chapter Six,
Tabata’s publications were lessons in history and educational manuals on resistance
politics. According to one member of SOYA in the 1950s, Archie Nkonyana, “Tabata and
Jane Gool were our mentors and his writings, especially The Awakening and ‘The
Boycott’ were our textbooks. This ensured our political development”. 19
For Tabata and his fellow activists, meeting halls were like public classrooms,
newspapers, leaflets and bulletins were like worksheets, while political speeches
afforded opportunities for history lessons and instruction on building unity. Different
kinds of meetings and assembly were conducted, geared towards varied objectives,
ranging from planning and co‐ordination, mobilisation, confidence building,
information and education. They were often structured through a symbolic order of
speakers and assembled listeners, as well as the ritual and ceremony of agendas,
meeting formalities and procedures, and processes of recording. The rites of their
business were marked by rules of uninterrupted address, orderly conduct and
attentiveness. 20
18 Crain Soudien, ‘The City, Citizenship and Education’, p 10.
19 This is a verbatim quote from a discussion conducted with Umtata businessman Archie Nkonyana in
Umtata on 14 June 2000. Nkonyana had been a member of SOYA in the 1950s.
20 For a discussion of the pedagogy of Unity Movement political meetings, speeches and publications in
the context of the campaign against the 1952 Jan van Riebeeck Tercentenary Festival, see Ciraj Rassool
and Leslie Witz, ‘The Jan van Riebeeck Tercentenary Festival’.
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