The Individual, Auto/biography and History in South Africa

identification”. This identity claim was thus also “a claim to full citizenship” and to “all
the rights, privileges, opportunities, duties and a readiness to shoulder responsibilities
of the country to which they belong”. 26 Embracing these categories of knowing society
also entailed an enunciation of selfhood and defining one’s self into history. This was
thus an entire programme in national identity formation, in which the nation was ‘taken
to school’.
As the ‘new road’ was charted, the non‐European subject was created, whose identity
belonged to the ‘indivisible’ experience of oppression and the unifying yearnings of a
new nation in formation. Black people, figured as ‘African’ and ‘non‐European’, were
invited to become citizens in a supra‐organisation, which was also a national
programme of instruction and order. I.B. Tabata’s position was that of teacher‐writ‐
large, and in this position, he offered the patronage of his political experience and
knowledge to other activists. Part of this patronage was biographic. In the shift that
occurred from collective leadership and selflessness to individuality and
presidentialism, Tabata’s biography of leadership was narrated and reproduced as
historical lesson, and as a model in a process of person‐formation.
This pedagogy of nation building built upon a structure of patronage, and Tabata
networked with youth activists across the country and further afield in Southern Africa
on the political tasks of mobilisation and unity. After having met up with Tabata in
Johannesburg in 1948, S.J. Nhlapo of The United Youth, based in Sophiatown, Newclare
and Western Native Township expressed the significance of this encounter for them:
Ours is an organisation of the unfortunate elements of the
African Youth who are the products of the South African
system of Government based on the colours of the people. We
are the so‐called Ruffians of the African race who are said to
be mainly concerned with dice throwing, dagga smoking and
skokiaan drinking. We have been awakened to the forces
working for the destruction of the black man. We fully realise
that …we are… easy prey for the blood‐sucking fangs of our
26 See I.B. Tabata to Chairman and Members (Draft in Dora Taylor’s script), September 1956, I.B. Tabata
Collection, BC 925.
447