The Individual, Auto/biography and History in South Africa

deliberately as “a training ground for our young”. 40 SOYA was also intended “to
counteract the attraction of the ANC Youth League, especially at Fort Hare”. 41 The
formation of APDUSA, on the other hand, had addressed an organisational weakness
that had become apparent in the early 1960s. The movement had been “top heavy with
intellectuals” at a time when it was winning over groups of workers and peasants in
Natal and Transkei, and groups were being invigorated in Port Elizabeth and East
London. Taylor described the incremental relationship of tutelage and seniority among
these structures and the passage of persons through them as almost like an educational
system: “You would graduate from SOYA to the Unity Movement and then to
APDUSA”. 42
Jane Gool confirmed that when it was formed, APDUSA was an organisational pinnacle,
thought of by Tabata as a “stepping‐stone to a party”. In putting forward the interests of
the workers and peasants “as a priority”, APDUSA was like a “political study group on
a mass scale”. 43 In the absence of an underground party for many years (after the
dissolution of the WPSA around 1950) and coming immediately after Tabata had
experienced isolation from active leadership, APDUSA provided a means of tighter
cohesion and was a device for the consolidation of leadership. Tabata himself accepted
the presidency of this new structure. Neville Alexander has suggested that Tabata also
initiated an “inner circle”, party‐like structure around 1961 (or shortly before) consisting
of a number of Tabata’s “hangers on”. This “nerve‐centre” had a clear purpose in
“training a certain calibre of leadership in what revolution means”. Apparently Alie
Fataar was invited to join this group in 1961, although neither he nor Jane Gool admitted
to its formation. Alexander himself, who had been a member of SOYA and the CPSU,
40 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.
41 Ciraj Rassool, Interview with Neville Alexander, Cape Town, 8 December 1992.
42 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.
43 Jane Gool to Ciraj Rassool, personal communication, 19 July 1991. See also ‘The Birth of the African
People’s Democratic Union of Southern Africa (APDUSA), issued by the Central Executive of APDUSA,
General Secretary L Mqotsi, March 1961, Carter‐Karis Papers, Melville J Herskovits Library of African
Studies, Northwestern University.
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