The Individual, Auto/biography and History in South Africa

was also invited to join along with CPSU activists, Kenny Abrahams and Carl Brecker.
Being invited to join this ‘inner circle’ was, for Alexander, an attempt to “bind” people
into a way of thinking “under the control … of the leadership” of APDUSA and the
AAC. 44 Similarly, in the early 1950s, SOYA had been seen as an initiative of Tabata “to
create his own power base” among the youth. 45 As tools of centralisation, SOYA,
APDUSA and this ‘inner circle’ also provided a means of discipline.
Order, constraint and person formation
As much as schools have been forums of enlightenment and enablement, they have also
paradoxically been institutions of order and constraint. Similarly, the Unity Movement
and its constituent bodies emerged and developed simultaneously as institutions of
education and political advancement, as well as of discipline and regulation. For all their
efforts at equality, collectiveness and identity, these political movements, like schools,
have also been structures of inequality, hierarchy and authority. Hierarchies of
knowledge relations and instruction gave rise to intermittent backlashes and expressions
of dissent. These became particularly acute as the hierarchies of paternalism and
patronage gave way to the consolidation and defence of presidentialism. In Tabata’s
case, the authority of the teacher‐leader increasingly came to resemble that of the
autocrat, who exercised power over the political movement and its members. Dissent
was met with discipline, and Tabata’s exercise of political authority was met with
accusations of leadership cults and abuse of power. As Tabata’s biography was lived
and exercised as a form of authority, and turned into lessons of leadership, so it was also
confronted and challenged for the modes of power and sectarianism it represented.
This paradox of education and regulation was reflected in the place of youth bodies in
the federal structure, as well as in the rites of passage, and possibilities of ascension and
44 Ciraj Rassool, Interviews with Neville Alexander, 8 & 28 December 1992.
45 Joe Rassool, ‘Notes on the History of the Non‐European Unity Movement in South Africa, and the role of
Hosea Jaffe’. In contrast, according to Joe Rassool, the NEF became Hosea Jaffe’s “kindergarten”. After Ben
Kies had stopped attending NEF meetings from about 1953, in order not to have “an inhibiting effect on
the youth”, Jaffe’s views had emerged as “definitive on all questions; his pronouncements became part of
Movement lore”.
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