The Individual, Auto/biography and History in South Africa

By the 1950s, increased internal bloodletting took the form of political manoeuvring,
suspensions and expulsions, and also saw efforts to retain the allegiance of cadres who
showed evidence of deviation. When S.A. Jayiya was accused of having been
“wrench[ed] from his moorings” by “the Jaffes” in 1956, he was “stripped … of all
positions” in the Voters’ Association and the AAC Committee (WP) in order to make it
“impossible for him to drag his ‘friends’ with their poison into the African sector”. 70
Cadoc Kobus was similarly lost to the ‘Jaffes’ after he had been found wanting as a
political organiser and office‐bearer. In 1954 Kobus ‐ then AAC General Secretary ‐ was
accused of having attempted to sabotage the AAC for failing to call a conference until
two weeks before the date of the meeting. And in 1957, it was thought that he might try
to organise “car‐loads” of supporters to disrupt the AAC conference. 71
In 1958 these conflicts inside the structures of the NEUM came to a head at the
December AAC Conference held at Edendale. The “fraternal delegation representing the
National Committee of the National Anti‐CAD Movement” withdrew from the
Conference after accusing “the AAC leadership” of having turned the Ten Point
Programme into “a kind of maximum programme” and of having interpreted Point 7 on
the Land Question as meaning “no more than the ‘right to buy and sell land’”. 72 This
was the precursor to the 1959 document, ‘What Has Happened in the NEUM’, which
was challenged for being “a shameful and treacherous attack on the AAC”, and which
was seen accordingly as “subversive of the whole NEUM”. The authors of the
document, Jayiya, Kobus, Kies and R.E. Viljoen, who had styled themselves as
“Foundation Members” of the NEUM and members of the HUC, were accused by the
70 I.B. Tabata to Leo Sihlali, 25 August 1953, I.B. Tabata Collection, BC 925.
71 I.B. Tabata to Leo Sihlali, 14 February 1957; I.B. Tabata to Wycliffe Tsotsi, 26 October 1957, I.B. Tabata
Collection, BC 925. It is unclear whether the expressions of political dissidence described above came
about as a result of Kobus’ influence. Kobus re‐emerged as one of the founders of the AAC Vigilance
Committee in 1961, which attempted to contest the political leadership of the AAC by Tabata and his
colleagues. See The Torch, 1 February 1961.
72 ‘Anti‐Coloured Affairs Department Delegation Statement’ (signed by R.O. Dudley and V.W.W.
Wessels), Ikhwezi Lomso, February 1959. See also Ciraj Rassool, Interview with R.O. Dudley, Cape Town,
11 November 1992, in which he explains the emergence of different interpretations of the ‘land question’
in the movement, and discusses his memories of the 1958 AAC Conference and the ‘tactics of exclusion’
of certain representatives from discussions by proceedings being conducted in Xhosa, without
translation into English.
461