The Individual, Auto/biography and History in South Africa

NEUM Acting President, Wycliffe Tsotsi, of constituting “a clique” which had “usurped
the authority and functions of the HUC”. 73 At the Eighth Unity Conference held in
December 1959, the Joint Secretaries, S.A. Jayiya and Dan Neethling and the Treasurer,
R.E. Viljoen, who had refused to hand over the books, minutes and other property of
movement, were branded as “renegades” and expelled from the NEUM and all its
affiliates. 74
Sometimes the line of action in the case of alleged deviation took a more sympathetic
path. When R.S. Canca showed evidence at the 1953 AAC Executive meeting of having
come under the influence of the ‘Jaffes’ for having nominated Kies, Jaffe and Victor
Wessels to replace Goolam Gool, Tabata asked Leo Sihlali to investigate the extent of this
influence. Canca was described as having an “immature mind” that was “impressed by
the show of erudition” on the part of Kies, Jaffe and Wessels. Tabata expressed his
disappointment that Canca could “exalt and hold in awe” a “creature like young
Wessels”, who was not only “politically younger than he” but who could not “hold a
candle to our coming boys such as Guma, Mqotsi, etc”. In asking Sihlali to “find a
method of weaning [Canca] away from his idols”, Tabata expressed the importance of
these efforts: “We do not want to lose that boy. He is very valuable”. 75
Members and leaders who refused to conform, or who were deemed to have deviated
from political policy were the subject of severe criticism. In February 1960, Tabata
expressed his displeasure to Sihlali for J.L. Mkentane having been elected as Vice‐
President of the AAC and as Treasurer of the reorganised NEUM. Tabata said that it
may have been unwise to have elevated “to such eminence” someone who spent “a lot
of time” attempting to “save” the young SOYANS from “my evil influences”. “Isn’t it
strange”, Tabata suggested to Sihlali, “how many people have found me standing in the
73 See ‘Treacherous Attack on AAC’ (Letter from W.M. Tsotsi), in Ikhwezi Lomso, May 1959.
74 ‘Conference Resolutions’, Ikhwezi Lomso, February 1960, pp 3; 8.
75 I.B. Tabata to Leo Sihlali, 25 August 1953, I.B. Tabata Collection, BC 925. By 1957, it seems that the rift
with Canca had been healed. And by December 1959, Canca was elected to the position of AAC General
Secretary. See I.B. Tabata to Mlamleli (R.S. Canca), 20 March 1957, I.B. Tabata Collection, BC 925; Ikhwezi
Lomso, February 1960.
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