The Individual, Auto/biography and History in South Africa

continuation”, and by not indicating that they had expelled him and his comrades.
Initially the FI thought that Tabata was pursuing something that Alexander had
initiated. 97
In a second irony two years later, after Alexander Defense Committees had been created
in Europe and North America, I.B. Tabata claimed Alexander as a Unity Movement
martyr as he toured the United States in Alexander’s name. During the 1965 tour of the
United States, Dora Taylor selectively recalled her and Tabata’s relationship with
Alexander. In describing Alexander’s “eagerness to be active and [to] train more than
the others”, Taylor suggested that when he came back to South Africa in 1961 he was
“not fully aware, not fully acclimatised to the intensification of Fascism”. However, she
added: “Neville was always our son”. And this was why Tabata had “given his time to
the defence of the Alexander group, and of course extending it to the defense of other
members”. 98
Herewith, the rupture between Tabata and Alexander was downplayed and almost
opportunistically, Alexander’s expulsion from APDUSA and the Unity Movement was
swept under the carpet. Alexander was reclaimed as ultimately ‘one of their own’ by the
Unity Movement, and as generationally subject to Tabata’s leadership. In the process as
well, Taylor placed herself alongside Tabata as the co‐parent of a member of the youth,
the movement’s martyr, who had paid the price for his naiveté and ‘eagerness’. The
Alexander Defense Committee became a vehicle for the promotion of the Unity
Movement in exile and for projecting Tabata’s irrefutable leadership. The funds and
resources generated in Alexander’s name became available for the sustenance of
members of the movement, deemed to be eligible as victims of apartheid’s persecution. 99
97 Ciraj Rassool, Interviews with Neville Alexander, 8 & 28 December 1992.
98 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.
99 See ‘Memorandum Concerning the Work of the Alexander Defense Committee in Aiding the Victims
of South African Persecution’, Alexander Defense Committee Records, 1962‐1971, SML Microform,
Sterling Memorial Library, Yale University; Berta Green to I.B. Tabata, 11 November 1966, Unity
Movement of South Africa Papers (by courtesy, Jane Gool), Harare (1991). In this letter Green wrote
470