The Individual, Auto/biography and History in South Africa

with the other liberation movements in a truly revolutionary struggle for liberation”.
The “inner core” of the Tabata “clique and faction” had “never been happy about this
publication”. As a result, “the bureaucracy killed it”. To close down the APDUSA
Lusaka Branch, “the master strategist in these matters” used the argument that other
executive members had not been informed about its existence. The branch also needed
to be disbanded, it was argued, “for security reasons”. A third reason proffered was that
some Branch members were not South African. During its existence, the Branch was
“never … popular with the leaders”, who had felt that “it was not properly under their
control”. Indeed, Tabata and Jane Gool “refused” to call it an APDUSA Branch, referring
to it instead as “a Club”, thus denying its members any organisational status. When
Branch members expressed their dissatisfaction over their treatment by the leadership,
they were accused of “rebellion” and labelled “undisciplined”, with “no respect for their
leaders”. 113
During this struggle, Mqotsi drafted and circulated key documents that sought to
explain various aspects of these internal conflicts and to present “an indictment of I.B.
Tabata and his clique”. 114 Here, Mqotsi explained that the closure of the branch and the
newsletter had been precipitated by his criticism of Tabata’s “bureaucratic tendencies
and practices”. Differences had emerged between them over who took decisions on
behalf of the Unity Movement outside South Africa. Tabata had contended that as “the
only constitutional authority”, he alone as President could “make decisions in the
absence of legal machinery created by the HUC properly constituted at home”. In
contrast, Mqotsi had argued that members of the movement, especially the executive,
had “the political right to make decisions” on behalf of the organisation that would be
subject to later review by the HUC or representative movement conference. After a
suggestion had been made to separate the office of the President at Headquarters from
the Office of the Representative, Tabata then “unilaterally and bureaucratically”
appointed Jane Gool as the movement’s political representative in its Lusaka office “in
113 L Mqotsi, General Secretary, African People’s Democratic Union of Southern Africa to All Members of
the Unity Movement, the All‐African Convention, the African People’s Democratic Union of Southern
Africa and other affiliated organisations and bodies, May 1966, Livingstone Mqotsi Papers.
114 An Indictment of I.B. Tabata and his Clique’, Lusaka, 19 September 1966, Livingstone Mqotsi Papers.
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