The Individual, Auto/biography and History in South Africa

NUM. They found instead a hostility that had seen in its formation an attempt to
“isolate” and “discredit” the exiled leadership, and “smear their names so as to prevent
them from defending themselves against these attacks”. The creation of the New Unity
Movement, they suggested, was an attempt “to hijack the Unity Movement”. 130
It was as if the need ‘to guard the gates’ of the movement had become an obsession with
holding on to the status of leadership in a very marginal movement that had almost
become like private property, and with demanding that members be unquestioningly
loyal to the legendary leader. And in some senses there were property issues at stake,
especially around questions of intellectual property, and issues of history and narrative.
And here the NUM and its affiliates incorporated the symbolic works and names that
UMSA would have laid claim to. The New Unity Movement Youth Wing called its
journal Ikhwezi, in a clear historic reference to Ikhwezi Lomso. 131 Kader Hassim held on to
the name APDUSA to describe the Natal branch that in effect had broken with a
putative, remaining exiled and reconstituted national organisation by that name that
traced its history to its 1961 formation under Tabata’s presidency. And APDUSA (Natal)
quickly acquired a public presence as the printing and publishing arm of the NUM,
bringing out the ‘Declaration to the People of South Africa’ and the ‘Ten Point
Programme’, and initiating a journal in APDUSA’s name.
A key element in this claim on intellectual property was historical, and the formation of
the New Unity Movement saw the creation of new narratives of the history of the
NEUM and its affiliates. The creation of the NUM was framed as a ‘revival’ of the
NEUM. While the NEUM’s “policy, programme and traditions were continued by
various organisations in various ways”, this narration suggested that it “did not function
130 Jane Gool, ‘Letter from Abroad’, 29 November 1990 (author’s possession). Jane Gool also suggested
that Kader Hassim’s “bitter rejection” of the exiled leadership was bound up with holding them
“responsible for him being sent to Robben Island”. See Jane Gool, ‘Critique on The Journey by Frank
Anthony’, 24 April 1991 (author’s possession).
131 See for example Ikhwezi (Journal of the New Unity Movement Youth Wing), Vol. 2, No 1, March‐April
1989.
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