The Individual, Auto/biography and History in South Africa

in “his contribution” to the liberation movement. We will miss “his warm handshake
and even the whiplash of his tongue”. 154
From the funeral podium, Nikane and other speakers devoted a substantial amount of
energy to denouncing the New Unity Movement, who represented those who “fell by
the way side [and] left the organisation”. Nikane argued that while they “pretended not
to have left”, there was “only one Unity Movement”, UMSA of which Tabata had been
founder and president. This was the only Unity Movement, “founded by the original
people of whom Jane Gool … [was] one”. Those who had formed the New Unity
Movement were “renegades” who had “departed from the history of this
organisation”. 155 The setting of Tabata’s funeral ceremony became a political meeting at
which attempts were made to reassert weakening organisational bonds through Tabata’s
biography and through attacks on the New Unity Movement, whose creation had
threatened UMSA’s very existence. It was important for UMSA to attempt to assert some
authority over the process of defining Tabata’s passage into memory. And the New
Unity Movement’s formation and existence was seen as a disrespectful affront to
Tabata’s legacy and memory. A few weeks later, the fragile structures of UMSA held a
follow‐up public memorial meeting in a Cape Town township, at which criticisms of the
New Unity Movement were reasserted. 156
These attacks did not stop the New Unity Movement affiliate, APDUSA Natal, from
holding a Tabata memorial meeting of their own, and from attempting a new appraisal
of Tabata’s career as an activist and author. This meeting took place in a Durban
township a year after Tabata’s death, and marked an attempt to claim Tabata’s memory
as part of the political foundations of the New Unity Movement. The David Landau
Centre in Asherville where the meeting took place was bedecked with large portraits of
154 Recording and Transcript of part of the funeral ceremony of I.B. Tabata, Lesseyton, 27 October 1990
(one cassette), author’s possession. This recording was made by Selim Gool. I am grateful to him for
letting me have a copy.
155 Recording and Transcript of part of the funeral ceremony of I.B. Tabata, Lesseyton, 27 October 1990
(one cassette), author’s possession.
156 Unity Movement of South Africa (UMSA) issued a memorial pamphlet at the meeting, ‘I.B. Tabata’,
(Eikefontein, October 1990). The memorial meeting itself took place in Bishop Lavis.
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