The Individual, Auto/biography and History in South Africa

WPSA’s newspaper, The Spark, spoke of the philosophical centrality of Tabata’s shift
away from Christianity and God in his early political life. 163
In other ways, however, the assertion of the religious was not inappropriate because it
enabled a reconnection with an early period in Tabata’s life, when he had come under
the guidance and patronage of an Anglican priest, Bishop W.E. Smyth. Smyth had been
the warden of the Anglican Hostel at Fort Hare Native College, where Tabata was in the
matriculation class from 1930 to1932. Smyth’s two sisters had come to live with him, and
one had died while he was still warden. At Fort Hare, the key idea behind the Anglican
Hostel had been of the warden “being in much closer touch with the students”. Smyth
had “shared the life of his students as a father with his family” in what was little more
than a rented bungalow. He slept and worked in the same room with them. Smyth took
his students such as Tabata, Kobus, Mancoba and A.C. Jordan for long walks over
weekends, “drawing them out and discussing their ideas”, and also asked students to
join him for meals. In his sister Ethel’s recollection, he was “always accessible to any
man at any minute and he always trusted us”. Known as ‘Bawo’ or ‘Father’ to his
students, his sister was convinced that “all [had] felt his fatherhood”. 164
All students were obliged to attend Hostel prayers on weekday evenings, and a Sunday
bible class, in addition to their Sunday morning service. The Anglican Hostel also had a
choir and an American organ, and there were regular music and choir practices
conducted with the assistance of Miss E Robertson from Alice. In c.1930, Tabata was
photographed in altar robes along with other altar servers, Smyth and Robertson by
163 Ciraj Rassool, Interview with Cadoc Kobus, Qumbu, 19‐20 July 1993; Interview with Ernest Mancoba,
Cape Town, 25 April 1995, assisted by Wonga Mancoba. See also Chapter Seven, footnote 45. Tabata,
Kobus and Mancoba lived together in the Anglican Hostel at Fort Hare in 1932.
164 Lists of Students in the Anglican Hostel, 1930‐1932, Cory Library For Historial Research, PR 3295;
‘First Report of the Native Church Hostel at Fort Hare, South Africa and the Fellowship of Prayer and
Alms’, Cory Library For Historial Research, PR 3364; Rev. F.H. Brabant, D.D., ‘Beda Hall, 1920‐1952’;
Bishop Ferguson‐Davie, ‘Fort Hare: Early Days of the Anglican Hostel’, Cory Library, Rhodes
University, PR 3025; Ethel Smyth to Archdeacon Rolfe, 12 September 1948, Cory Library, Rhodes
University, PR 3145/A. It is quite likely that this is where Tabata encountered Marxist and radical
literature for the first time. On Bishop Smyth and Fort Hare more generally, see Z.K. Matthews, Freedom
for My People (Cape Town: David Philip, 1981), Chapter Four.
496