The Individual, Auto/biography and History in South Africa

Alice photographer, Harry Bennett (Figure 12). Smyth was also a great collector of books
and had an account at Heffers in Cambridge. Before he left Fort Hare in 1932, he had
assembled a library of some 4000 books, which he left for the use of the Hostel.
To his wards, Smyth had imparted a spirit of social service. “If you want a thing done,
start doing it yourself” was a principle by which he lived. 165 In his oration given at Dora
Taylor’s funeral, Tabata had cited Smyth as the first significant influence on his life, as
his first mentor and patron. Indeed, it seems that Tabata’s models for paternalism and
patronage, mentorship and person formation may have come from the domain of
religion. Smyth had been for him “an example of what a man should be and how a
human being should live”. From Smyth he had learnt how important it was to “live
according to your own ideas”. All other things did not matter “provided you [made] a
contribution to mankind”. 166 If the Christianity that made itself felt at his own funeral
had been like that of Bishop Smyth’s standpoint of social service, then it is likely that this
did not sit oddly with Tabata’s own history of person formation. It is also possible to
argue that we need not make too sharp a distinction between the secular and the
religious. The secular teachings of the Unity Movement about the ‘new road’ had an
ironic religiosity about them, of conversion and commitment, of truth and morality, and
of assembly and order. Indeed, the ‘new road’ was even referred to as a ‘gospel’ that was
able to capture people’s imagination, and give rise to a ‘baptism of fire’. 167
The point must also be made that the Christianity that made itself felt at Tabata’s funeral
was not just any kind. It was a very specific indigenous expression in the form of the
Order of Ethiopia, whose origins lay in anti‐colonial assertions of Africanness and a turn
away from the missionaries at the turn of the twentieth century. The mourning rituals of
the Order of Ethiopia were the symbolic language by which the Tabata family and the
165 Letter from the Director, Heffer & Sons Ltd to Bishop Ferguson Davie, Anglican Hostel, Fort Hare, c.
1934, Cory Library, Rhodes University, PR 3145; 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; ‘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.
166 I.B. Tabata, Oration at Dora Taylor’s Memorial Service, c.1976 (copy in the author’s possession).
167 Leo Sihlali to I.B. Tabata, 6 August 1948, I.B. Tabata Collection, BC 925
498