The Individual, Auto/biography and History in South Africa

disrespectful. And the fact that the evidence of Tabata and Taylor’s relationship was to
be found in the Tabata Collection did not make this past any less painful for some.
There is no doubt that Tabata and Jane Gool had a long‐term relationship, even if it
was not a monogamous one. It also may be the case that one of the elements of Taylor’s
mediation of the Tabata archive was an occlusion of Jane Gool, to reduce her
significance in his biographical narrative. Notwithstanding these possibilities, it
seemed incontrovertible that it was Tabata’s relationship with Taylor that was the most
formative in his development. It seemed that it was not necessary to change the
displays of I.B. Tabata in the District Six Museum.
As knowledge has circulated in the domains of public history that I been researching
about biography and theory, and that I had been developing a biography of I.B.
Tabata, a number of requests came my way. At the end of 2002, I was delighted to
receive a phonecall from Thembeka Mufamadi, whom I had known in Cape Town in
the early 1990s, and who had written biographical celebrations of the life of Raymond
Mhlaba, the former Rivonia trialist and Robben Island prisoner. She informed me that
she had been seconded by the HSRC to the Nelson Mandela Foundation to do research
and assist Mandela in the writing of his ‘presidential memoirs’. She asked for my
assistance in locating theoretical writings on biography and life history.
I was also approached separately by Lesley Townsend of SAHRA and Luvuyo
Dondolo, my former student who had become an independent heritage consultant, to
consider working with them to map sites associated with the life of I.B. Tabata.
Townsend had been spending considerable time in the Eastern Cape preparing
conservation management plans for sites of significance “associated with the legacy of
Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela and the surrounding community”. 13 She had also provided
assistance to Luli Callinicos with the Mandela heritage trail project, and was familiar
13 See for example, ‘Community‐based conservation management plan for places of cultural
significance within the Thembu region of the Transkei/Eastern Cape, which are associated with
the legacy of Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela and the surrounding community’ (Prepared by Lesley
Freedman Townsend for SAHRA, c.2003). Townsend’s work also laid emphasis on the
conservation of earth building.
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