Writing, authorship and I.B. Tabata's biography: from collective leadership to presidentialism

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Periodical article

Title:	Writing, authorship and I.B. Tabata's biography: from collective leadership to presidentialism
Author:	Rassool, Ciraj
Year:	2008
Periodical:	Kronos: Journal of Cape History
Issue:	34
Pages:	181-214
Language:	English
Geographic term:	South Africa
Subjects:	anti-apartheid resistance biography leadership Unity Movement of South Africa political history
About person:	Isaac Bangani Tabata (1909-1990)
External link:	http://www.scielo.org.za/pdf/kronos/v34n1/v34n1a08.pdf
Abstract:	This paper examines the cultural history of Unity Movement resistance leader Isaac Bangani Tabata's biography. It focuses on writing and authorship as one of the circumstances out of which the idea emerged that Tabata had a biography: that of a great leader of a South African liberation movement. The rendition of Tabata's life underwent a transition from biographic denial and a stress on collective leadership, to biographic narration under conditions of repression. This process culminated in the embrace of biography as an element of a politics of presidentialism, in which Tabata's biography became a means of projecting the Unity Movement in exile. The paper examines the production of pamphlets, articles and books by Tabata, and shows that his work of writing and authorship, characterized by a process of individuation, constituted a biographic threshold. Notes, ref. (Also published in: Afrika Zamani, no. 13/14 (2005/06), p. 23-67.) [ASC Leiden abstract]