Isaac Bangani Tabata

Isaac Bangani Tabata OLG (1909-1990), also known as "I.B" or "Tabby", was a South African political activist, author and orator. A Marxist in the Trotskyist tradition, he was central to the Non-European Unity Movement from its inception in 1943, as well as in the African Peoples' Democratic Union of Southern Africa (APDUSA) formed 1961. He is notable for his innovative analyses, theoretical work and lifelong commitment to the movement. Tabata was married to Jane Gool, a major political activist.

Early years and the Workers Party of South Africa Isaac Bangani Tabata was born on 10 June 1909 at Bailey, near Queenstown in the Eastern Cape. He attended his secondary schooling at the mission school of Lovedale, whose other notable alumni include Steve Biko, Ellen Kuzwayo, Govan Mbeki and Charles Nqakula.

He continued his studies in the University of Fort Hare, and then, from 1931, worked in Cape Town to seek employment. He found work as a truck driver and soon joined the racially diverse Lorry Drivers' Union, where he served as a member of the executive body. It was when he joined the Cape African Voters Association that he was exposed to Marxist and other radical literature. He also stressed the importance of a long-term strategy of political education.

Tabata often travelled between Cape Town and the rural Transkei, distributing and publishing the NEUM program, and helping build a significant NEUM network in Pondoland. He focused on attacking government 'rehablitation' programmes that aimed at limiting African farmers' livestock in the overcrowded African reserves. The Xhosa version of the NEUM text, The Rehabilitation Scheme: A New Fraud, was widely circulated and Tabata was involved in Transkei resistance to the rehabilitation schemes. Such activities led to his arrest in Mount Ayliff in 1948.

The arguments for peasant-based struggle and for boycotts were developed further by Tabata in a new pamphlet "Boycott as a Weapon of Struggle" in 1952, published at the same time as the ANC and the (now-underground) SACP started the Defiance Campaign of mass civil disobedience. During this time, he wrote Education for Barbarism, which criticised the Bantu Education system. In 1956, the state banned Tabata from public political activity, and confined him to Cape Town, for a period of five years, and the Suppression of Communism Act also led to the suppression of his writings. Tabata would remain a key leader of both UMSA and APDUSA for the rest of his life.

Tabata fled into exile in 1963, initially to Swaziland and then to Zambia.

Thabo Mbeki, who then occupied the presidency of the Republic of South Africa, awarded Tabata the Order of Lethuli in gold for "exceptional contribution to the founding of organisations which forged unity among the oppressed across race and class boundaries".