Chairman of the Sophiatown African National Congress in the mid-1950s and a first-string accused in the Treason Trial of 1956-1961. Tyeku was born in 1904 and worked in his early life as a farm labourer in Bethal in the Eastern Transvaal. He later moved to Johannesburg, where he became a coal dealer and property owner in Sophiatown and joined the ANC. Without formal education, but fiery on the public platform - a talent perhaps developed from his experience as a lay preacher in a Zionist church - he exemplified the type of grassroots leadership that was one of the great strengths of the ANC. The removal of Sophiatown destroyed his livelihood and the long years of the Treason Trial left him destitute.
