Henrietta (Ettie or Het) Rebecca Stakesby Lewis was born in 1850 at the Umpukani Mission Station, Orange Free State (now Free State Province), and grew up in the Kat River area, Eastern Cape Province. She was Olive Schreiner’s elder sister.

Eric Magamana Lubisi was born on 11 October 1946 in Highlands, near Eastwood in Pretoria, Transvaal (now Gauteng). He was the only son and had five sisters. At the age of twelve, he and his family relocated to Mamelodi Johannesburg. Transvaal. He completed his matric at Mamelodi High School – art was one of his subjects, which his teacher, Alex Selepe, encouraged. Lubisi started drawing with charcoal. He participated in various art activities at the local youth club.

Eve Hall was born on 20 March 1937 in Paris, France, to a Jewish father and a German mother. When the Second World War broke out, her father was on a visit to South Africa, leaving her mother to cope with a half-Jewish child under Nazi occupation. Defiantly, she refused to pin the yellow Star of David (an identifier that Jewish people had to wear) on her daughter’s clothes.

Sumboornam (Sam) Pillay, who later became known as Sam Moodley, was born in 1948*. She grew up in the multi-cultural community of Dundee, Northern Natal (now KwaZulu-Natal), where African, Indian and Coloured families lived together peacefully before the Group Areas Act tore the community apart.