Self Mampuru was born in 1908 into the leading family of chiefs of Sekhukhuneland. In the 1930s in Johannesburg he met William Ballinger, who helped him go to Britain where he studied the management of cooperatives at Manchester from 1937 to 1939. He was unsuccessful in organising cooperatives on his return to South Africa.

Born in 1915, Malope was a house painter. He joined the ANC Youth League in 1944 and was arrested in 1946 for assisting in the African mine workers' strike. He served a term of imprisonment during the Defiance Campaign. Malope was an accomplished linguist, speaking Sotho, Xhosa, English, Hindustani and Afrikaans.

He began his education in Basutoland, he later studied at Lovedale and the University of the Witwatersrand. He worked at various times for the YMCA, the South African Institute of Race Relations, and the Bantu World. He was temperamentally averse to militant political activity, but he joined the Liberal Party and in 1960 became its Transvaal organizer.

A leader of the African National Congress Youth League during the 1940s, he was elected to the African National Congress (ANC) national executive committee in 1946. He was a university graduate and was a president of the Transvaal African Teacher's Association. In the early 1950s he identified himself with Selope Thema's National-minded Bloc.

John Bidwell Mancoe was born in 1895 in Reddersburg in the Orange Free State, he graduated from Healdtown and became a teacher. In 1923 he joined the Industrial and Commercial Workers' Union (ICU), becoming secretary of the Bloemfontein branch and later provincial secretary for the Orange Free State. During the 1930s he was an officer of Clements Kadalie's Independent ICU, centered in East London.

The entrepreneur Samuel Marks was born in Lithuania in 1843. He arrived on African shores in 1868 where he began his career by hawking cheap jewelry and cutlery in Cape Town. Later he moved on to Kimberley where he went into business with his brother-in-law Isaac Lewis and Jules Porges. Together they formed the French Diamond Mining Company.

Born in 1912, Mashibini was a businessman. He joined the African National Congress in 1951. He was active in the Defiance Campaign and a prominent Queenstown community leader.

Born in 1918, Mashaba was a factory worker. He joined the African National Congress during the Defiance Campaign and was active in the Moroka branch.

Born in 1923, Mati worked as a clerk. He joined the African National Congress in 1946. He was active in the 1949 bus boycott in Port Elizabeth. Mati served three months imprisonment during the Defiance Campaign for defying unjust laws after his arrest for organising the illegal May Day meeting in Port Elizabeth in 1955.

Elijah H. Mdolomba was born in the Cape and educated at Healdtown. At the time of Bhambatha Rebellion in 1906, he was chaplain to a loyalist African army unit in Natal, and during World War I he served in France with an African labor battalion.