Albert Newall was born in 1920 in Manchester in the United Kingdom. Newall enlisted with the Royal Air Force (RAF) in 1937, where he trained and later served as an aerial photographer, until his discharge in 1941 due to ill health. Newall returned to Manchester where he began part-time studies at the Manchester School of Art and worked as a freelance photographer for Temple Press Ltd.

Robert Mokxotho Matji was born on 22 August 1922 in Pretoria, Transvaal (now Gauteng). He later moved to the Eastern Cape, settling in Port Elizabeth, where he worked as a factory worker, and later became a bookkeeper in a general store in the New Brighton location of Port Elizabeth. He became an active trade union activist, and joined the African National Congress (ANC) and the South African Communist Party (SACP).

The South African writer, Abraham Hermanus de Vries, was born on Tuesday the 9^th of February, in 1937, in a small town and agricultural centre of the western Klein Karoo called, Ladismith. He matriculated at Ladismith High School and went on to study at Stellenbosch University as well as the Gemeentelijke Universiteit van Amsterdam. He acquired doctorate degrees from both of the universities.

The shards of South Africa’s fragmented history share a common thread throughout; at the core is a struggle for equality and visibility. Over the course of the country’s fight for democracy, there have been countless women who’s incredible strength and bravery has shaped South Africa as we know it today.