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.

He was born in Lamontville, Durban. He is a wood sculptor who was taught and encouraged by the Durban artist, George Msimang.

He mainly uses railway sleepers for his sculpture. 

He has participated in many group exhibitions, including Spiritual Art of Natal, 1993 and he is represented in public and private collections in SA.

Clarance Mlokoto, nicknamed “Oom Locks”, was born in 1930 in Tsomo, Eastern Cape.

Mokabe was one of the students who stood up against the introduction of Afrikaans as a medium of instruction in African schools in 1976. In 1977, Mokabe skipped the country to go into exile to the USA, where he lived until he met his death in 2007. Mokabe did not return home when most exiles did in the early 1990s.

Mohammed Iqbal Shaik was born in Vrededorp, Johannesburg on 26 August 1958. He became politically active when he was a student leader at the M.L. Sultan Technical College. During 1982 he, together with Mohammed Ismail, travelled to Swaziland where he met Aboobaker Ismail who he had known since his youth. He joined Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK) and received training in the use of and maintenance of firearms and limpet mines. He and Ismail were established as the Dolphin Unit.

Mokoena was born in Orlando West, Johannesburg during World War II. He grew up in the township, but due to his mother’s bad health was brought up by Anna Khomo. He was still in contact with his family, and they made trips back to the Free State to visit the graves of his relatives almost every year. His parents were unhappy at needing to move to Johannesburg, but were forced to look for work.

Born in 1887, John Mtini was the 'Grand Old Man' of the trial who took part in the 1929 anti-pass campaigns, the struggles of the unemployed of 1931-2, the formation of a Railway Workers' Union in 1936 and many subsequent campaigns. He was a veteran African Congressman, and he was over seventy years old at the time of the trial.

1979: Soweto Oppenheimer Towers (Mofolo Arts Centre Students).