Moosa “Mosie” Moolla was born in the small, (then) western Transvaal town of Christiana on 12 June 1934 where his father ran a successful import-export business. The family was forced to relocate to Bloemhof, a nearby town, following the Great Depression of the 1930s. Mosie did his primary schooling in Bloemhof. Since there were no high schools catering for blacks, Mosie was forced to move to Johannesburg in 1949 to pursue his secondary education. 

Elizabeth Mafekeng was born in 1918 in Tarkastad and attended school until Standard 7. Living conditions in her birthplace forced her to leave for Paarl in Cape Town in early 1930s. Mafekeng left school at the age of 15 to support the family.

Josias Ratshilumela Madzunya was born in the Sibasa area of the northern Transvaal in about 1909, a member of the Venda tribe,the son of a polygamous Venda-speaking peasant farmer near Thohoyandou in the northern Transvaal,Madzunya came to Johannesburg in 1931, eventually establishing himself as a peddler.

 Stanley Mabizela was born in 1934, 7th of March in  Port Elizabeth, joined the liberation struggle at an early age when he first joined the ANC Youth League. A son to a farm worker, Mabizela did his primary education in Port Elizabeth where he also became politicised. After passed Standard 6, he was sent by his father to Mariazel in the Transkei, near the border of Lesotho where he did form one and form two in one year. After completing form two, the priests at Mariazel expelled him when they discovered that he was an active ANC person.

Elijah Nkwenkwe Loza was born in 1918 near Alice in the Ciskie,where his father was tribal  headman.After completing secondary education, he went to Cape Town as a migrant in the 1940s, working at the Groote Schuur Hospital and later at a bakery where he became an organizer foir the African Food and Canning Workers' Union.He joined the African National Congress (ANC) and Communist Party (CP),and in 1955 participated in a

Moses Mbheki Mncane Mabhida was born in Thornville near Pietermaritzburg on 14 October 1923,he was  one of seven children in a rural family that was later forced off the land.Mabhida could not pursue his studies because of the financial constraints experienced by his family. His formal education was perpetually interrupted and ended when he finished the ninth grade in 1942.

Appiah Saravanan (A.S.) Chetty was born in Pietermaritzburg, Natal (now KwaZulu-Natal) on 3 April 1929. He was the second of five children of Appiah and Vellimah Chetty, whose parents had been brought to Natal as indentured labourers. He attended Woodlands High where he was labelled an ‘agitator’ by the principal.

James Randolph Vigne was born in 1928 in Kimberley and grew up in Port-Elizabeth. He went to school at St Andrew’s College in Grahamstown where he enjoyed a spell as head boy at the age of 13 in 1941. That same year he joined the Van Riebeeck Society. He did his higher education at Wadham College, Oxford, after which he returned to Cape Town and served as English editor at Maskew Miller’s until 1964.

Denis Farrell’s aerial photograph in 1994 of a snaking queue of Soweto voters pipped that of Nelson Mandela casting his vote, earning him a Pulitzer Prize nomination.

Marcus Solomon was born in Grahamstown, Eastern Cape, on 27 January 1939. His father, a waiter by profession, was a Hindu born of Tamil parents from Sri Lanka, although his paternal grandfather was Christian. His mother, classified Coloured, was of mixed Scottish and Khoi descent and belonged to the Protestant Congregational Church.