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.
He was a participant in the Consultative Conference of African Leaders in December 1960 and was elected to its continuation committee, becoming its chairman after the resignation of Jordan Ngubane. But he was more of an observer than a planner of the "all-in" African conference of March 1961.
Along with other members of the continuation committee, he was arrested and found guilty of furthering the aims of the African National Congress (ANC), but the charges were dropped on appeal. He left South Africa for Lesotho in mid-1961 and has since died.