SAHO global search

1928-2010

Professor Fatima Meer

Fatima Meer was born in Grey Street, Durban on 12 August 1928, the daughter of Moosa Meer and Rachel Farrel and the second born of their nine children. Her…

B-0065346

1940

Sindiso Mfenyana

Background and Childhood Sindiso Mfenyana is descended from the Bhele clan, which is an offshoot of the Hlubi tribe. He traces his roots back to a small town…

B-0123703

1974-2005

Kabelo Sello Duiker

Kabelo Sello Duiker was born in Orlando West, Soweto, Johannesburg. Duiker was the eldest of three brothers and his parents were well-educated and affluent…

B-0149512

1967

Mpush Makambi

Mpush Makambi was born in 1967 in Mdantsane, Eastern Cape. At school, Makambi was sporty but boxing was his first love. He turned professional in 1983 with a…

B-0149478

1950-1990

Muntu Myeza

Muntu Myeza was born on 3 December 1950 to Jacob and Julia Myeza in Natal where he also did his early education. Myeza attended part of his senior high school…

B-0121056

Approx 1870s-1935

Isaiah Mdliwamafa Shembe

Isaiah Shembe was born at Ntabamhlophe near Escourt in the Drakensberg region (near Giants Castle). His forefathers had settled there to escape the regiments…

B-0121675

1959-2024

Tito Mboweni

Early LifeAfter completing high school, Tito Mboweni attended the University of the North in Transvaal between 1979 and 1980, where he was registered for a…

B-0008523

1930-2005

Hamilton Naki

Hamilton Naki was born in the small village of Ngcangane in the Eastern Cape in 1930. His family was poor and after completing primary school he left for Cape…

B-0008743

Pauline Podbrey

Pauline Podbrey was born as Pauline Podbrez in Lithuania. She arrived with her family in Durban in 1933 at the age of eleven, although her father had come to…

B-0068314

1941-2011

Ian Mkhize

Ian Mkhize was born on 3 October 1941 in Nhlazantshe Township in Pietermaritzburg. He spent his formative years in Ixopo and matriculated at Sobantu High in…

B-0064851

Dawid Kruiper

Dawid Kruiper was born in the Kalahari National Park (now Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park) in 1936.  He referred to himself as “Die Ou Ram” (The Old Ram). He was…

B-0087604

1928-2008

Cleopas Madoda Nsibande

Cleopas Nsibande was born into a family of seven on 25 March 1928, in Nyibe Location near Ermelo in the Mpumalanga province of South Africa. He attended…

B-0008817

1941-1995

Kenule Beeson Saro-Wiwa

Ken Saro-Wiwa was a prominent Nigerian author, activist and television producer. He garnered attention by leading a nonviolent campaign against the…

B-0098638

1928-2008

Cleopas Madoda Nsibande

Cleopas Nsibande was born into a family of seven on 25 March 1928, in Nyibe Location near Ermelo in the Mpumalanga province of South Africa. He attended…

B-0068273

1959

Thandi Modise

Thandi Modise, the youngest of six children, was born on 25 December 1959 in Huhudi township near Vryburg in the North West. Her father, Frans Modise, a…

B-0008591

1930-2011

Magnus Malan

Magnus Malan was born in Pretoria on 30 January 1930. His father, Avril Ire de Merindol, was a professor of biochemistry at the university of Pretoria, and…

B-0008412

1957-1998

Simon Nkoli

“If you are Black and gay in South Africa, then it really is all the same closet…inside is darkness and oppression. Outside is freedom.”— Simon Tseko…

B-0150068

1936-2012

Dr. Neville Edward Alexander

Neville Edward Alexander was the first of six children of Dimbiti Bisho Alexander, a primary-school teacher, and David James Alexander, a carpenter. It was in…

B-0084115

1930s-2014

David Patrick Russell

Born in the late 1930s, Bishop David Patrick Russell became involved in the struggle against apartheid from an early age. He did his first degree at the…

B-0144759

1934-2011

Professor Kader Abdul Asmal

Kader Abdul Asmal was born on 8th of October in 1934, in the small rural town of Stanger, KwaZulu Natal (then Natal). Young Asmal was raised in a vibrant,…

B-0007798

Professor Sir Raymond Hoffenberg

Professor Sir Raymond (Bill) Hoffenberg was born in Port Elizabeth, Eastern Province (now Eastern Cape) on 16 March 1923. He went to school in Port Elizabeth…

B-0095464

1841-1926

John Xavier Merriman

John Xavier Merriman was a politician, businessman, and the last Prime Minister of the Cape Colony before the four provinces became the Union of South Africa…

B-0008546

1930-2018

David Goldblatt

David Goldblatt, one of South Africa’s most famous documentary photographers, is internationally acclaimed for his work. The grandson of Lithuanian-Jewish…

B-0008106

1932

Irene Menell (nee Manderstam)

Born in 1932, Irene Menell (nee Manderstam) spent her early life moving from one place to the next, completing her primary and secondary schooling in the…

B-0150806

1944-2020

Rajes Pillay

Rajaluxmi Pillay (also known as Rajes) was born on 4 August 1944 in Pietermaritzburg, Natal (now KwaZulu-Natal – KZN). Her parents were from Kimberley in the…

B-0150649

1944-2017

Buchi Emecheta

Florence Onyebuchi Emecheta Obe ‘Buchi Emecheta’ was born in the Nigerian city of Lagos on 21 July in 1944 to Jeremy Nwabudinke, a railway worker and Alice …

B-0122744

1934

Samson Ratshilumela Mudzunga

Samson Ratshilumela Mudzunga was born in 1934 in the Nzhelele district of the former Venda ‘homeland’, now Limpopo province. However, Apartheid-era documents…

B-0099632

1927-2011

Professor Carel Boshoff

Carel Boshoff was born on 9 November 1927, a second child from the second marriage of his father. He spent his early life on a cattle farm in the Waterberg…

B-0007874

1963

Justice Sfiso Mkame

Justice Sfiso (called Sfiso) Mkame was born on 3 May 1963 in Durban. As a child Mkame drew on sand walls. In Standard 1 he did handicrafts and drawing at…

B-0008568

1915-1984

Thelma Gutsche

Thelma Gutsche was born in 1915 in Somerset West, Cape Province to Dr. And Mrs. J Gutsche. Gutsche did not attend formal schooling but received private…

B-0008135