- Desmond Tutu
Desmond Tutu : This is an unbelievable achievement. As you might know, we have won the Rugby World Cup in 1995. It did wonders back then. Success in sports connected the people in a way that only a few politicians have been able to achieve in the past. We are looking forward to similar results in the context of the Football World Cup 2010. The Football World Cup makes South Africans feel more self-confident.
- Amira Hass
Amira Hass ; born 1956) is an Israeli journalist and author, mostly known for her columns in the daily newspaper "Ha'aretz". She is especially famous for living in the West Bank and Gaza Strip and reporting on events from the Palestinian perspective of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The daughter of two Holocaust survivors (Bergen-Belsen), Hass was born in Jerusalem.
- Michael Jackson
Michael Jackson is a radio talk show host based in the Los Angeles area. Jackson is best known for his radio show which covered the arts, politics and human interest subjects, particularly in the Los Angeles and greater Southern California area. The show originally aired on L.A. radio station KABC. He was born in England, experiencing the The Blitz (German bombing) of London during World War Two. After the war, in which his father served in the RAF as a navigator trainer, …
- Steve Biko
Stephen Bantu Biko (18 December 1946 - 12 September 1977) was a noted nonviolent anti-apartheid activist in South Africa in the 1960s and early 1970s. A student leader, he later founded the Black Consciousness Movement which would empower and mobilize much of the urban black population. Since his death in police custody, he has been called a martyr of the anti-apartheid movement. While living, his writings and activism attempted to empower blacks, …
- Oliver Tambo
Oliver Reginald Tambo (27 October 1917 - 24 April 1993) was a South African anti-apartheid politician and a central figure in the African National Congress (ANC). He was born in Mbizana in eastern Mpondoland in what is now Eastern Cape. In 1940 he, along with several others including Nelson Mandela, was expelled from Fort Hare University for participating in a student strike. In 1942 Tambo returned to his former high school in Johannesburg to teach science and mathematics.
- Walter Sisulu
Walter Max Ulyate Sisulu (May 18, 1912 - May 5, 2003) was a South African anti-apartheid activist and member of the African National Congress (ANC). He was born in Engcobo in the homeland of Transkei (now part of Eastern Cape Province, South Africa). Educated in a local missionary school, he left in 1926 to work. He moved to Johannesburg in 1928 and experienced a wide range of manual jobs. He joined the ANC in 1940. In 1943, together with Nelson Mandela and Oliver Tambo, …
- Zwelinzima Vavi
Zwelinzima Vavi is General Secretary of Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU), and Vice-Chairperson of the Millennium Labour Council. Vavi was born on a farm in Hanover, Northern Cape, with a mineworker father, four brothers and seven sisters. He does not know his birth-date. He was a child labourer, looking for work among neighbouring farms. In 1987 Vavi worked in a gold-mining territory of Klerksdorp and Orkney. He was a uranium plant clerk at Vaal Reefs mine, …
- Peter Hain
Peter Gerald Hain PC MP (born February 16, 1950, Nairobi, Kenya) is a British Labour Party politician and Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (he is also Secretary of State for Wales). He is the Member of Parliament for the Welsh constituency of Neath. He came to the UK from South Africa as a teenager, and was a noted anti-apartheid campaigner in the 1970s.
- Hugh Masekela
Hugh Ramopolo Masekela (born Witbank South Africa, April 4, 1939) is a South African trumpet, flugelhorn and cornet player. He began singing and playing piano as a child. At age 14, after seeing the film, "Young Man With a Horn" (where Kirk Douglas portrays American Jazz trumpeter, Bix Beiderbecke), he took up playing the trumpet. His first trumpet was given to him by Archbishop Trevor Huddleston, the anti-apartheid chaplain at St. Peters Secondary School.
- Chris Hani
Chris Hani, born Martin Thembisile Hani (June 28, 1942 - April 10, 1993) was the leader of the South African Communist Party and Umkhonto we Sizwe, the armed wing of the African National Congress (ANC). He was a fierce opponent of the apartheid government. He was assassinated on 10 April 1993.
- Breyten Breytenbach
Breyten Breytenbach (born September 16, 1939) is a South African writer and painter with French citizenship. Breyten Breytenbach was born in Bonnievale in the Western Cape, approximately 180 km from Cape Town and 100 km from the southernmost tip of Africa at Cape Agulhas. He studied fine arts at the University of Cape Town and became a committed opponent of the policy of apartheid. He left South Africa for Paris in the early 1960s.
- Cyril Ramaphosa
Matamela Cyril Ramaphosa is a South African lawyer, trade union leader, activist, politician and businessman. He was born in Soweto, near Johannesburg, in what is now Gauteng province. While Ramaphosa was previously a major figure in South African national politics, he has in recent years become a prominent figure in the business community. Widely respected as a skilful and formidable negotiator and strategist, …
- Nelson Mandela
Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela (IPA: [xoliaa mandela]; born 18 July 1918) was the first President of South Africa to be elected in a fully representative democratic election, serving in the office from 1994-1999. Before his presidency, Mandela was an anti-apartheid activist, and the leader of the African National Congress's armed wing Umkhonto we Sizwe.
- Tony Leon
Anthony James Leon (born December 15, 1956) is a South African politician and the former leader of the Democratic Alliance, South Africa's main opposition party and former leader of the opposition.
- Jan Smuts
Field Marshal Jan Christiaan Smuts, OM, CH, PC, ED, KC, FRS (May 24, 1870 - September 11, 1950) was a prominent South African and British Commonwealth statesman, military leader, and philosopher. In addition to various cabinet appointments, he served as Prime Minister of the Union of South Africa from 1919 until 1924 and from 1939 until 1948. He served as a British Field Marshal in both the First World War and the Second World War.
- Helen Suzman
Helen Suzman was born Helen Gavronsky on 7 November, 1917 in Germiston, Gauteng, South Africa as the daughter of Lithuanian-Jewish immigrants. She was an anti-apartheid activist and politician. She studied as an economist and statistician at Witwatersrand University. She married Dr. Moses Suzman when she was 20, and had two daughters with him before returning to university as a lecturer in 1944.
- Tokyo Sexwale
Mosima Gabriel Sexwale (born 5 March, 1953), commonly known as Tokyo Sexwale, is a South African businessman and former politician, anti-apartheid activist, and political prisoner. His nickname of "Tokyo" is derived from his involvement with the sport of karate as a youth. A charismatic leader, Sexwale was imprisoned on Robben Island for his anti-apartheid activities, alongside figures such as Nelson Mandela.
- Ahmed Kathrada
Ahmed Mohamed Kathrada (sometimes nicknamed Kathy) (born 21 August 1929) is a South African politician and was an anti-apartheid activist and political prisoner. In addition to being a veteran of the anti-apartheid movement, Kathrada is best known for being one of the famous Rivonia Trialists as well as a long-serving political prisoner on Robben Island and in Pollsmoor Prison.
- Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma
Doctor Nkosazana Clarice Dlamini-Zuma (born 27 January 1949) is a South African politician and was an anti-apartheid activist. Since 17 June 1999 she has been the South African Minister of Foreign Affairs. Dlamini-Zuma, a Zulu, was born in Natal, the oldest of eight children. She completed high school at the Amanzimtoti Training College in 1967. In 1971, she started her studies in Zoology and Botany at the University of Zululand, …
- George Bizos
George Bizos is a member of the National Council of Lawyers for Human Rights, which he helped found in 1979. He is Senior Counsel at the Legal Resources Centre in Johannesburg in the Constitutional Litigation Unit. He was a judge on Botswana's Court of Appeal from 1985 to 1993. Mr. Bizos was counsel to United Democratic Front leaders, including future provincial Premiers Patrick Lekota and Popo Molefe in the Delmas Treason Trial, 1985-89.
- Adam Hochschild
Adam Hochschild is the author of six books, many of them on human rights issues. His latest, Bury the Chains: Prophets and Rebels in the Fight to Free an Empire's Slaves, was a finalist for the 2005 National Book Award. His Finding the Trapdoor: Essays, Portraits, Travels, collects some of the articles he has done in several decades of writing for various newspapers and magazines.
- Adriaan Vlok
Adriaan Vlok (born 1937) was Minister of Law and Order in South Africa from 1986 to 1991 in the final years of the apartheid era. Under his ministry the South African government faced increasing opposition and political unrest, and implemented increasingly drastic measures to suppress it, including hit squads carrying out bombings and assassination of activists. His position as minister became especially controversial after 1990 during the negotiations to end apartheid, …
- Dennis Brutus
Dennis Vincent Brutus (born November 28, 1924) is a South African poet. A graduate of the University of Fort Hare and the University of the Witwatersrand, Brutus was formerly on the faculty of the University of Denver and Northwestern University. Dennis Brutus was an activist against the apartheid government of South Africa in the 1960s. He worked to get South Africa suspended from the Olympics; this eventually lead to the country's expulsion from the games in 1970.
- Mac Maharaj
Sathyandranath Ragunanan "Mac" Maharaj (born April 22, 1935 in Newcastle, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa) is a South African politician affiliated to the African National Congress, academic and businessman of Indian origin. Maharaj was a political activist who worked closely on anti-apartheid activities with Nelson Mandela, with whom he was incarcerated following the Little Rivonia Trial on Robben Island.
- Patrick Chamusso
Patrick Chamusso (born in 1949 in Mozambique) is a former political prisoner, freedom fighter/terrorist and member of the African National Congress party of South Africa. One of three sons, Patrick came to live in South Africa when as a teenager he followed his migrant worker father to work in the mines of South Africa performing odd jobs. After his father's death, Chamusso's mother remarried and bore another daughter.
- Govan Mbeki
Govan Archibald Mvuyelwa Mbeki (9 July 1910 - 30 August 2001) was a South African politician, and father of Thabo Mbeki, the current President of South Africa. He was named in honour of Edward Govan, a Scottish missionary who founded Lovedale College, the school he attended in the Eastern Cape. He attended Fort Hare University, completing in 1936 a Bachelor of Arts degree in Politics and Psychology together with a teaching diploma, …
- Frederik Willem de Klerk
Frederik Willem de Klerk (born March 18, 1936) was the last State President of Apartheid-era South Africa, serving from September 1989 to May 1994. De Klerk was also leader of the National Party (which later became the New National Party) from February 1989 to September 1997. De Klerk is best known for engineering the end of apartheid, South Africa's racial segregation policy, …
- Donald Woods
Donald James Woods, CBE (December 15, 1933 – August 19, 2001) was a South African journalist and anti-apartheid activist. As editor of the "Daily Dispatch" from 1965 to 1977, he befriended Steve Biko, leader of the anti-apartheid Black Consciousness Movement, and was banned by the government soon after Biko's death, which had been caused by serious head injuries, sustained while in police custody.
- Eddy Grant
Eddy Grant is an artist of singular creative vision, ambition and determination, integrity and dignity, self-sufficiency and humour. He's also a vocal advocate of progressive socio-political and humanitarian issues and a vociferous promoter of the culture and achievements of contemporary black people.
- Wouter Basson
Wouter Basson (b. July 6, 1950) is a South African cardiologist and former head of the country's secret chemical and biological warfare project, Project Coast, during the Apartheid era.
- Ruth First
Ruth First (May 4 1925 - August 17 1982) was a Jewish South African anti-apartheid activist and scholar born in Johannesburg, South Africa. Her parents, Julius and Matilda First, emigrated to South Africa from Latvia in 1906. Ruth First was a member of the South African Communist Party (SACP), of which her parents were founder members, and which was allied with the African National Congress in the struggle to overthrow the racist government of her country, …
- Albie Sachs
Albie Sachs (1935-) is a justice on the Constitutional Court of South Africa. He was appointed to the court by Nelson Mandela in 1994. Justice Sachs recently gained international attention in 2005 as the author of the Court's holding in the case of "Minister of Home Affairs v. Fourie", …
- Hector Pieterson
Hector Pieterson (1964 - 16 June 1976) became the iconic image of the 1976 Soweto uprising in apartheid South Africa when a news photograph by Sam Nzima of the dying Hector being carried by a fellow student, was published around the world. He was killed at the age of 12 when the police opened fire on protesting students. For years, June 16 stood as a symbol of resistance to the brutality of the apartheid government.
- Marthinus van Schalkwyk
Marthinus Christoffel Johannes van Schalkwyk (born 10 November 1959) is a South African politician. His political career began during the late apartheid years at the Rand Afrikaans University as chairman of the Student Representative Council (SRC), the Afrikaanse Studentebond (ASB), and later of the Ruiterwag, the youth wing of the Broederbond.
- John Kani
Bonsile John Kani (1943 -) is a South African actor, director and playwright. He was born in New Brighton, South Africa. Kani joined The Serpent Players (a group of actors whose first performance was in the former snake pit of the zoo, hence the name) in Port Elizabeth in 1965 and helped to create many plays that went unpublished but were performed to a resounding reception. These were followed by the more famous "Sizwe Banzi is Dead" and "The Island", …
- Allan Boesak
Reverend Allan Aubrey Boesak (23 February 1945 -) is a South African Dutch Reformed Church cleric and was a politician and anti-apartheid activist. He was sentenced to prison for fraud in 1999 but was re-instated as a cleric in late 2004.
- John Taylor
John Taylor (born July 21, 1946 in Watford, Hertfordshire) was a Welsh rugby union player. Nicknamed "Basil Brush" thanks to his wild hair and beard, he played as a flanker for the London Welsh RFC (of which he is now a board member), and represented Wales 26 times between 1967 and 1973. Perhaps his most famous moment was in the Five Nations match against Scotland in 1971. The match had see-sawed backwards and forwards with each team taking the lead several times.
- André Brink
André Philippus Brink was the first Afrikaans book to be banned by the South African government. Interestingly, Brink writes his works simultaneously in English and Afrikaans. Initially, André Brink's oeuvre was mainly concerned with the apartheid policy. His more recent work is generally regarded as postcolonial. Brinks's son, Anton Brink, is an artist.
- Eugene de Kock
Eugene de Kock was an assassin for the apartheid government in South Africa. Dubbed "Prime Evil" by the media, he was the commander of the Vlakplaas counterinsurgency group, who are well known for executing dozens of opponents of the apartheid government. De Kock first became prominent during his testimony in the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, during which he made multiple revelations relating to the deaths of anti-apartheid activists.
- Jerry Dammers
Jerry Dammers (born Jeremy Dammers, 22 May 1955, Ootacamund, India) was the founder and keyboard player of the Coventry based ska band, The Specials (changed from The Special A.K.A.). He also contributed in founding the 2 Tone record label, which helped to popularize the new sound of the ska revival in the 1980s.