Douglas Calderwood was born in Johannesburg, the son of DY Calderwood, mine manager of the New Kleinfontein Gold Mining Company. Educated at King Edward VII School. His architectural studies were done at the University of the Witwatersrand. Thereafter he attended the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) on a foreign student’s scholarship. On his return he was appointed Chief Research Officer, National Building Research Institute (NBRI) of the SA Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), whereafter he became Head of the Architectural Division.
Calderwood’s doctoral thesis was published in 1953 as “Native Housing in South Africa” with funding from the CSIR. This focussed on the prevailing issue at that time: how to implement the new (1948) Nationalist government's post-Second World War township building programme and minimise costs. In the service of the CSIR, as a state-funded instrument for researching of the so-called ‘Native Housing problem’, Calderwood was charged with drawing up national standards for state funded housing while minimising cost. In his commendation of Calderwood's thesis, William Holford, then Professor of Town Planning at the University of London, describes the work as 'a breath of fresh air' because it shows that 'the technical, the social and the economics of housing must be looked at together'. Calderwood designed three housing types designated NE 51/6, NE 51/8 and NE 51/9 (where acronym ‘NE ’is non-European dated 1951 types 6, 7 and 9). While Calderwood stressed that these were intended as a demonstration of the outcome to the rational design process, they were nevertheless taken up by government and housing authorities to be reproduced in the thousands across South African for three decades from the 1950s. [Commentary précised from Haarhoff, 2010 (See Appropriating Modernism: Apartheid and the South African township.)]
Calderwood served as President of the Transvaal Provincial Institute of Architects for the term 1957/58. Calderwood was working at the National Building Research Institute when the University of the Witwatersrand invited him to manage the new Building Science course there in 1967. Calderwood overhauled the curriculum and improved its relevance. It was his subject, industrial organisation and management, rooted in Calderwood's father's mine management techniques, that characterized the whole building degree. In the course the importance of human relations in the building industry - welfare, incentives, conflict management, even body language, were taught.
He married Pauline Pearson of Port Elizabeth in 1949 by who he had two sons.

James Lycett had been an “influential Freemason, businessman, prospector, hotelier (?) and amateur actor and manager.” In 1855, he again performed with a theatre company called the “Amateurs of Cape Town, 1848-1857.

Born in the Eastern Cape, Raymond Tucker grew up in Johannesburg. He studied at Rhodes University and later did a law degree at the University of the Witwatersrand. He was active in the Liberal Party and devoted himself to human rights. He increasingly handled political trial cases and thus became a known South African Human Rights solicitor, presenting at high profile cases such as Winnie Mandela, the Very Rev Gonville ffrench-Beytagh, Robert Sobukwe and the trial of the 'Pretoria 12' (Sexwale and 11 Others) . He was awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of the Witwatersrand in 2004.

Hal White Miller was the former Managing Director and Executive Chairperson of The Argus Newspaper Group. Born in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe, he was educated at Michaelhouse in KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa. He served as a lieutenant with the Black Watch Highland Regiment in World War 2. His career spans from working as a reporter for The Star newspaper, to manager of the Bulawayo Chronicle, to manager of the then Argus Printing and Publishing Company, The Star, and finally to Executive Chairman of the Argus Company. He died in 2006 at the age of 81.

Regina Twala was South African writer of books, columns, articles and letters. She was also a feminist activist, a teacher, researcher evangelist and political activist in Swaziland (eSwatini). She studied at the Jan Hofmeyer School of Social Work and later completed a BA degree in social studies at the University of the Witwatersrand. In her second marriage she was married to Dan Twala, and they had one child named Vusi who is deceased, but had a daughter Pinokie.

Achmat Dangor, born in Newclare on 2 October 1948, was a South African writer, poet and political activist against Apartheid.
He worked extensively in the field of development and civil society, with institutions such as the Kagiso Trust, the Independent Development Trust (IDT), UNAIDS, the Nelson Mandela Childrens Fund (NMCF) and the Nelson Mandela Foundation.
His literary works included poetry collections such as Bulldozer (1983) and Private voices (1992), and novels such as Waiting for Leila (1981), the Z Town Trilogy (1990), Kafka's Curse: Novella & Three Other Stories (1997), Bitter Fruit (2001), Strange Pilgrimages (2013) and Dikeledi: Child of Tears No More (2017).
Achmat Dangor was a banned person from 1973 to 1978 by the South African government. He was active on several writers’ bodies advocating the end of segregation such as Black Thoughts, the Writers’ Forum and the Congress of South African Writers (COSAW).

Gerhard Maré is Professor Emeritus at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, where he served as the director of the Centre for Industrial and Labour Studies and as chair of Sociology. He was director of the Centre for Critical Research on Race and Identity from its establishment in 2006 until 2012. He is the co-author of "An Appetite for Power: Buthelezi's Inkatha and South Africa", and "Declassified: Moving beyond the dead end of race in South Africa".

Born to William Edgar and Hellen Harding, little is known but her passion for archaeology and museum management, curation and the use of both, for social and research purposes.

Joseph Barnett was born in 1861(?) in Brynmawr, Wales as one of 6 children of Barnett and Ellen Isaacs. He came to Johannesburg around 1888/9, where he started a photographic business in 1895, later joined by his brother David. Both brothers obtained contracts with periodical publications like the illustrated London journal "Black & White". Joseph Barnett died while on holiday in Wales and was buried at his birthplace on the 23 July 1897.
His brother David not only continued with the business Barnett & Co., but also took over Joseph's appointment as special correspondent of "Black and White", taking the photographic work of the brothers further. In the years to follow he contributed many of his pictures of the South African War (1899-1902), published by 'Black and White', and later launched a series of postcards in about 1902. David Barnett died at the age of 90 in 1964.