Amina Cachalia, daughter of Ebrahim Ismail Asvat and Fatima Issack, was born on 28 June 1932, as the ninth of 11 children. She grew up in the Vereeniging location of Johannesburg and later moved to Newclare, west of Johannesburg. Her first school attendance was at a 'Coloured' Afrikaans medium school and later at an 'Indian school', after the family had moved to Fordsburg in Johannesburg.

The 1946 the Passive Resistance Campaign involved most members of the Asvat family. Amina too elected to go to prison but was considered too young at the time. In 1948 she was offered a scholarship by the Indian Government to further her studies in India but was refused a passport. Later that year she co-founded the Women's Progressive Union, of which she became the Secretary, and later went on to join the Indian Youth Congress, where she served as a National Executive member.

When the Congress Alliance launched the Defiance Campaign in 1952, she was one of the youngest women arrested and sent to prison. In 1954 she participated in the inaugural launch of the Federation of South African Women FEDSAW), together with Lilian Ngoyi and Helen Joseph, and later served as the National Treasurer.

In July 1955 she was married to Yusuf Cachalia, son of Ahmed Muhammad Cachalia and Katija Cachalia (Nanie)ø, then Secretary of the South African Indian Congress, with whom she was to have two children, Ghaleb and Dilshad (Coco). Yusuf Cachalia died on 10 May 1995 at the age of 80.

Amina Cachalia was an organizer of the historic march of 20,000 women on the Union Buildings on 9 August 1956. She was served with her first banning order in 1963, which was re-imposed successively between 1963-1978. Her husband Yusuf spent 27 years as a banned person and 10 years under house arrest. When her banning order was not repeated in 1980 she immediately resumed active politics during the campaign to oppose the Tricameral Parliament. She was elected patron of the Federation of Transvaal Women (FEDTRAW). She continued to work towards the United Democratic Front (UDF).

Additionally, she served as a director of Snapper Clothes (Pty) Ltd, a company which she and her late husband started in 1958.

With the beginning of South Africa's new dispensation in 1994, Amina Cachalia continued her active political service in various capacities. She was instrumental in Nelson Mandela's Presidency; later became a trustee of the Nelson Mandela Children's Fund and other charities; served on the Finance Committee of the ANC Women's League, being the Treasurer of the PWV Region; was the ANC candidate for the National Assembly; and she became chairperson of the 'World in Soweto' Project, geared to the upliftment of Soweto.

On the 20 April 2004 she became South Africa's first Indian woman to receive an honorary degree in Law from the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg.

Amina Cachalia is the recipient of The National Order of Luthuli in Bronze, awarded to her for her lifetime contribution to the struggle for gender equality, non-racialism and a free and democratic South Africa.

James Arthur Calata was born at Debe Nek, near King William's Town in the Cape Province in 1895 and later trained as a teacher at St. Matthew's College, 1915-1920. In 1921 he left teaching to become an Anglican priest. He was ordained in 1926 as a Deacon in the Anglican Church in Port Elizabeth and, after a short spell at Somerset East, proceeded to Cradock where he served as minister from 1928 until his retirement in 1968.

The Rev. Calata, however, was also a central figure in African social and political life being involved in, amongst others, the Pathfinders Movement, the African Parents Association, the Society of Saint Ntsikana, and the African National Congress in 1930. In 1935 he acted as Chaplain of the A.N.C. and as Secretary General between 1936 and 1949 when he resigned because he was not in favour of the Programme for Action. He was instrumental in getting A. B. Xuma elected President of ANC as he saw he was able to attract more educated people within the movement.

He was held and tried for treason in 1956 and acquitted. He was banned in 1962 for having 2 twenty-year-old photographs of an ANC deputation on his wall.

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.

Daughter of Captain Joseph Hare, and grand-daughter of William Wilberforce Bird and wife of William Douglas.