Karl von Holdt has been a researcher and publisher in the South African labour and trade union movement. He is the former editor of the South African Labour Bulletin.

Chief Albert Lutuli, a teacher and activist, became the President-General of the African National Congress (ANC) from December 1952, which he remained until his death in 1967. He was the first African to receive the Nobel Peace Prize in 1960.

British activist living in South Africa since the 1980s, he initially worked for the Marxist Workers Tendency of the ANC in London and later in South Africa. From the 1990s onwards he then became instrumental and held various position in the Centre for Applied Legal Studies (CALS), the AIDS Law Project (ALP), the Treatment Action Campaign and Section 27.

He also completed a Masters degree in African literature at Wits and lectured and wrote on the influences of Shakespeare on African writing and politics in South Africa.

Mark Heywood has written extensively on HIV, human rights and the law, including co-editing the AIDS and the Law Resource Manual and Health & Democracy: A guide to human rights, health law and policy in post-Apartheid South Africa. He has been part of the legal teams of the AIDS Law Project and the Treatment Action Campaign that have been involved in all the major litigation around HIV and human rights in South Africa.

William Matlala is a freelance photographer specializing in Labour and Trade Union activities, who has served the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) in his capacity as photographer particularly in the 1990s.

He was born and grow up in the Dithabaneng village in Mphahlele district Northern province (Limpopo). After leaving school he went to seek employment in Johannesburg. He found himself in Germiston on the East Rand where he worked in Trimpack, a food company. He started as a general worker and later trained as a machine operator. In Trimpack he joined the Food and Allied Workers Union (FAWU) and was elected shop steward as well as chairman of the shop steward committee.

Whilst working in Trimpack he became interested in photography and started corresponding with the African School of Photography in Pretoria, where he obtained a Diploma. Initially he took photographs of colleagues at work and at their home with their families, and became fully involved in community activities particularly after the company closed in 1988. He then underwent more training in the field of photography through the Department of Manpower and later at the Market theather photo workshop and the South African Union of Journalists.

He built a large photographic archive throughout the 1990s, mainly of his own photographs but also of other South African photographers like Anna Zieminski, Cedric Nunn, Santu Mofokeng, Paul Weinberg, Morice Smithers and Abdul Shariff.

AIDS LAW PROJECT (ALP) is a non-governmental organization which works exclusively to promote equal rights and justice for people living with HIV and AIDS. ALP focuses on using legal strategies to advance health rights for people living with and affected by HIV and AIDS. It was founded by lawyers whose desire was to give back to society, through applying their legal expertise in assisting people living with HIV and AIDS to acquire equal rights and treatment.

Dr. Freed was a lecturer in Social Medicine.

This organisation was formed as a multi-racial group of parents in support of their children who were kept in detention, often without trial. The DPSC operated on national level under extreme conditions of State repression, such as banning orders and detentions. Although the DPSC did not operate in isolation, the sheer numbers of those who were detained was overwhelming. Some of the earlier material of the organisation appears to have been lost in the Khotso house bombing in 1988, where the DPSC offices were located.