Bernard Leeman is an Irish activist who served in both the First Lesotho Liberation Army (LLA) and the pre-1986 Azanian People's Liberation Army (APLA). He worked in various capacities, including as the BCP's acting representative in London, as the PAC education secretary, founder of the University of Azania and co-editor of The Africanist. For three months in 1977 he worked undercover as a Major in the Lesotho Paramilitary Force. In 1978 he financed the invasion of Lesotho and in 1985 played a major role in the Lekhanya coup in 1986.

Nonseng Ellen Kate Kuzwayo was born on the 29th of June 1914. She grew up on her grandfathers farm in Thaba Nchu and inherited the farm in 1930 but lost it when it was declared a white area. She was a campaigner against Apartheid in South Africa and a fighter for womens emancipation; she was a teacher, social worker and community leader.

She refused to work with government agencies, collaborating instead with voluntary organizations such as the YWCA, where she held the position of General Secretary in the Transvaal Region 1964, working with women in deprived communities. After the Soweto uprising in June 1976 and the arrest and killing of many young people, Soweto residents chose ten persons to study the role of members of the Local Councils who were cooperating with the apartheid regime. Ellen Kuzwayo and nine men were selected to the Committee of Ten but all ten members of the Committee were arrested by the police and detained without trial. Ellen Kuzwayo was detained at the Johannesburg Fort' Womens Jail for five months.

Her activities included being President of the Black Consumers Union and serving on the Executive Committee of the Urban Foundation. She has published "Call me Woman" (1985), "Sit and Listen: Stories from South Africa" (1996) and "Tsiamelo - a place of goodness" (1984). Ellen Kuzwayo was honored by the Johannesburg City Council and on the 2nd of April 1987 she became the first black woman to receive an Honorary degree from the University of the Witwatersrand. In 1994 she was appointed an African National Congress (ANC) member of parliament and retired after five years in 1999, receiving the State Order of Meritorious Service.

She died on the 19th of April 2006 at the age of 91, survived by her sons Bobo and Justice Moloto, six grandchildren and three great-grand children.

Dr Ivan Raymond May is an Alumni of the University of the Witwatersrand, where he obtained his BSc Honours in 1969, Master of Science in 1970, Doctor of Philosophy in 1974 and Master of Business administration in 1976.

A former Research Fellow at the Wageningen University Netherlands and Research Assistant and Lecturer at the University of the Witwatersrand, he laterserved in leading positions and on the Boards of several organisations and companies, including Greatermans Department Stores, Ogilvy & Mather Worldwide and Nedcor Ltd. (from where he retired in 2003).

Dr May is actively involved in organisations focussing on charity, business and social issues in South Africa, such as Charities Aid Foundation, Business and Arts South Africa, the Order of St John in South Africa, the Market Theatre Foundation and the Salvation Army.

He has received numerous and prestigious awards in acknowledgement of his work in various fields, like the Endangered Wildlife Trust Cheetah Award, the WWF Gold Medal as well as awards by the Marketing Federation and the Association of Marketers of South Africa. As a World Fellow of the Duke of Edinburgh Award, he received a Knighthood of Justice of the Most Venerable Order of the Hospital of St John of Jerusalem from her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II.

Dr Mayis the President of Convocation of the University of the Witwatersrand, and he is an elected member of Council and Senate.

Hilda and Lionel 'Rusty' Bernstein, both life long members of the South African Communist Party (SACP), devoted their lives to freedom and democracy in South Africa.

Lionel 'Rusty' Bernstein was born in Durban in 1920, as the youngest of four children of European emigrants. Orphaned at the age of 8, he was sent to finish his education at Hilton College, a prestigious Boy's school in Natal. After matriculating he returned to Johannesburg where he started to work at an architect's office, while studying architecture part-time at the University of the Witwatersrand until 1936, after which he worked full-time as an architect. In 1937 he joined the Labour League of Youth and later joined the Communist Party. In 1941 he volunteered for the South African army and served as a gunner in North Africa and Italy as part of the Allied Forces. In March that year he married Hilda, an emigrant from Britain, whom he had met in the Labour League of Youth. She had risen to prominence in local politics

Hilda Bernstein, previously Watts, was born in London in 1915 as one of three daughters of Simeon and Dora Schwarz. Her father was a Bolshevik who became the Russian Trade Attaché in London in 1919, but left the family when he was recalled to Russia when Hilda was 10. Hilda emigrated to South Africa in 1933 aged 18, after receiving the news of her father's death, having never returned from the Soviet Union. In South Africa she soon joined the youth branch of the Labour Party. By 1940 she joined the Communist Party of South Africa and served on both the district committee and national executive. In 1943 she was elected for 3 years to the Johannesburg City Council as the only communist candidate to achieve this.

After Rusty's discharge from the army in 1946 he was reunited with his wife Hilda and their daughter Toni, the first of four children, being Toni, Patrick, Francis and Keith. Soon after Hilda and Rusty got involved in the strike of African miners in 1946, being on the strike committee and producing the strike bulletin. At the end of the strike they got arrested together with others and charged with sedition, to be convicted of aiding an illegal strike for which they received suspended sentences. In 1950 the Communist Party was banned, and listed members became subject to various restrictions, including a ban on being published. Nevertheless both published and edited extensively. Amongst many other publications, Rusty wrote and edited "Fighting Talk", the official organ of the Springbok Legion. Hilda was the editor of the magazine "Childhood", the official organ of the South African National Council for Child Welfare. Hilda and Rusty were instrumental in the formation of political movements and organisations at the time. Rusty played a major part on the committee organising the Congress of the People, which would adopt the Freedom Charter in 1955. Rusty has been credited with the drafting of the text for the Freedom Charter. Hilda was one of the founders of the first multi-racial women's organisation in 1956, called the Federation of South African Women (FEDSAW), and played a key role in organising the historic Women's March to Pretoria in 1956. At the end of 1956 Rusty, amongst 156 others, was arrested and charged with Treason, a trial which lasted for more than 4 years, after which all accused were found not guilty and discharged. In 1960, following the State of Emergency, Rusty and Hilda were detained for several months, first in the Old Fort prison, from which they were moved to the Pretoria Central Prison. During that time their four children were left in the care of friends and family. After their release house arrest followed as well as renewed banning orders. On the 11 July 1963 Rusty and other prominent leaders were arrested during a raid on Liliesleaf Farm in Rivonia. Rusty was charged along Nelson Mandela, Walter Sisulu and others in the Rivonia Trail in 1964. He was acquitted, rearrested, recharged and then released on bail. Soon after his release, and just as police came to their home to arrest Hilda as well, both fled and crossed the border to Botswana on foot, ultimately arriving in London. They left their children in the care of their eldest daughter Toni and her husband Ivan Strasburg whom she married with her fathers blessings send from jail in 1963. Soon after all their children joined them in exile starting in London, were Rusty worked as an architect. Hilda forged a new life as an artist and writer, with many one-person shows of her etchings, drawings and paintings, as well as extensive group shows of print-makers and women artists in the UK, USA, Europe and African countries. Her work was displayed in the Royal Academy just as much as it was used on posters and greetings cards for the Anti-Apartheid Movement. Rusty was an outstanding political educator. In 1987 he conducted a series of seminars for the ANC in Moscow on the history of the South African liberation struggle. In 1989 he was asked by the ANC leadership to establish a school of politics in the ANC camps in Mazimbu and Dakawa in Tanzania, where Hilda joined him for one year at the ANC's Solomon Mahlangu Freedom College.

Both Hilda and Rusty lived to see the end of Apartheid, and came back to South Africa to take part in the first democratic elections in 1994. Rusty had worked in the ANC press office during that time, with particular responsibility for ensuring mass white participation in the elections. In 1995 he travelled to Italy to celebrate the 50. anniversary of the liberation from Nazi occupation, where he represented his former South African regiment. In 1998 Rusty and Hilda were awarded honorary degrees from the University of Natal for their role in helping to bring democracy to South Africa. Both published extensively, culminating in books like "The world that was ours", Death is part of the process", "For their triumphs and for their tears", "The Rift - The exile experience of South Africans" and "A life of ones own", which were published by Hilda, as well as Rusty's acclaimed book "Memory against forgetting", being his personal account of the history of South African politics between 1938-1964.

Rusty Bernstein died at their home in England on the 23 June 2002, aged 82. In 2004 Hilda was very proud to receive the Luthuli Silver Award for "contribution to the attainment of gender equality and a free and democratic society" in South Africa, she was 89 years at the time. She died on the 8 September 2006 in Cape Town.

(Compiled with the texts of the profiles of Hilda and Rusty Bernstein on the website www.rusty-bernstein.com, with permission)

Michael Alan Harmel was born to Irish immigrant parents in February 1915 in Johannesburg. He was an intellectual and revolutionary and became a radical socialist opposed to racism while studying at Rhodes University in the 1930s. After graduating from Rhodes with an MA in English literature, Harmel worked in London for the British Communist Party's newspaper The Daily Worker. He returned to South Africa in 1939, and immediately joined the Communist Party of South Africa. At the early age of 25 he was elected to the Johannesburg District Committee where he served as a District Secretary. After the dissolution of the Communist Party in 1950 Harmel worked tirelessly towards reconstitution of the Party and was a prominent member of the underground Party collective. Publicly he devoted most of his time to journalism. He was on the editorial board of Liberation, and also worked as a correspondent of The Guardian, Spark and New Age. Harmel also collaborated in the formation of the South African Congress of Trades Unions (SACTU) and was a founder member of the Congress of Democrats. He was one of the first to be banned under the Suppression of Communism Act which he defied and for which he was arrested. In 1959 Harmel became the first editor of the Communist Party's new journal, The African Communist". He wrote countless articles for that journal, largely under his pseudonym, A. Lerumo. He was also one of the commanders of Umkhonto we Sizwe. While tutoring in Marxism-Leninism to new recruits of the Communist Party, he played a leading role in drafting this Party's new programme.

In 1962 Michael Harmel was one of the first people to be placed under 24 hour house arrest for 5 years. Subjected to repeated state harassment he was instructed by the Communist Party to go into exile in London where he continued editing and producing The African Communist. While in exile, Michael Harmel continued his full-time work in both the MK and the Communist Party. He also played an important role in the shaping and work of the British Anti-Apartheid Movement, as well as the establishment of the Irish Anti-Apartheid Movement. On the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the Communist Party Harmel wrote a book containing the history of this party and entitled: "Fifty Fighting Years". It was published under his pseudonym A. Lerumo and translated into many languages.

Michael Harmel was sent to Prague to become the Communist Party's representative to the journal World Marxist Review. He worked and lived in Prague with his wife and daughter until his death at the age of 59 on 18 June 1974. He was survived by his wife Ray Harmel (1905-1998), his daughter Barbara, and his granddaughter Lisa.

Dr Barbara Harmel was born in December 1942 in Johannesburg. Harmel is the daughter of Ray Harmel, a trade unionist, founding member of the Garment Workers' Union and a life-long member of the South African Communist Party, and Michael Harmel who was a member of the central committee of this the South African Communist Party and the first Editor of the African Communist.

Dr Harmel joined the underground movement in 1963 and, after narrowly avoiding arrest, went into exile in 1964. Harmel graduated with a B.A. (Hons.) in Philosophy and a Masters in sub-Saharan African Studies at the School of Oriental and African Studies from the University of London. While reading for a Ph.D. at the University of Essex, she was awarded a travel scholarship to do her research at Yale University. She was also an Associate Fellow of the Southern Africa Research Programme at Yale and taught several courses on the politics of South Africa. In 1984 Barbara moved to Washington D.C. where she worked for four years promoting Congressional awareness of conditions in South Africa and campaigning for U.S. sanctions against South Africa.

In 1988 she was awarded a two-year scholarship at Harvard University's Center for International Affairs where she ran a weekly seminar on South African politics presented by many speakers from South Africa. In 1990 she became the Director of the South Africa Program at the Albert Einstein Institution in Cambridge, Massachusetts. It was in this capacity and under their auspices that she returned to South Africa in 1992. In 1995 Dr Harmel trained as a psychologist in London and is currently in private practice in Johannesburg.

Robey Leibbrandt was an Olympic boxer, winning the light heavyweight bronze medal for South Africa at the 1934 Empire Games. He later returned to Berlin to study Sports. He joined the German Army during the Second World War, was trained as a paratrooper and dropped on the Cape Town coast in 1941. He formed the Nasionaal Sosialistiese Rebelle, drumming up anti-British support until his arrest in 1943, after which he was sentenced to death for high treason. His sentence was commuted to life imprisonment by General Smuts.

Sr Priscilla Dlamini was the receipient of various awards for her work at the Hospice, amongst others "Community Builder of the Year" award by the Department of Social Welfare in 2001; "The woman of the year Finalist award" in Social Services by Shoprite Checkers; and she was nominated as "100 Top Women achiever in South Africa" in 2005.

Carien Engelbrecht was the Project Manager of the Alexandra Renewal Project, which was a Special Presidential Project for Urban Renewal, and of the Katorus Project, which was a Special Presidential Project for Housing. Her Papers contain reports and notebooks with personal notes of minutes and accounts relating to the two projects as well as earlier projects she was involved in.

Vishwas Satgar was a member of the SACP for 18 years until his expulsion from the party in September 2009.

Vishwas Satgar's early political involvement started in the 1980s when he became active in the Natal Indian Congress, Pietermaritzburg. At the University of Natal Pietermaritzburg (UNP) he was the Secretary of the black Students Society, which he represented in the United Democratic Front. After the unbanning of the ANC and the SACP he became a member of both organisations. He held the position of the Gauteng Provincial Secretary of the SACP from 2001 until 2007, and sat on the Central Committee of the SACP. He was actively involved with the Alliance partners of the SACP in the Tripartite Alliance of the African National Congress (ANC), the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) and the SACP.

Vishwas Satgar published widely on issues of left movements, worker's issues and grass roots community initiatives, and is now closely involved with the Conference of the Democratic Left (CDL) and Democratic Left Front.