Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela was born on 18 July 1918 in the small village of Mvezo, on the Mbashe River, South Africa. Mandela's mother was a Methodist, and Nelson followed in her footsteps, attending a Methodist missionary school. In 1934 Mandela matriculated from Clarkebury Missionary school. Four years later he graduated from Healdtown, a strict Methodist college, and left to pursue higher education at the University of Fort Hare. It was here he first met his lifelong friend and associate Oliver Tambo. Both Nelson Mandela and Oliver Tambo were expelled from Fort Hare in 1940 for political activism.

After moving to Johannesburg, Mandela started studying to complete his Bachelor's degree in 1941. In 1942 he started upon a law degree at the University of Witwatersrand.

In 1944 Nelson Mandela began his political career by forming, along with Tambo, Walter Sisulu, and a few others, the African National Congress Youth League, ANCYL. When DF Malan's Herenigde National Party won the 1948 election, Mandela, Tambo, and Sisulu acted. The existing ANC president was pushed out of office and someone more amenable to the ideals of the ANCYL was brought in as a replacement. Sisulu proposed a 'programme of action', which was subsequently adopted by the ANC. Mandela was made president of the Youth League in 1951.

In 1962 Nelson Mandela was smuggled out of South Africa, to attend conferences and to catch up with Oliver Tambo. On his return to South Africa, Mandela was arrested and sentenced to five years for "incitement and illegally leaving the country".

On 11 July 1963 a raid was undertaken in Rivonia, near Johannesburg, on the MK (Umkhonto we Sizwe, military wing of the ANC) headquarters. The remaining leadership of the MK was arrested. Nelson Mandela was included at trial with those arrested in Rivonia and charged with over 200 counts of "sabotage, preparing for guerrilla warfare in SA, and for preparing an armed invasion of SA". Mandela was one of the defendants at the Rivonia Trial to be given life sentences and sent to Robben Island.

As a planner of the Defiance Campaign from 1952, he was arrested that year and given a suspended sentence. In 1953, he travelled to Europe, the USSR, Palestine, and China as an ANC representative. He was jailed seven times in the next ten years. At the Treason Trial he was eventually sentenced to six years, but was released on bail pending his appeal. He went underground in 1963, resulting in his wife being the first woman arrested under the General Laws Amendment Act of 1963. He was caught at Rivonia on 11 July of the same year, along with 16 others. At the conclusion of the Rivonia Trial he was sentenced to life imprisonment on 12 June 1964. With other senior ANC figures, he served the majority of his sentence on Robben Island.

In 1946 Slovo enrolled at the University of Witwatersrand to study law, graduating in 1950 with a Bachelor of Law, LLB. During his time as a student, Slovo became more active in politics and met his first wife, Ruth First, the daughter of the Communist Party of South Africa's treasurer, Julius First. After college Slovo worked towards becoming an advocate and defense lawyer. In 1950 both Slovo and Ruth First were banned, under the Suppression of Communism Act, from attending public meetings and could not be quoted in the press. They both, however, continued to work for the Communist Party and various anti-Apartheid groups.

As a founder member of the Congress of Democrats (formed in 1953) Slovo went on to serve on the national consultative committee of Congress Alliance and helped draft the Freedom Charter. As a result of Slovo, along with 155 others, was arrested and charged with high treason. Slovo was released with a number of others only two months after the start of the Treason Trial. The charges against him were officially dropped in 1958.

In 1963, just before the Rivonia arrests, on instructions from the ANC, Slovo left South Africa. He spent twenty-seven years in exile in London, Maputo (Mozambique), Lusaka (Zambia), and various camps in Angola. In 1969 Slovo was appointed to the ANC's revolutionary council. He helped draft strategy documents and was considered the ANC's main theoretician. In 1977 Slovo moved to Maputo, Mozambique, where he created a new ANC headquarters and from where he masterminded a large number of MK operations in South Africa.

In 1984 Slovo was asked by the Mozambican government to leave the country, in accordance with its signing of the Nkomati Accord with South Africa. Following the remarkable announcement by President FW de Klerk, in February 1990, of the unbanning of the ANC and SACP, Joe Slovo returned to South Africa. He was a key negotiator between various anti-Apartheid groups and the ruling National Party and was personally responsible for a 'sunset clause' which led to the power-sharing Government of National Unity, GNU.

After fighting in the Zimbabwe People's Revolutionary Army (ZIPRA) and the Zimbabwe African People's Union (ZAPU) forces, Hani made a narrow escape into Botswana, only to be arrested again, and detained in prison for two years for weapons possession. Hani returned to Zambia at the end of 1968 to continue his work with ZIPRA.

In 1973 Hani transferred to Lesotho. There, he organized units of the MK for guerrilla operations in South Africa. By 1982, Hani had become prominent enough in the ANC to be the focus of several assassination attempts, including at least one car bomb.

After the unbanning of ANC and SACP on February 2, 1990, Hani returned to South Africa and became a charismatic and popular speaker in townships. By 1990 he was known to be a close associate of Joe Slovo, the secretary-general of the SACP. Both Slovo and Hani were considered dangerous figures in the eyes of South Africa's extreme right: the Afrikaner Weerstandsbewging (AWB, Afrikaner Resistance Movement) and the Conservative Party (CP). When Slovo announced that he had cancer in 1991, Hani took over as secretary-general.

In 1992, Hani stepped down as chief of staff of MK to devote more time to the organization of the SACP. Communists were prominent in the ANC and the Council of South African Trade Unions, but were under threat—the collapse of the Soviet Union in Europe had discredited the movement worldwide.

In 1972 Biko was one of the founders of the Black People's Convention (BPC), working on social upliftment projects around Durban. The BPC effectively brought together roughly 70 different black consciousness groups and associations, such as the South African Students’ Movement (SASM), which later played a significant role in the 1976 uprisings, the National Association of Youth Organisations, and the Black Workers Project, which supported black workers whose unions were not recognized under the apartheid regime. Biko was elected as the first president of the BPC and was promptly expelled from medical school. He started working full-time for the Black Community Programme (BCP) in Durban, which he also helped found.

In 1973 Steve Biko was "banned" by the apartheid government. Under the ban, Biko was restricted to his hometown of Kings William's Town in the Eastern Cape. He could no longer support the Black Community Programme in Durban, but he was able to continue working for the Black People's Convention. From King William's Town, he helped set up the Zimele Trust Fund which assisted political prisoners and their families. Despite the ban, Biko was elected Honorary President of the BPC in January 1977.

Biko was detained and interrogated four times between August 1975 and September 1977 under Apartheid era anti-terrorism legislation. On August 21, 1977, Biko was detained by the Eastern Cape security police and held in Port Elizabeth. Biko sustained a head injury during interrogation, after which he acted strangely and was uncooperative. The doctors who examined him initially disregarded overt signs of neurological injury.

By September 11, Biko had slipped into a continual semi-conscious state and was transported 1,200 kilometers to Pretoria, a 12-hour journey which he made lying naked in the back of a Land Rover. A few hours later, on September 12, alone and still naked, lying on the floor of a cell in the Pretoria Central Prison, Biko died from brain damage.

The brutal circumstances of Biko's death caused a worldwide outcry and he became a martyr and symbol of black resistance to the oppressive apartheid regime. As a result, the South African government banned a number of individuals and organizations, especially those Black Consciousness groups closely associated with Biko.

The United Nations Security Council responded by finally imposing an arms embargo against South Africa. Biko's family sued the state for damages in 1979, but it was not until a second inquiry in 1985 that any action was taken against the three doctors connected with Biko's case.

Chief Albert Luthuli joined the African National Congress (ANC) in 1945 and was elected Natal provincial president in 1951. In 1952, Chief Luthuli was one of the leading lights behind the Defiance Campaign, a non-violent protest against the pass laws. The Apartheid government was, unsurprisingly, annoyed and he was summoned to Pretoria to answer for his actions. Luthuli was given the choice of renouncing his membership of the ANC or being removed from his position as tribal chief. Albert Luthuli refused to resign from the ANC, issued a statement to the press which reaffirmed his support for passive resistance to Apartheid and was subsequently dismissed from his chieftaincy in November.

At the end of 1952, Albert Luthuli was elected president-general of the ANC. The previous president, Dr. James Moroka, lost support when he pleaded not-guilty to criminal charges laid as a result of his involvement in the Defiance Campaign, rather than accepting the campaign's aim of imprisonment and the tying up of government resources. The government responded by banning Luthuli, Mandela, and nearly 100 others.

In 1961 Chief Albert Luthuli was awarded the 1960 Nobel Prize for Peace for his part in the anti-Apartheid struggle. In 1962, he was elected Rector of Glasgow University, and the following year published his autobiography, 'Let My People Go'. Although suffering from ill health and failing eyesight, and still restricted to his home in Stanger, Albert Luthuli remained president-general of the ANC. On 21 July 1967, whilst out walking near his home, Luthuli was hit by a train and died. He was supposedly crossing the line at the time: an explanation dismissed by many of his followers who believed more sinister forces were at work.

Although observers expected him to continue Botha's defence of apartheid, de Klerk decided to end the policy. He was aware that growing ethnic animosity and violence was leading South Africa into a racial civil war. Amid this violence, the state security forces committed widespread human rights abuses and encouraged violence between Xhosa and Zulu, although de Klerk later denied sanctioning such actions. He permitted anti-apartheid marches to take place, legalised a range of previously banned anti-apartheid political parties, and freed imprisoned anti-apartheid activists, including Nelson Mandela. He also dismantled South Africa's nuclear weapons program.