Molefi Nathanael Oliphant was born on 6 March 1952 in Kroonstad, Free State.

He started his career as a teacher in 1975 at Lekoa Shandu High School in Sharpeville, rising to the rank of principal in 1983 at Lebohang High School in Boipatong. He was promoted to Inspector of Schools in 1993. In 1995 he was promoted to the post of District Director of Education in the Sedibeng West District of the Gauteng Department of Education.

Nowongile Cynthia Molo was born in 1949 in the former Transkei (now Eastern Cape). She completed the Junior Certificate (Form 3) at Bethel College. She has also taken courses in Political Theory, Leadership Skills and HIV and AIDS.

Molo worked for the Department of Education in the Eastern Cape, where she was mainly involved in the building and renovation of schools, and later became a project manager in the Department of Agriculture in that province.

Born in the late 1930s, Bishop David Patrick Russell became involved in the struggle against apartheid from an early age. He did his first degree at the University of Cape Town, and then studied for a Masters Degree at Oxford University. He trained for the priesthood at the College of the Resurrection, Mirfield, England, and later obtained his PhD in Religious Studies (specialising in Christian Ethics) from the University of Cape Town. In 1965 he was ordained as the 12th Bishop of Grahamstown.

Dr Thokozani Mandlenkosi Ernest Nene, known as “Gxaba Lembadada”, was born at Kwa Hlabisa, on the North Coast of KwaZulu-Natal on 19 September 1944.

Dr Nene attended the Eshowe Government School, where he matriculated in 1965. He went on to study at the University of Zululand, Ongoye, where he obtained a Bachelor of Arts degree. In  2001 he obtained a Doctor’s Degree in Philosophy at the same institution.