Jomo Kenyatta was born Kamau to parents Moigoi and Wamboi ”” his father was the chief of a small agricultural village in Gatundu Division, Kiambu District ”” one of five administrative districts in the Central Highlands of British East Africa (now Kenya).

Moigoi died when Kamau was very young and he was, as custom dictated, adopted by his uncle Ngengi to become Kamau wa Ngengi. Ngengi also took over the chiefdom and Moigoi's wife Wamboi.

Norman Stewart Middleton was born in January 1921, in Sophiatown, Johannesburg, Transvaal (now Gauteng) and moved to Pietermaritzburg, Natal (now kwaZulu-Natal) when he was 10. In 1940, after finishing school, he signed up to join the army.  

He was a soldier during World War II in North Africa and Italy and was wounded by shrapnel in an air raid. After the war, Middleton returned to Pietermaritzburg and began working at Eddels shoe factory, where he became an active member of the Leather Workers’ Union, eventually becoming vice-chairperson.

Percy Ndithembile Konqobe was born in 1939 in Nigel, Transvaal (now known as Gauteng Province). He completed school through standard six (now Grade Eight) before leaving to work. He was employed at several jobs and spent some years in prison until around 1976, when he felt called to become a sangoma or traditional healer. Since that time he worked as a traditional Zulu healer in Soweto.

Samson Ratshilumela Mudzunga was born in 1934 in the Nzhelele district of the former Venda ‘homeland’, now Limpopo province. However, Apartheid-era documents noted his year of birth as 1938, a date still recognised as correct in many publications. He began experimenting with moulding clay as a child, and at around age fifteen began to teach himself how to carve.