Anderson Khumani “Dan” Ganyile’s was born in 1935 in Bizana District, Transkei (now Eastern Cape). He attended St John’s School in Umtata and then Lovedale before proceeding to Fort Hare in 1959. Ganyile’s interest in politics was sparked by the African National Congress (ANC) 1952 Defiance Campaign. In 1959,as a first year student at the UFH,he joined the off-campus African National Congress Youth League (ANCYL),only to be denied university re-admission in February 1960.Ganyile returned to Bizana where he quickly became involved in the burgeoning Pondoland rebellion against the Bantu Authorities Act,lending his assistance as secretary to be peasant leadship group known as The Mountain.He was detained without charge for the full length of the post-Sharpville state of emergency from April to August 1960,then return to Pondoland.
In early November 1960 he was banished to a remote farm in Frenchdale in the Northern Cape but within few months had escaped and made his way to the British colony of Basutoland(Lesotho).In the mid-1961 he was living with two other men in a hut in Qacha's Nek,a mere 638 yards fro the Transkei border.In August 1961 one evening,six South Africa plainclothes police forcibly entered the hut and,after an intense struggle,bound and gagged Ganyile and his colleagues and took them back over a barbed-wire border fence to South Africa where they were imprisoned.Ganyile had not been able to smuggle out a message about his capture,months of silence might have ensued.On September 21,New Age ran a banner headline "SA Police Kidnap Pondo Leader in Basutoland".Other newspapers,andsoon the British press too- egged on by parliamentarians Fenner Brockway and Jeremy Thorpe were denouncing the illegal seizures in Britain territory.After much ducking and dodging bySA courts and ministers,all three men were released without charge.They sued for wrongful arrestassault and detention, and were granted an undisclosed amount in an out-of-court settlement.Ganyile returned to Basutoland but after Transkeian "independence" in 1976 he came back to live in Bizana.After being a distributor for the Daily Dispatch for some years,he became a court interpreter in Port St. Johns.