Born in New Brighton, Port Elizabeth, he was aged 37 at the time of the trial. He had a magnificent bass voice, and \'in the Fort his voice rolled above the combined effort of all the others, singing a song he himself had introduced: Iza unyatele Afrika, Strydom shoo…("Strydom, beware, Africa will trample you").\' He was a veteran of the Defiance Campaign, who served three months for breaking railway apartheid regulations, and lost his job as a packer in a battery factory because of his arrest. At the time of the trial he had been taking part in the Sophiatown bus boycott.