James Mpanza

James Mpanza (15 May 1889 – 23 September 1970) was a community leader and social activist. From the mid-1940s to the late 1960s, he led land occupations and squatter camp movements due to housing crises. The demolition of these camps led to one of the largest housing developments in South Africa and contributed to the founding of modern Soweto. He co-founded Orlando Pirates FC in 1937 and played a key role in the construction of Orlando Stadium in 1959. Mpanza is known as "the father of Soweto".

Life Mpanza was born on 15 May 1889 in Georgedale, today part of eThekwini Metropolitan Municipality, a township between Pinetown and Pietermaritzburg in KwaZulu-Natal. His father Ventile Mbihlana Mpanza, an ox cart driver, and his wife Evelyn had four children but their eldest son died before manhood. Mpanza studied until year 6 at Georgedale Primary School, before qualifying with a third-class teaching certificate at Indaleni in Natal.

He was a clerk and interpreter at a solicitors' office when he was 18, and he was falsely convicted of fraud in 1912. He came to notice when he was accused of the murder in 1915 of an Indian shopkeeper called Adam. Mpanza appealed his own case, arguing that he was somewhere else at the time. He was reprieved but he still received a life sentence. He served 13 years in jail, being moved from place to place because he misbehaved and attacked warders. At Cinderella prison in Boksburg at the end of World War 1, he became a Christian and wrote a short book on his ideas and began preaching to his fellow prisoners.

In 1927, he was released and he made his living by teaching in Pretoria, before moving to Orlando, Johannesburg, in 1934. He would ride a horse through Orlando giving rise to an air of eccentricity. This allowed him to continue to influence the Orlando Advisory Board. He later helped to set up the Soweto Urban Banto Council in the 1960s, which reduced his importance.