Born in Johannesburg in 1925, he became one of the few significant coloured activists in the Transvaal in the 1950s. A clerk by occupation, he was secretary of the South African Coloured People's Organization in the Transvaal in the mid-1950s and was a defendant in the Treason Trial for its full length, from 1956 to 1961. He moved to Swaziland after 1961.