ALTHOUGH HE BECAME A PROMINENT FIGURE IN THE EARLY HISTORY OF Soweto, very little is known about James Mpanza's life prior to his emergence as the leader of a big squatter movement. Mpanza was born in Natal on 15 May 1889. In Pietermaritzburg he attended an Indian school and learnt to speak English and an Indian dialect but, like many of his generation, he was forced to leave school to find work. Through his education he found a job as a clerk at the Durban harbour, and later he worked in Pinetown. It was here that he killed an Indian shopkeeper and was imprisoned in Pietermaritzburg to be executed. But his sentence was first commuted to life and then he was released early. During his imprisonment, the future messianic leader of squatters converted to Christianity. After his release from prison, Mpanza moved to Johannesburg and, like many other new arrivals, he lived in one of the city's slums. In 1934 he moved to Orlando, where he lived at Number 957 Pheele Street. Soon after his arrival in the township, Mpanza was elected onto the advisory board and he emerged as the voice of the growing class of sub-tenants, desperate for their own homes, who had been lobbying the central government and the Johannesburg authorities for years – to no avail – to deal with the shortage of housing.

Frustrated by the lack of response from the authorities, Mpanza mooted the idea of mobilising sub-tenants to occupy open spaces in the location to highlight their plight. His proposal received the cold shoulder from members of the Communist Party, who viewed him with suspicion, but the young members of the African National Congress, who were to become leading figures in the ANC Youth League, were more receptive. Walter Sisulu, one of the founders and leading members of the Youth League, lived with his family in Orlando East. In the book A Place in the City: The Rand on the Eve of Apartheid, Walter Sisulu says, ‘Mpanza spoke to me and Nelson [Mandela], and said let's pass a resolution at the Orlando Residents’ Association. It must be moved by Nelson and seconded by me; in which, he says, that on the 29th January we the residents of Orlando shall evict the sub-tenants. That resolution was moved; and that strategy moved the City Council.’