Under Protest is based largely on a series of about three dozen interviews conducted by Daniel Massey in 1998 and 1999 with former Fort Hare students. Massey traveled across South Africa in a battered white Ford Meteor—from the rural Transkei, where Ambrose Makiwane was tending cows, to the halls of Parliament in Cape Town, where Mangosuthu Buthelezi was minister of home affairs—asking the Fort Harians about the role the university played in their political development.

Thelma Appavoo	Jeff Baqwa	Selby Baqwa	Terence Beard	Devi Bughwan
Mangosuthu Buthelezi	Ismail Dada	Ntombezinhlanu Dwane	Sigqipo Dwane	V.R. Govender
Herby Govinden	Isaac Mabindisa	Stanley Mabizela	Sipo Makalima	Henry Makgothi
Ambrose Makiwane	Andrew Masondo	George Matanzima	Kaiser Matanzima	Ivy Matsepe-Casaburri
Joe Matthews	Govan Mbeki	Frank Mdlalose	Marumo Moerane	Thenjiwe Mtintso
Logan Naidoo	G.C. Oosthuizen	R.A. Pillay	Barney Pityana	Sizwe Satyo
Makhenkesi Arnold Stofile	Rama Thumbadoo	G.S. Tootla	Wycliffe Tsotsi