Mkhuseli Jack was born on 31 May 1958, on the Mosskraal Farm in Humansdorp, a small town in one of the districts surrounding the Eastern Cape in South Africa.
He finished Standard Five and Six in a coastal town called Jeffreys Bay due to the lack of a permit he required to complete his schooling in Humansdorp.
Mkhuseli Jack only learned about the system of apartheid in South Africa when he moved to the city of Port Elizabeth to continue his high school education.
Later, he helped create and lead the Port Elizabeth Youth Congress, part of the United Democratic Front (UDF) and became involved in the emerging civic movement.
The United Democratic Front initially gained attention through low-key, non-violent acts of defiance such as rent boycotts and labour strikes.
The non-violent acts of civil disobedience that had been led by Nelson Mandela in the early stages of the Anti-Apartheid movement had caught the attention of the world.
The armed branch of the ANC, Umkhonto we Sizwe (Spear of the Nation), as well as other organisations that had opposed the regime with violence during the later stages of the Anti-Apartheid movement, had failed.
He began forming street committees where members would meet at random points on roadsides so as to seem informal and not arouse suspicion.
Affected by the ongoing violence, the black citizens of Port Elizabeth began insisting on searching for an alternative form of resistance.
At the time, black consumers made up about 47% of South Africa's national buying power compared to 40% for whites and the remaining 13% for Indians and people of mixed race.
After five days, in an attempt to extinguish the boycott, the government declared a state of emergency in the townships of Port Elizabeth on 21 July 1985.
"Once you cut the ground out under their feet, the government starts to panic" – Mkhuseli Jack[4] The initial demands made by the leaders of the boycott were simple and included the opening of public facilities to all races, the removal of troops from the townships, the release of Nelson Mandela and that blacks and whites share a single education system.
[9] "The boycott succeeded because of broad mass participation, because of international solidarity, the fact that the regimes violence against our people backfired and the resilience of our people" – Mkhuseli Jack[4] In the early 1990s, Mkhuseli Jack earned an honours degree in Economics & Development Studies at Sussex University in England.
[11] In 2009, Mkhuseli Jack was named as one of a group of powerful Eastern Cape businesspeople that emerged as bankrollers of the breakaway political party, the Congress of the People (COPE), which formally split from the ANC on the 1.
[12][13] In 2006 a coalition of more than 70 Palestinian civil society organisations launched a call for boycott directly inspired by Mkhuseli Jack's action, against the Israeli state, known as the BDS campaign.