 In 1950 he formally joined the ANC and played a leading role in the 1952 ANC Defiance Campaign against Unjust Laws.He was one of the main volunteers who travelled from village to village collecting demands of the African population that were incorporated into the ANC Freedom Charter; he attended the 1955 Congress of the People in Kliptown that drew up the Freedom Charter as a delegate from Alexandra.In 1957 Thomas Nkobi shot to prominence when he chaired the Second Alexandra Peoples Transport Committee which was co-ordinating a bus boycott in the Johannesburg and Pretoria townships following a 25 per cent increase in bus fares.