50 Facts About Albertina Sisulu

Albertina Sisulu OMSG was a South African anti-apartheid activist.

Albertina Sisulu entered politics through her marriage to Walter Sisulu and became increasingly engaged in activism after his imprisonment in the Rivonia Trial.

Albertina Sisulu was the deputy president of the ANC Women's League from 1991 to 1993 and a member of the ANC National Executive Committee from 1991 to 1994.

Albertina Sisulu was born on 21 October 1918 in the Camama, a village in the Tsomo region of the Transkei.

Albertina Sisulu was the second of five siblings in a Xhosa family.

Albertina Sisulu's father, Bonilizwe Thetiwe, was a migrant worker who spent long stints working in the gold mines of the Transvaal, and her mother, Monica Thetiwe, was disabled by the bout of Spanish flu that she had suffered while pregnant with Sisulu.

In 1929, while Albertina Sisulu's mother was pregnant with her fifth and final child, Albertina Sisulu's father died of occupational lung disease in Camama.

Albertina Sisulu covered her living expenses by ploughing fields and working in the laundry room during school holidays.

In January 1940, Albertina Sisulu moved to Johannesburg, where she began her long nursing career as a trainee in the non-European section of the Johannesburg General Hospital.

Albertina Sisulu began attending ANC meetings not as a member but as his companion.

Albertina Sisulu abstained from the 1952 Defiance Campaign, during which Walter was arrested and convicted of communism; in her paraphrase of the ANC's policies, "if one of the members of the family was already defying, we couldn't all go, because there were children to be looked after".

Opposition to apartheid accelerated in 1954 and 1955, and Albertina Sisulu was involved in several related campaigns.

Albertina Sisulu was elected to the inaugural national executive committee of the Federation of South African Women when it was founded in 1954.

Albertina Sisulu was present at the August 1956 Women's March in Pretoria, and in October 1958 she was arrested for the first time and charged for participating in another women's march against pass laws.

On 19 June of that year, Albertina Sisulu became the first woman to be detained under the so-called 90-Day Detention Law: the recently enacted General Laws Amendment Act, 1963 allowed police to detain activists incommunicado indefinitely and without charging them.

Albertina Sisulu was held in solitary confinement and interrogated at length about Walter's whereabouts.

Albertina Sisulu was released after her husband and his comrades were apprehended at Rivonia in July 1963.

Albertina Sisulu was banned continuously for the next 17 years, prohibited from political activity and for several years confined to effective house arrest.

Nonetheless, throughout this period, Albertina Sisulu remained a prominent figure in the resistance movement, notable for her focus on civic organising on a national rather than local scale.

Albertina Sisulu was particularly influential in the preparations for the establishment of the United Democratic Front, a popular front against apartheid that was launched in 1983, and in a protracted campaign to revive FEDSAW.

Albertina Sisulu's trial began in Krugersdorp shortly afterwards, with George Bizos as her defence counsel.

In 1983, Albertina Sisulu retired from public nursing, having reached retirement age and received her pension.

However, in the 1980s, their relationship grew tense as Albertina Sisulu attempted to curb Mandela United's excesses.

In later years, because of their husbands' stature, the press often contrasted Madikizela-Mandela and Albertina Sisulu as opposing models of female activism, comparing Albertina Sisulu's cool-headed maturity with Madikizela-Mandela's "rage and charm".

Meanwhile, Asvat was an unpopular figure both with the state and with conservative residents of Soweto; in 1987, Albertina Sisulu was with him when he narrowly escaped a knife attack, and in December 1988, they worked without water or electricity after the supply to their surgery was cut off.

Albertina Sisulu had admitted the gunmen to an appointment with Asvat earlier that day.

Albertina Sisulu told press it was "a crushing victory for us".

In 1989, as the negotiations to end apartheid quickened, Albertina Sisulu embraced her public-facing role in the anti-apartheid movement.

The delegation travelled to Sweden; to France, on the invitation of Danielle Mitterrand; and to the ANC's headquarters in exile in Lusaka, where Albertina Sisulu provided exiled leaders with a report on conditions inside South Africa.

The last of the restrictions against Albertina Sisulu were lifted by the South African government on 14 October 1989.

Albertina Sisulu became involved in the campaign to re-establish the ANC Women's League, though she declined a nomination to stand for the league's presidency.

The mainstream ANC held its own reunion in July 1991 at the 48th National Conference in Durban, where Albertina Sisulu was elected to serve as a member of the party's National Executive Committee.

Albertina Sisulu only served one three-year term in the committee; at the 49th National Conference in December 1994, both she and her husband declined to stand for re-election to the party's leadership.

Albertina Sisulu later said that, as a member of the ANC National Executive, she had been highly doubtful of Mandela's proposal to reconcile with National Party supporters in the interests of national unity.

Albertina Sisulu's biographer said it was "one of the proudest moments of her life" to be selected to offer the nomination on the ANC's behalf.

Albertina Sisulu served one term in Parliament, retiring at the June 1999 general election.

Albertina Sisulu was expected to provide important testimony in the TRC's investigation into the activities of the Mandela United Football Club, in particular through her account of the day of Asvat's murder and of the relationship between Asvat and Madikizela-Mandela.

In that interview, Albertina Sisulu had confirmed the authenticity of a patient record card from Asvat's surgery which undermined Madikizela-Mandela's alibi on the day of Seipei's death; she said that she recognised her own handwriting on the card.

Albertina Sisulu later said that she had made this identification in error.

Albertina Sisulu said that she did not recall having seen Madikizela-Mandela or her colleagues at the surgery during the period of Seipei's kidnapping.

Albertina Sisulu briefly re-appeared on the witness stand, at her own request, and Ntsebeza told her that she had been "vindicated" and restored as "an icon of moral rectitude".

Albertina Sisulu met her husband, Walter, in 1941, and their families agreed on lobola the following year; they married on 15 July 1944 in a civil ceremony in Cofimvaba.

On 10 October 1989, Albertina Sisulu was visiting Mandela at Victor Verster Prison when she learned of her husband's impending release through an SABC broadcast.

Albertina Sisulu's health had deteriorated in prison and when Sisulu was nominated to stand for Parliament in 1994, Mandela suggested that she might decline the nomination in order to care for Walter.

Albertina Sisulu's children were so incensed by the suggestion that Mandela called to apologise to them and rescind his advice.

At the time of her death, Albertina Sisulu had 26 grandchildren and three great-grandchildren.

Albertina Sisulu died unexpectedly at her home in Linden on 2 June 2011, aged 92.

Albertina Sisulu was watching television with two of her grandchildren when she had a coughing fit and lost consciousness; paramedics were not able to revive her.

Obituaries and tributes to Albertina Sisulu celebrated her as the mother of the nation.

In line with this decision, the Johannesburg Metropolitan Council resolved in 2008 to rename 18 municipal roads after Albertina Sisulu, thereby preserving the name change in the non-freeway sections of the R24 that pass through downtown Johannesburg and Roodepoort.