ANC leader seen by many South Africans as mother of the nation
Liz McGregor
guardian.co.uk, Monday 6 June 2011 18.12 BST
When 20,000 women gathered outside the Union Buildings in Pretoria in
1956 to protest to the South African prime minister JG Strijdom
against an extension to the pass laws, they sang: "Strijdom, you have
tampered with the women, you have struck a rock." They could have been
describing Albertina Sisulu, wife of the ANC leader Walter Sisulu.
Albertina, who has died aged 92, was quiet and unassuming, but her
strength and resilience over a lifetime of persecution and hardship
were extraordinary.
She was born Nontsikelelo Thethiwe in the village of Camama, in rural
Transkei. Her happy childhood ended when she was 11 with the death of
her father, a miner, probably from the lung disease pneumoconiosis.
Her mother was always sickly and Albertina – as she was christened by
the missionaries who educated her – looked after her three siblings.
Twice she had to drop out of school, so she was two years behind the
rest of the class when she graduated from Mariazell, a Catholic
mission school, in 1939. She wanted to become a nun, but that would
have made it difficult to support her family, so she opted for
nursing.
In 1940, Albertina started work at the Johannesburg Non-European
Hospital. She nursed with Nelson Mandela's first wife, Evelyn, and
Walter Sisulu's sister, Barbie – and then she met Walter. He was
instantly smitten and they married in 1944, with Mandela as best man.
That year, Albertina was the only woman present at the formation of
the African National Congress Youth League.
Albertina had been apolitical but soon she became subsumed in Walter's
great passion. After April 1963, when he went underground to head the
military wing of the ANC, Umkhonto we Sizwe (Spear of the Nation), she
became the breadwinner, supporting from her meagre nurse's salary
their three sons, Max, Mlungisi, Zwelakhe, two daughters, Lindiwe and
Nonkululeko, adopted children Gerald and Beryl, several nephews and
nieces and, later, grandchildren. She insisted that their home in
Soweto and its garden be immaculate and that every visitor be fed, no
matter how little food there was.
Albertina simply carried on where Walter had left off after he and the
rest of the ANC leadership were imprisoned at Robben Island in 1964.
The state persecuted Albertina relentlessly. She was repeatedly
arrested, sometimes under the Terrorism Act, which allowed detention
without trial; sometimes on trumped-up charges. Banning orders meant
she could not go to meetings or leave the district. One of the reasons
given for her first banning order, in 1964, was that she had attended
"a multiracial reception at the British consulate".
Max Sisulu's wife, Elinor, wrote in In Our Lifetime, a 2002 biography
of her parents-in-law, that what Albertina found hardest to bear was
the persecution of her children. Max was forced into exile aged 17.
After repeated detentions and torture, Lindiwe fled to Britain via
Swaziland, where she pursued doctoral studies at York University.
Zwelakhe, a journalist, was detained, tortured and banned. Each
detention caused Albertina dreadful anxiety, particularly after her
nephew, Kenneth Sisulu, died in custody.
The brutal suppression of the student uprisings of 1976 recruited
thousands for Umkhonto we Sizwe. Albertina organised for them to join
training camps in neighbouring states. When the United Democratic
Front, effectively the internal wing of the ANC, was launched in 1983,
Ma Sisulu, as she was known, was elected one its three national
presidents. But by that time, she was back in jail. She spent seven
months in solitary confinement before being tried for promoting the
ANC at a friend's funeral. She was sentenced to four years, two of
which were suspended, but was released pending appeal and immediately
resumed her political work. Two years later, she was arrested again
and charged with treason. There were massive protests. International
opinion had swung against apartheid. The state's case collapsed and
she was freed again.
Albertina was regarded by many as the mother of the nation. But so was
that other famous wife, Winnie Mandela. Albertina was intermittently
horrified by Winnie's behaviour but, mindful of the state's desire to
set the two women against each other, and the closeness of their
husbands, refused to be drawn into public criticism of her. The murder
in 1989 of Dr Abu Baker Asvat changed things.
Baker Asvat had set up a mobile clinic in a poor squatter community,
and in the early 1980s Albertina went to work for him as his nurse.
One day, he was asked to examine two youths sent to him by Winnie for
evidence of sexual assault: she claimed to have rescued them from the
clutches of a local cleric. Baker Asvat found no signs of assault,
which did not please Winnie. Soon afterwards, he was shot in his
surgery. Nothing was ever proved, but Albertina had serious misgivings
about the circumstances of Baker Asvat's death. Later, in 1997, when
the Truth and Reconciliation Commission investigated claims that
Winnie Mandela had ordered his killing, Albertina was called to
testify but gave no incriminating evidence.
In 1989, she was finally allowed a passport and went abroad for the
first time. In the US, she was feted by George Bush Sr and in Britain
met Margaret Thatcher. That October, Walter was released. The couple
travelled extensively for the next few years, mostly on business. A
second honeymoon was taken in a Black Sea dacha after an official
visit to the Kremlin. After the first democratic elections in 1994,
Albertina became an MP, her power base in women's organisations such
as the ANC Women's League and the Federation of South African Women.
The plight of women and children was her abiding concern.
Walter died in 2003; at his funeral, a poem written by Albertina,
Walter, What Will I Do Without You?, was read out. After his death,
she lived quietly in the family home in Linden, a Johannesburg suburb,
but her children continue to play a prominent role in South African
public life: Lindiwe is minister of defence and Max is speaker of the
National Assembly.
Albertina is survived by her children, 26 grandchildren and three
great-grandchildren.
• Albertina Sisulu (Nontsikelelo Thethiwe), nurse and ANC activist,
born 21 October 1918; died 3 June 2011
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News and Media Limited 2011
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