Statecraft & Independence
Landmark
Albertina Sisulu
1918 – 2011
Mother of the nation, and founding co-president of the UDF
Landmark is level 2 of 4 in the South Africa Hall of Fame: a first that opened a door, or the pre-eminent figure of their generation in this country. See how the levels work.
Why they are here
She kept the movement running through the twenty-six years her husband was on Robben Island, and co-founded the United Democratic Front that made the country ungovernable.
Nontsikelelo Albertina Sisulu trained as a nurse and midwife at Johannesburg General, one of the few professions open to a Black woman in the 1940s, and worked as one for decades — which is also how she moved through the townships without attracting attention she could not explain.
She married Walter Sisulu in 1944 and was the only woman present at the founding of the ANC Youth League that year. In August 1956 she was among the twenty thousand women who marched on the Union Buildings in Pretoria against the extension of pass laws to women, and she helped organise it.
Walter was imprisoned in 1964 and did not come home until 1989. What she did with those twenty-six years is the substance of her claim here. She was banned continuously from 1964 for almost twenty years — forbidden to meet more than one person at a time, to be quoted, to leave her magisterial district — and she held the organisation together anyway, through house arrest, detention without trial, solitary confinement, and the imprisonment and exile of her own children.
In 1983 she was elected co-president of the United Democratic Front, the mass internal movement of churches, unions, students and civics that carried the resistance through the 1980s while the ANC was banned. She was in detention at the time of her election. In 1989 she led the UDF delegation that met Margaret Thatcher and George H. W. Bush, putting the case for sanctions directly to the two governments most resistant to them.
She was elected to the first democratic parliament in 1994 and served until 1999. She and Walter were married for sixty-seven years and died within months of each other.
She married Walter Sisulu in 1944 and was the only woman present at the founding of the ANC Youth League that year. In August 1956 she was among the twenty thousand women who marched on the Union Buildings in Pretoria against the extension of pass laws to women, and she helped organise it.
Walter was imprisoned in 1964 and did not come home until 1989. What she did with those twenty-six years is the substance of her claim here. She was banned continuously from 1964 for almost twenty years — forbidden to meet more than one person at a time, to be quoted, to leave her magisterial district — and she held the organisation together anyway, through house arrest, detention without trial, solitary confinement, and the imprisonment and exile of her own children.
In 1983 she was elected co-president of the United Democratic Front, the mass internal movement of churches, unions, students and civics that carried the resistance through the 1980s while the ANC was banned. She was in detention at the time of her election. In 1989 she led the UDF delegation that met Margaret Thatcher and George H. W. Bush, putting the case for sanctions directly to the two governments most resistant to them.
She was elected to the first democratic parliament in 1994 and served until 1999. She and Walter were married for sixty-seven years and died within months of each other.
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