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NY Times June 5, 2011
Albertina Sisulu, Who Helped Lead Apartheid Fight, Dies at 92
By BARRY BEARAK
JOHANNESBURG — Albertina Sisulu, considered by many to be the
mother of South Africa’s liberation struggle, a woman who was
hounded and jailed by the apartheid government but who lived to
see her children assume leadership roles in a democratic nation,
died here on Thursday. She was 92.
The African National Congress confirmed her death.
Mrs. Sisulu’s passing extinguishes another light of a generation
that fought one of the great moral battles of the 20th century.
Since her death, virtually every one of this nation’s leaders have
come to her home to offer condolences. Only Nelson Mandela has
been conspicuously absent. He is increasingly frail, and members
of the Sisulu family visited him instead.
A humble but forceful woman, Mrs. Sisulu was the widow of Walter
Sisulu, one of Mr. Mandela’s earliest political mentors, who died
in 2003. She kept her dignity through decades of government
harassment. Mr. Sisulu was imprisoned for 26 years, and she
herself was repeatedly jailed, held incommunicado and “banned,” a
restriction limiting where she could go and how many people she
could see.
“But try as they might, they could not break her spirit, they
could not make her bitter, they could not defeat her love,”
Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu said in one of the many tributes
offered after her death.
Nontsikelelo Thethiwe was born into a poor farming family in the
Transkei, a former British protectorate that is now part of
Eastern Cape Province. When she enrolled in a school run by
missionaries, she was given a list of Christian names to chose
from and selected Albertina.
Her father died when she was 11, and poverty might have kept her
from finishing her education had she not won a scholarship to a
Roman Catholic secondary school. After graduation, she accepted
the advice of an admired priest and moved to Johannesburg to study
nursing, a career that offered a small salary as she apprenticed.
In 1941, she was training at the Non-European General Hospital
when she met Mr. Sisulu, a political activist with the African
National Congress. Their courtship would be her political
awakening. They married three years later. Nelson Mandela was best
man at the ceremony.
In his autobiography, Mr. Mandela describes Albertina as a “wise
and wonderful presence.” At the Sisulus’ wedding reception, he
wrote, an A.N.C. stalwart warned the bride, “Albertina, you have
married a married man: Walter married politics before he met you.”
She, in turn, was marrying the liberation movement. The Sisulus’
home in the Orlando area of Soweto became a central meeting place
for the robust discussions that shaped the direction of the A.N.C.
She combined her work as a visiting nurse with the distribution of
political pamphlets.
On Aug. 9, 1956, Mrs. Sisulu was a leader of a historic march by
20,000 women against the nation’s pass laws, which restricted the
movements of blacks. One slogan from the protest was, “You strike
a woman, you strike a rock.” Aug. 9 is now celebrated in South
Africa as Women’s Day.
Walter Sisulu would go on to head the A.N.C., and later, along
with Mr. Mandela and others, create an armed wing of the
organization. The Sisulus’ relationship has been celebrated in
South Africa as a great love story, but during the first 20 years
of their marriage, he was so often in jail or on the run that the
couple barely spent 9 years together.
Once, in 1963, when the police failed to locate her husband, they
seized Mrs. Sisulu instead, arresting her while she was treating
patients. She was placed in solitary confinement under a notorious
law that allowed detention for 90 days without charges.
“There was nothing to read, nothing to do, nothing to occupy my
mind—nothing except to think of what was happening to my children
at home,” she recalled in a 2002 biography written by her
daughter-in-law, Elinor Sisulu.
The couple had five children and raised three more who belonged to
Mrs. Sisulu’s deceased sister. Unknown to Mrs. Sisulu, after she
was jailed, her 17-year-old son Max was arrested and held under
the same law.
In 1964, Mr. Sisulu was sentenced to life imprisonment, serving
most of his time, like Mr. Mandela, on Robben Island. Mrs. Sisulu
was banned for 10 years. Her children either went into exile or
entered boarding school.
As the decades passed, MaSisulu, as she was affectionately called,
was frequently arrested, locked up for infractions as slight as
attending the funeral of a friend. Her children faced similar
harassment.
“I did not mind going to jail myself, and I had to learn to cope
without Walter,” Mrs. Sisulu once said. “But when my children went
to jail, I felt that the Boers were breaking me at the knees.”
Nevertheless, her political activities continued. In 1983, she
became one of the founders of the United Democratic Front, a
powerful antiapartheid coalition that brought together religious,
labor and student groups.
In July 1989, she led a delegation on an overseas mission, arguing
for sanctions against the apartheid government. She met with
President George H. W. Bush and former President Jimmy Carter. She
dined with Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis.
The days of racist oppression were drawing to a close. That
October, Mr. Sisulu was set free; Mr. Mandela would be released
four months later.
In 1994, with multiracial democracy finally having replaced white
domination, Mrs. Sisulu was elected to Parliament. She served for
four years, retiring from politics though remaining active in
social causes.
The Sisulu family, for so long badgered and humiliated, is now a
political dynasty. Her daughter Lindiwe Sisulu is the nation’s
defense minister. Her son Max is speaker of the National Assembly.
Another daughter, Beryl Sisulu, is South Africa’s ambassador to
Norway. She is also survived by her son Zwelakhe Sisulu and
daughter Nkuli Sisulu.
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