Albertina Sisulu

Nontsikelelo Albertina Thethiwe was born on 21 October 1918 in the village of Camama, in the Transkei — a region of the Eastern Cape — into a Xhosa family that knew the hardships of rural poverty. Orphaned young, she helped raise her younger siblings, and that early burden of care shaped a lifetime of service. Seeking a way to support her family, she trained as a nurse in Johannesburg, later qualifying as a midwife. It was a vocation of dignity, and it placed her among the people whose freedom she would one day defend.

In 1944 she married Walter Sisulu, a rising figure in the African National Congress and a close comrade of Nelson Mandela. Their wedding drew the young leaders of the liberation movement, and Albertina stepped into the struggle not as an ornament to her husband but as a force in her own right. When Walter was imprisoned for life after the Rivonia Trial, she became both the anchor of her family and a steadfast public leader, enduring bannings, house arrest, and detention across the long decades of apartheid.

In 1983 she was elected a founding co-president of the United Democratic Front, the broad coalition that channelled mass resistance in the 1980s. Revered as "Ma Sisulu," a mother of the nation, she carried the movement's moral authority at home and abroad, leading a delegation overseas in 1989. After apartheid fell she served in the first democratic Parliament, retiring in 1999, and was honoured with doctorates and the nation's orders of merit.

She died on 2 June 2011, having lived to see the freedom she helped to win. We honor Albertina Sisulu — nurse, mother, and unbending servant of her people — whose quiet strength held a nation through its darkest night.