Walter Sisulu

Walter Max Ulyate Sisulu was born on the eighteenth of May 1912 at Qutubeni, in the Engcobo district of the Transkei, in what is now South Africa's Eastern Cape. His mother, Alice Mase Sisulu, was a Xhosa domestic worker; his father was a white civil servant who played no part in raising him. Reared in the rural cradle of his people, Sisulu left an Anglican mission school in his mid-teens to seek work, and in 1928 made his way to Johannesburg. There he labored as a dairy worker, kitchen hand, factory worker, and gold miner before schooling himself at night into a livelihood.

In 1940 Sisulu joined the African National Congress, and the political awakening of a nation began to gather around him. He helped found the ANC Youth League, and in 1941 befriended a young Nelson Mandela, becoming his mentor, brother, and lifelong comrade. Elected Secretary-General of the ANC in 1949, he served until 1954, reorganizing the movement, championing the Programme of Action, and helping steer the 1952 Defiance Campaign against apartheid's unjust laws.

As the state closed its fist, Sisulu turned to deeper resistance, aiding the founding of Umkhonto we Sizwe. Arrested at Rivonia in July 1963, he stood as Accused No. 2 beside Mandela and was sentenced to life imprisonment in June 1964. For more than a quarter-century he endured Robben Island and Pollsmoor, an unbroken anchor of dignity and counsel among the prisoners.

Released on the fifteenth of October 1989, he was elected Deputy President of the ANC and helped guide South Africa toward its first democratic dawn. He died at his home in Johannesburg on the fifth of May 2003, aged ninety. We honor Walter Sisulu, the quiet architect of a nation's freedom, whose steadfast counsel shaped the men who set his people free.