Albertina Sisulu
Albertina Sisulu OMSG (née Nontsikelelo Thethiwe; 21 October 1918 – 2 June 2011) was a South African anti-apartheid activist. A member of the African National Congress (ANC), she was the founding co-president of the United Democratic Front. In South Africa, where she was affectionately known as Ma Sisulu, she is often called a mother of the nation.
Albertina Sisulu
Born in rural Transkei, Sisulu moved to Johannesburg in 1940 and was a nurse by profession. She entered politics through her marriage to Walter Sisulu and became increasingly engaged in activism after his imprisonment in the Rivonia Trial. In the 1980s she emerged as a community leader in her hometown of Soweto, assuming a prominent role in the establishment of the UDF and the revival of the Federation of South African Women.
Between 1964 and 1989, she was subject to a near-continuous string of banning orders. In addition to intermittent detention without trial, she was subject to criminal charges on three occasions: she was acquitted of violating pass laws in 1958, convicted of violating the Suppression of Communism Act in 1984, and acquitted of violating the Internal Security Act in the 1985 Pietermaritzburg Treason Trial.
After the end of apartheid, Sisulu represented the ANC in the first democratic Parliament before she retired from politics in 1999. She was also the deputy president of the ANC Women's League from 1991 to 1993 and a member of the ANC National Executive Committee from 1991 to 1994.
Early life and education[edit]
Sisulu was born on 21 October 1918 in the Camama, a village in the Tsomo region of the Transkei.[1] She was the second of five siblings in a Xhosa (Mfengu) family.[2] Her father, Bonilizwe Thetiwe, was a migrant worker who spent long stints working in the gold mines of the Transvaal, and her mother, Monica Thetiwe (née Mnyila), was disabled by the bout of Spanish flu that she had suffered while pregnant with Sisulu.[1][3] Sisulu and her siblings spent most of their childhood with their maternal grandparents in the village of Xolobe, where Sisulu began school at a Presbyterian mission. Though her family called her "Ntsiki" throughout her life, she assumed the name Albertina at school, choosing it from a list of European Christian names provided by her missionary schoolteachers.[1]
In 1929, while Sisulu's mother was pregnant with her fifth and final child, Sisulu's father died of occupational lung disease in Camama.[1] Her mother remained in ill health until her death in 1941, so Sisulu – both the eldest sister and the eldest female cousin – became a primary caregiver to her younger siblings and cousins, with frequent interruptions to her education as a result.[1][4] Nonetheless, in 1936, she received a scholarship for secondary schooling at Mariazell College, a Catholic boarding school in Matatiele.[1] She covered her living expenses by ploughing fields and working in the laundry room during school holidays.[3] Newly converted to Catholicism, she intended to become a nun or school principal, but her headmaster, Father Bernard Huss, convinced her to pursue training as a nurse after she finished school in 1939.[3]
Death and funeral[edit]
Sisulu died unexpectedly at her home in Linden on 2 June 2011, aged 92.[65][75] She was watching television with two of her grandchildren when she had a coughing fit and lost consciousness; paramedics were not able to revive her.[76][77] She was buried on 11 June next to her husband's grave in Croesus Cemetery in Newclare, Johannesburg.[78]
Obituaries and tributes to Sisulu celebrated her as the mother of the nation.[3][76][79][80] In his own statement, President Jacob Zuma said that, "Mama Sisulu has, over the decades, been a pillar of strength not only for the Sisulu family but also the entire liberation movement, as she reared, counselled, nursed and educated most of the leaders and founders of the democratic South Africa".[81] He also announced that Sisulu would receive a state funeral, and that the national flag would be flown at half-mast from 4 June until the day of her burial on 11 June.[82]
Memorial services were held throughout the week,[83] followed on 11 June by the official funeral at Soweto's Orlando Stadium.[84][85] President Zuma delivered a eulogy, after leading the crowd in verses of struggle song Thina Sizwe,[86] and Graça Machel read a message from former President Mandela which heralded Sisulu as his "beloved sister" and as the "mother of all our people".[78]