The ANC Centenary 2012
Biography 3: Albertina Sisulu
Albertina Sisulu was a leading figure in the antiapartheid movement. Known as ‘the mother of the
nation’, she dedicated her life to achieving human rights
for all South Africans. Despite being jailed, harassed by
the police and separated from her husband for 26 years,
she went on to serve in the first democratically elected
parliament in 1994.
Born on 21 October 1918, Albertina grew up in a village
in the Transkei. As the eldest daughter she often had to
look after her younger brothers and sisters and missed
out on two years of primary school. This did not stop her
from winning a college scholarship and in 1939 she was
accepted as a trainee nurse at Johannesburg General
Hospital. Here she experienced the ingrained racism of
South African society through the poor treatment of
senior black nurses by more junior white nurses.
She married Walter Sisulu on 15 July 1944 and they were to spend the rest of their lives as activists in the struggle
against apartheid. Despite having children and a nursing job, Albertina joined the ANC Women’s League in 1948 and
soon took on a leadership role. She believed passionately in education and held ‘alternative classes’ at her home in
Soweto, because she opposed the inferior education imposed on black South African children.
In 1956, Albertina helped organise a huge women’s march to protest against the introduction of passes for women:
if stopped without a pass, a black woman could be arrested on the spot. In 1963, Albertina was arrested and held
without charge for 90 days in solitary confinement. These were difficult days for Albertina – the security police would
torment her by telling her lies about her family - pretending one of her children was seriously ill or her husband
dying. When her home was raided and Walter was arrested, she had no idea.
Walter was sentenced to life imprisonment on 12 June 1964 along with seven others, including Nelson Mandela, for
planning acts of sabotage. He spent 26 years in prison, most of the time on Robben Island. Over the next few years
Albertina suffered further imprisonments, bannings and house arrest but never gave up her struggle for a ‘free South
Africa’. In 1983 she helped form the United Democratic Front, which led anti-apartheid resistance within South
Africa in the 1980s, becoming one of its three Presidents. She was allowed to leave the country in June 1989 and
met with the US President George W Bush and the UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, describing the severe
conditions black South Africans were living under and urging them to impose economic sanctions against the
apartheid regime.
In October 1989, Walter was released from Robben Island. In 1994, Albertina fulfilled her dream of living in a free
and equal South Africa by serving in the first democratically elected parliament. She died peacefully at her home in
Johannesburg, aged 92, on 2 June 2011.