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Albertina Nontsikelelo Sisulu
Mama Albertina Nontsikelelo Sisulu who was born at Camama Village in Tsomo in the Eastern Cape on 21 October 1918. She was a political activist and nurse, and one of the most important female leaders of the anti- Apartheid resistance movement in South Africa. Often referred to as the ‘Mother of the nation”, Mama Sisulu acted on her ideal of human rights throughout her life assisted by her husband and fellow activist, the late Tata Walter Sisulu (1912 – 2003). It was with her husband that she attended the rst conference of the ANC Youth League as the only women present.
Mama Sisulu joined the ANC Women’s League in 1948 and in the 1950’s she assumed a leadership role, both in the ANC and in the Federation of South African Women (FEDSAW). She was one of the organisers of the historic anti-pass Women’s March in 1956 and strongly opposed inferior ‘Bantu’ education. Her home in Orlando West, Soweto was often used as a classroom for alternative education until a law was passed against it.
Both Mama and Tata Sisulu were jailed on several occasions for their political activities and she was constantly harassed by the Security Police. She was the rst woman arrested under the General Laws Amendment Act which gave the police the power to hold suspects in detention for 90 days without charging them. Mama Sisulu was kept in solitary con nement incommunicado for two months while the Security Branch looked for her husband. She was also detained and put in solitary con nement in 1981 and 1985 and was banned and placed under house
arrest on numerous occasions. In 1983 Mama Sisulu was elected co-president of the United Democratic Front (UDF) and was nally granted a passport by the government in 1989. She used this opportunity to lead a UDF delegation to Europe and the United States where she met the British Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, and the American President, George Bush Snr., respectively.
The last restriction on the Sisulu family was lifted in October 1989 and Walter Sisulu was released from Robben Island. In 1994 Mama Sisulu served in the rst democratically elected Parliament. She and her husband have won numerous humanitarian awards.
Mama Sisulu passed away at her Linden home in Johannesburg at the age of 92.
Source: Eastern Cape Education Department, Communications
A woman of fortitude
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ALBERTINA SISULU
2018