ALBERTINA NOTSIKELELO SISULU

Mrs. Albertina Notsikelelo Sisulu has also been active in the freedom struggle, becoming a symbol of courage and determination and is acclaimed by the people as "mother of the nation." She was elected, even while in gaol, as one of the Co-Presidents of the United Democratic Front (UDF), the largest democratic organisation in the country, with more than 600 organisations affiliated to it. MaSisulu is also national President of the multi-racial Federation of South African Women.

Born in Cofimvaba in the district of Tsomo, in the Transkei, on October 21, 1918, in a family of five as  the second eldest. Educated in a lower primary school in her district. She went up to a secondary school that took her up to high school in the same district of Tsomo in a college called Maria Zell, which was a Roman Catholic church college. She managed  to get educated because of the Roman Catholic Church. Much as her dream was to be a teacher, conditions wouldn't allow  her so she  took  up nursing, under which training she was being paid, in the hope of helping her brothers and sister.

She  became a state-registered General Nurse in 1944, April and a Midwife in 1954,   and was employed  as  a midwife  by the City Health of Johannesburg. What it meant to a  midwife then, was to carry a big suitcase full of bottles and for your lotions that were to used, and bowls and receivers. The suit cases were carried on their heads. They had to use a bus or a taxi to reach their patients. She did this from I946 up to 1980. In 1980 she was appointed a senior nurse running a small hospital in Orlando East. She got her pension in 1983  and immediately  joined a certain doctor who was working with her  in the small hospital.

She met Mr. Sisulu in I941 and was present in the first meeting of the formation of the ANC Youth League. They got married in 1944. At their wedding, the chairman of the African National Congress Youth League warned the bride: "You are marrying a man who is already married to the nation." Their life together was marked by frequent arrests and detentions as Walter Sisulu led campaigns to defy apartheid laws. ANC secretary-general, he had been jailed more than once when he went underground in 1963.

She joined the ANC Women`s League in the 1940`s and was elected its Treasurer in 1959. She was an executive member of the multi-racial Federation of South African Women when it was established in 1954, and was elected its Transvaal President in 1963 and national President recently. Albertina was a leader of the campaign to boycott 'Bantu Education,' imposed on African children in 1954; alternative classes were held at her home until they were prohibited by law. She was one of the leaders of the national demonstration of 20 000 women in Pretoria in August 1956, in protest against the extension of pass laws to African women, and also one of the leaders of the women's demonstrations against the pass laws in Johannesburg in 1958, after which she was gaoled, separated from her ten-month-old daughter, Nonkululeko.

In 1963, she and her 17-year-old son, Vuyisile Max, were detained for several months and held in solitary confinement as the Security Police tried to extract information on the whereabouts of Walter. As soon as she was released, she led demonstrations against repression and the trials of the leaders of the freedom movement. Her husband was arrested with other ANC leaders during a raid at Liliesleaf Farm in 1964, and given a life sentence for treason, and Albertina was left with five children, plus her late sister’s two children, to rear on her own.

Soon after her husband was sentenced to life imprisonment, she was subsequently restricted under banning orders for 17 years from 1964 to 1981; for ten years she was confined to her home during nights and weekends and prohibited from receiving visitors. When the banning orders expired at the end of July 1981, she began speaking all over the country demanding the release of political prisoners and an end to repression.

MaSisulu occupied a place of honour at a conference of political, trade union and community organisations in Durban in October 1981, which affirmed the Freedom Charter of 1955 as the framework for the continuing struggle. She was again banned, from January 1982 to July 1983, from attending any public meetings.

She was arrested in July 1983 and charged with furthering the aims of the ANC by singing ANC songs at the funeral of a leader of the Federation of Women. While in jail, she was elected Transvaal President of the newly-formed United Democratic Front  (UDF) and then Co-President of the national UDF. She was sentenced early in 1984 to four years in prison. While on bail pending appeal, she was arrested again in December 1984 and charged with treason. The charges were dropped after she spent several months in prison. The ban on the ANC was lifted after last thirty years in 1990, several months after Walter Sisulu was released from Robben Island. The ANC Women's League to which is Deputy President was launched in Durban on August 9, 1990. It was a historic day for women.

Albertina and Walter had a remarkable family. The children like their parents contributed to the struggle in various ways. Max the eldest son, as mentioned above, was arrested with his mother. He was harassed by the police after release, as a result of which he escaped from the country. Another son, M1ungisi, was detained in 1984 during the campaign against the new racist constitution, along with a nephew and a niece whom she had raised after the death of their parents. A daughter, Lindiwe, was detained for 11 months during the Soweto Uprising of 1976 and is now in exile.  The youngest son, Zwelakhe, editor of New Nation, was restricted and gaoled several times and has been in detention without trial since December 1986.

Yet Albertina seeks no pity. She told the press in one of the brief intervals between banning orders:

" ... Although politics has given me a rough life, there is absolutely nothing 1 regret about what I have done and what has happened tome and my family throughout all these years. Instead, 1 have been strengthened and feel more of a woman than I would otherwise have felt if my life was different "

Albertina has agreed to be nominated to the post of Rector of the University of Edinburgh, not for the honour to herself but to enable the electors to show their concern for freedom in South Africa and their solidarity with those struggling under very difficult conditions. Her candidature was, backed by the United Nations former Assistant General Secretary, and Head of the UN Centre Against Apartheid, Mr. E S Reddy and the former leader of the Liberal Party and Chairman of the Scottish Anti-Apartheid Movement, David Steele.