Walter Sisulu

Walter Max Ulyate Sisulu (18 May 1912 – 5 May 2003) was a South African anti-apartheid activist and member of the African National Congress (ANC). Between terms as ANC Secretary-General (1949–1954) and ANC Deputy President (1991–1994), he was Accused No.2 in the Rivonia Trial and was incarcerated on Robben Island where he served more than 25 years' imprisonment for his anti-Apartheid revolutionary activism. He had a close partnership with Oliver Tambo and Nelson Mandela, with whom he played a key role in organising the 1952 Defiance Campaign and the establishment of the ANC Youth League and Umkhonto we Sizwe. He was also on the Central Committee of the South African Communist Party.

Walter Sisulu was born in 1912 in the town of Ngcobo in the Union of South Africa, part of what is now the Eastern Cape province (then the Transkei). As was not unusual for his generation in South Africa, he was uncertain of his birthday, but celebrated it on 18 May. His mother, Alice Mase Sisulu, was a Xhosa domestic worker and his father, Albert Victor Dickinson, was a white civil servant and magistrate. Dickinson did not play a part in his son's upbringing: Sisulu reportedly met him only once, in the 1940s, before he died in the 1970s. Sisulu and his sister, Rosabella, were raised by his mother's family, who were descended from the Thembu clan. He was close with his uncle, Dyantyi Hlakula, who was passionate about Xhosa culture and who oversaw his initiation. Although he was technically of mixed race, Sisulu identified strongly as black and as Xhosa.

In his mid-teens, Sisulu left school – an Anglican mission school – to find work. In Johannesburg, he worked a range of jobs, including as a bank teller, gold miner, domestic worker, and baker. He was fired from the bakery for trying to organise his co-workers.

He founded Sitha Investments in 1939. It was situated at Barclay Arcade between West Street and Commissioner Street in the business district of Johannesburg. Its objective was to help black and Indian people buy houses. During its operations, Sitha was the only black-owned real estate agency in South Africa.

Sisulu was one of the first ANC leaders to push for a non-racial alliance, leading to cooperation with white and Indian activists like Joe Slovo and Ahmed Kathrada. His work laid the groundwork for the “Rainbow Nation” ideal.

In 1940, Sisulu joined the African National Congress (ANC), which had been founded in the year of his birth. The following year, Nelson Mandela moved to Johannesburg and was introduced to Sisulu, who by then was well connected among the city's activist class. Sisulu later said, ''I had no hesitation, the moment I met him, that this is the man I need" – the man, that is, "for leading the African people". Sisulu encouraged Mandela to join the ANC, occasionally contributed to his law school tuition, and introduced him to his first wife, Evelyn Mase, who was Sisulu's maternal relative.

In 1943, together with Mandela and Oliver Tambo, he joined the ANC Youth League, founded by Anton Lembede, of which Sisulu was initially the treasurer. He later distanced himself from Lembede, who died in 1947, had ridiculed his parentage.

The Youth League's drive for a more militant posture was given further fuel in 1948, when the National Party (NP) won national elections on a platform of legislating apartheid. In December 1949, at the ANC's 38th National Conference, the Youth League leadership carried out a "remarkable putsch", which successfully installed several younger and more militant members onto the party's National Executive Committee – including Sisulu, who was elected ANC Secretary-General. The League also tabled a broad Programme of Action, which was notable for its explicit emphasis on African nationalism and mass mobilisation techniques. The culmination of this new strategy was the 1952 Defiance Campaign of passive resistance. Sisulu was on the planning council for the campaign and was arrested for his participation. In December, he and other organisers, including ANC President James Moroka, were found guilty of "statutory communism" under the remarkably broad Suppression of Communism Act, but had their sentences – nine months' imprisonment with hard labour – suspended for two years.