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. Family Sisulu was born in 1912 in Ngcobo in the Union of South Africa, part of what is now the Eastern Cape province (then the Transkei). Not unusual for his generation in South Africa, he was not certain 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.