Statecraft & Independence
Landmark
Walter Sisulu
1912 – 2003
Architect of ANC resistance strategy, and Mandela's mentor
Landmark is level 2 of 4 in the South Africa Hall of Fame: a first that opened a door, or the pre-eminent figure of their generation in this country. See how the levels work.
Why they are here
He shaped the ANC's strategy and the men who carried it, Mandela among them, and served twenty-six years on Robben Island for it.
Walter Max Ulyate Sisulu was born at Qutubeni in the Transkei to a Xhosa mother and a white father he barely knew, left school at fifteen, and worked in the gold mines, in a dairy and in a bakery before setting up as an estate agent in Johannesburg — one of very few trades a Black man could run with a degree of independence.
He was the organiser rather than the orator. With Mandela, Tambo and Lembede he founded the ANC Youth League in 1944, and it was Sisulu who pushed the parent organisation away from petitions and deputations towards mass action — boycotts, strikes and defiance. He became the ANC's first full-time secretary-general in 1949 and reorganised it from a gentlemen's association into a movement with branches, discipline and a programme.
He recruited Mandela, who described him for the rest of his life as the man who made him. He travelled to Eastern Europe and China in 1953 to ask about armed struggle, was among those who founded Umkhonto we Sizwe, and was arrested at Liliesleaf Farm in Rivonia in 1963.
At the trial he took the stand and refused to name anyone, under cross-examination that ran for days. He was sentenced to life and served twenty-six years, most of it on Robben Island, where he ran the political education that inmates called the university. He was released in October 1989, ahead of Mandela, and became deputy president of the ANC through the negotiations. He died in 2003, married to Albertina for fifty-nine years.
He was the organiser rather than the orator. With Mandela, Tambo and Lembede he founded the ANC Youth League in 1944, and it was Sisulu who pushed the parent organisation away from petitions and deputations towards mass action — boycotts, strikes and defiance. He became the ANC's first full-time secretary-general in 1949 and reorganised it from a gentlemen's association into a movement with branches, discipline and a programme.
He recruited Mandela, who described him for the rest of his life as the man who made him. He travelled to Eastern Europe and China in 1953 to ask about armed struggle, was among those who founded Umkhonto we Sizwe, and was arrested at Liliesleaf Farm in Rivonia in 1963.
At the trial he took the stand and refused to name anyone, under cross-examination that ran for days. He was sentenced to life and served twenty-six years, most of it on Robben Island, where he ran the political education that inmates called the university. He was released in October 1989, ahead of Mandela, and became deputy president of the ANC through the negotiations. He died in 2003, married to Albertina for fifty-nine years.
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