Walter Max Ulyate Sisulu
May 18 1912 - May 5,  2003

His adopted daughter, Beryl Simelane,  told SABC Radio News that he stopped breathing at 9pm on May 5 after a medical check up earlier in the day

Walter Sisulu dedicated more than half of his life to equal rights and opportunities for all South Africans. However, he never sought any credit for his involvement or achievements. Instead, he paid a high price for his beliefs and vision. The apartheid authorities jailed him for more than 25 years in a bid to break his spirit and his grip on ordinary South Africans.

Walter Max Ulyate Sisulu was born out wedlock at Qutubeni in the Eastern Cape shortly after the birth of the ANC in 1912. He was the product of a black domestic worker, Alice Sisulu, and a white assistant magistrate, Victor Dickenson.

Walter Sisulu's highly respected uncle, Dyantyi Hlakula, shaped his character. Not only did the old man teach him about Xhosa culture and tradition, but he also punished him when he dared to ask who made God?

He was a champion stick-fighter and his first brush with the law came at the tender age of 10 when he was arrested for collecting sticks in a government forest. After Standard Four, he dropped out of school to avoid being punished for stick fighting. Shortly after that, his uncle died and he decided to venture out of the village.

From job to job
The first time Walter Sisulu ever saw a train was when the teenager caught the Mbombela for rural mine recruits to the Rose Deep Mine near Germiston. He was only allowed to work in the bowels of the earth after his traditional initiation. Circumstances forced him from job to job in the 1930s. He was a domestic worker, newspaper advertising agent, distributor and columnist. He was also a paint mixer, census enumerator, marketing agent and eventually a real estate broker. By this time, many black people were seeking his advice and assistance. As he came into contact with powerful African politicians, trade unionists and journalists, he also gained first-hand experience of police arrests.

He emerged as a public figure after his family was forcibly removed from Doornfontein to the new Orlando township in 1934. His activities with the local civic association propelled him towards politics, and by the age of 28, he had found his political home.

One year later, Walter Sisulu met three of the most important people in his life. Albertina Thethiwe who became his wife, as well as Oliver Tambo and Nelson Mandela who became his closest friends.

Walter Sisulu was a key driving force behind the creation of the Youth League in 1944. It revolutionised the ANC into a non-racial and mass-based liberation movement. By the age of 37, Walter Sisulu was elected as the ANC's first full-time secretary-general. The ANC offered to pay him five pounds a month, but didn't always.

He was also the organising genius behind the ANC's major political protests in the 1950s. Especially the 1952 Defiance Campaign against discriminatory laws.

Foundation for international solidarity
Walter Sisulu became the first person to put apartheid on the United Nations agenda and to lay the foundation for international solidarity. In 1953, he travelled overseas for the first time without a passport. He'd been invited to the Youth and Student Festival in Romania. However, his five-month trip also took him to the United Kingdom, Czechoslovakia, Poland and Israel, where he saw Cry the Beloved Country and the site of the Last Supper.

In China, Walter Sisulu enjoyed the people, but not their food. And in the Soviet Union, the Metro underground, Moscow's state library and 'Swan Lake' at the Bolshoi left their mark. However, more importantly, his trip through the Iron Curtain influenced him to become a communist.

Stringent banning orders eventually forced him to give up his position as ANC secretary-general in 1954. However, this didn't stop him from organising the Congress of the People at Kliptown and the Freedom Charter. In 1956, Walter Sisulu was among 156 senior leaders arrested for high treason. At the preparatory examination in Johannesburg, a huge wire cage had been constructed to confine them like wild beasts. It was dismantled after their lawyers protested, but Walter Sisulu was only acquitted after more than four years.

Banned and arrested
The apartheid government banned and forced the ANC underground in 1960 after the Sharpeville Massacre. One year later, Walter Sisulu was a moving spirit behind the ANC's decision to launch Umkhonto we Sizwe and the armed struggle. He became MK's first political commissar. Round about this time, he was arrested for attending a gathering. He was actually mourning his mother's death. In 1962, Walter Sisulu was probably the most arrested political leader. After being convicted of incitement, but out on R6 000 bail, Walter Sisulu disappeared in 1963.

On the 11th of July 1963, the police swooped on the ANC's safe house at Lilliesleaf farm in Rivonia. The ANC's key leaders were just about to discuss Operation Mayibuye and guerrilla warfare. No one escaped. This was the last time Walter Sisulu was ever arrested.

This dangerous man was the key defence witness in the Rivonia Treason Trial at the Palace of Justice in Pretoria. Walter Sisulu's comrades and lawyers described his testimony, memory and composure under cross-examination as 'absolutely brilliant'. Nevertheless, he was convinced that Transvaal Judge President Quartus de Wet would send them to the gallows on June 12, 1964.

Fifty-two-year-old Walter Sisulu described his life sentence as a relief. In the early hours of the next morning, the seven Rivonia Trialists were chained and flown to Robben Island. The grim and wretched prison was designed to punish, demoralise and silence them. Whether they were breaking stones in the courtyard or the lime quarry.

Centre of learning
The quarry became their centre of learning where Walter Sisulu educated fellow prisoners in politics and ANC history. After many years, he eventually got his O Levels. His favourite pastime was reading old newspapers over and over again. His hobbies were draughts and scrabble.

He only saw his wife, Albertina, for the first time in jail towards the end of 1964. However, they weren't allowed to hug, kiss or touch each other. A fence of twisted wire and a sea of noise kept them apart.

Suddenly, on March 31, 1982, Walter Sisulu and three close comrades were transferred to Pollsmoor Prison in Cape Town. Only then could Walter and Albertina Sisulu experience their first contact visit in almost 18 years.

Release
On the 10th of October 1989, newly inaugurated President FW de Klerk announced the unconditional release of eight political prisoners. Seventy-seven-year old Walter Sisulu was one of them. However, he had little time to savour his freedom. At the end of that month, he addressed a massive ANC rally in Soweto - the first in decades.

In February 1990, President De Klerk stunned the world by unbanning the ANC and releasing Nelson Mandela. It was Walter Sisulu's privilege to introduce the political leader he had groomed.

Walter Sisulu was also part of the ANC team that met the National Party government on talks-about-talks at Groote Schuur in Cape Town. He was 79-years-old when the ANC's first national conference in four decades elected him as Deputy-President. And then came the day, for which he had lived and fought - South Africa's first democratic election in April 1994.

1994 was a memorable year for Tata Sisulu, as he was affectionately known. He witnessed Nelson Mandela become South Africa's first black president. He and his wife celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary. And he retired from active politics at the ripe age of 82, but not to sit next to the kraal, as he put it. South Africa's freedom and democracy had preoccupied him for too long.

"Well, I would like to be remembered as a man dedicated to the struggle of the people. I think that is what I was, that is what I did. I would like to have reached a position whereby I inspired the youth for greater ideals," he said in a recent interview.

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