Albertina Sisulu

Nontsikelelo Albertina Sisulu OMSG ( Thethiwe; 21 October 1918 – 2 June 2011) was a South African anti-apartheid activist, and the wife of fellow activist Walter Sisulu (1912–2003).

She was affectionately known as "Ma Sisulu" throughout her lifetime by the South African public.

Born Nontsikelo Thethiwe in the Tsomo district of the Transkei on 21 October 1918, she was the second of five children of Bonilizwe and Monikazi Thethiwe.

Sisulu's mother survived the Spanish Flu, but was constantly ill and very weak because of this.

It fell upon Nontsikelelo, as the eldest girl, to take on a motherly role for her younger siblings.

She had to stay out of school for long periods of time, which resulted in her being two years older than the rest of her class in her last year of primary school.

She adopted the name Albertina when she started her schooling at a Presbyterian mission school.

In 1936, she left for Mariazell College in Matatiele in the Eastern Cape.

The school's routine was rigid and strict: pupils were woken up at 4am to bath and clean their dormitories, and would then proceed to the chapel for morning prayers.

Although her scholarship covered her board and lodging, she had to pay it back during the school holidays by ploughing the fields and working in the laundry room.

Sisulu only went home during the December holidays.

When she finished school in 1939, she decided to become a nurse.

She was accepted as a trainee nurse at a Johannesburg "Non-European" hospital called Johannesburg General.

She graduated from Mariazell College in 1939, and chose a career in nursing.

After spending Christmas with her family in Xolobe she left for Johannesburg in January 1940.

After being orphaned as a teenager, she was obliged to help provide for her younger brothers and sisters.

Abandoning her ambition to train as a teacher, she left the Transkei to train as a nurse at Johannesburg's General Hospital in 1940, as nurses were paid during training.

Sisulu started work in Johannesburg as a midwife in 1946, often walking to visit patients in townships.

Sisulu did not display an interest in politics at first, only attending political meetings with Walter in a supporting capacity, but she eventually got involved in politics when she joined the African National Congress (ANC) Women's League in 1948, and took part in the launch of the Freedom Charter the same year.

Sisulu was the only woman present at the birth of the ANC Youth League.

She became a member of the executive of the Federation of South African Women in 1954.

On 9 August 1956, she joined Helen Joseph and Sophia Williams-De Bruyn in a march of 20,000 women to the Union Buildings of Pretoria in protest against the apartheid government's requirement that women carry passbooks as part of the pass laws.

"We said, 'nothing doing'. We are not going to carry passes and never will do so."

The day is celebrated in South Africa as National Women's Day.

She spent three weeks in jail before being acquitted on the pass charges, with Nelson Mandela as her lawyer.

Sisulu opposed Bantu education, running schools from home.

She was subsequently in and out of jail for her political activities, but she continued to resist against apartheid, despite being banned for most of the 1960s.

Sisulu was arrested after her husband skipped jail to go underground in 1963, becoming the first woman to be arrested under the General Laws Amendment Act of 1963 enacted in May.

The act gave the police the power to hold suspects in detention for 90 days without charging them.

Sisulu was placed in solitary confinement for almost two months until 6 August.

She was also a co-president of the United Democratic Front (UDF) in the 1980s.

From 1984 until his murder in 1989, she worked for Soweto doctor, Abu Baker Asvat, who allowed her to continue with her political activities while employed by him, and she was present when he was murdered.

Sisulu regarded her relationship as being that of a "mother and a son", and the two never allowed the rivalry between the UDF, and Azapo, of which Asvat was the Health Secretary, and a founding member, to interfere with their friendship or working relationship.

In 1986, she received the honorary citizenship of Reggio nell′Emilia (Italy).

In 1989, she managed to obtain a passport and led a UDF delegation overseas, meeting British prime minister Margaret Thatcher and United States president George HW Bush.

In London, she addressed a major anti-apartheid rally to protest against the visit of National Party leader FW de Klerk.

In 1994, she was elected to the first democratic Parliament, in which she served until retiring four years later.

At the first meeting of this parliament, she had the honour of nominating Nelson Mandela as President of the Republic of South Africa.

In 2004 she was voted 57th in the SABC3's Great South Africans.

She died on 2 June 2011 in her home in Linden, Johannesburg, South Africa, aged 92.