South Africans felt a deep sense of loss at the news earlier this week that Walter Max Ulyate Sisulu, a giant of the liberation struggle and one of the founding fathers of South Africa's democracy, had passed away.
Sisulu, who served the ANC as Secretary-General and later as Deputy President, was an African patriot whose heroism, humility and leadership earned him the respect and love of the millions of our people.
Walter Sisulu was born on 18 May 1912 at Engcobo in the Transkei, of peasant origin. His formal schooling ended at the age of fifteen. He became a mineworker in Johannesburg, working a mile underground in arduous and dangerous conditions, sleeping in the grim barracks in one of the Reef compounds. His next job was in East London as a "kitchen boy". He returned to Johannesburg to work in a bakery for a miserable 18 shillings a week.
Having picked up some information about trade unions he led the workers on strike for higher wages. The strike was defeated and he was sacked. He went through a succession of factory jobs and clashed repeatedly with white bosses. He found relief delving back into Xhosa history and writing articles about national heroes for the African press. As he went from job to job he studied for his senior school standard.
Sisulu joined the ANC in 1940, the same year that Dr AB Xuma, also from Engcobo, assumed the position of President General of the ANC. In 1944, together with Anton Lembede, Oliver Tambo, Nelson Mandela and others, he helped found the ANC Youth League and became its first national secretary. In 1949 he was elected the first full-time Secretary-General of the ANC. When Sisulu first took on the complex job of Secretary-General of the ANC he brought natural gifts, a deep political seriousness from a life of struggle as a youth, an unconcern with the usual status symbols of educational and social success - for he had none and learned that other qualities were more important - and a steel nerve for crisis situations.
As the ANC grew after the great African miners strike of 1946, Walter grew too. His political experience taught him that behind the great repressive state in South Africa was a ruling class based on complex forms of class and colour exploitation, each supplementing the other to oppress the African as a worker, peasant and human being.
Walter Sisulu began to study and write, to plan mass campaigns and to formulate strategies. He was a leader of the Defiance of Unjust Laws Campaign in 1952. Together with Nana Sita, President of the Transvaal Indian Congress, he led the first batch of African, Coloured and Indian volunteers in breaking the law of entering Boksburg Location without a permit.
In 1953, Walter Sisulu was the guest of the World Federation of Democratic Youth to its third World Youth Festival in Bucharest, Romania. Sisulu was impressed with what he saw in the socialist countries, the highlight of which was his visit to the Soviet Union. He was invited to speak over Radio Moscow.
On his way back Sisulu stopped over in London, where he immediately set about meeting political leaders, both British and from other parts of Africa. He addressed a rally on South Africa in the Holborn Town Hall. On his return to South Africa he was enthusiastically received by a series of receptions and report-back meetings called by the South African Society for Peace and Friendship with the Soviet Union. Heavily armed police raided these meetings and made arrests.
Sisulu was one of the accused in the Treason Trial in 1956. In 1960, during the State of Emergency, he was detained without trial. He was arrested six times in 1962 and placed under 13-hour house arrest on 26 October and under 24-hour house arrest on 3 April 1963.
Pending an appeal against a six year sentence, he forfeited bail of R6,000 on 19 April 1963, and went underground. On 11 July 1963, Walter Sisulu was arrested and detained under the 90 day law. At the Rivonia Trial, Sisulu was the main defence witness and was subjected to fierce attack from the prosecutor, Percy Yutar. Sisulu told him: "I wish you were an African. Then you would know..." He was charged with sabotage and other offences in the Rivonia Trial and sentenced to life imprisonment on Robben Island.
Walter Sisulu was released from prison on 15 October 1989 together with Raymond Mhlaba, Wilton Mkwayi, Oscar Mpetha, Ahmed Kathrada, Andrew Mlangeni and Elias Motsoaledi. Their release was a prelude to the unbanning of the ANC and release of Nelson Mandela in February 1990.
In July 1991, at the ANC's first national conference in South Africa since 1959, Walter Sisulu was elected ANC Deputy President.
Sisulu has remained active in the ANC following the end of his term as Deputy President in December 1994. For several years he maintained an office in the ANC's Johannesburg headquarters, undertaking a number of responsibilities on behalf of the organisation.
On 18 May 2002, he celebrated his 90th birthday in Johannesburg surrounded by colleagues, comrades, friends and family.