Walter Sisulu dies

African National Congress veteran Walter Sisulu, born in 1912, the year the ANC was founded, has died, ANC secretary general Kgalema Motlante said on Monday. He would have turned 91 this month. Sisulu joined the ANC in 1940 and was among the group of radicals who formed the Youth League in 1943/44.

The ANC's leadership had, in the late 1920s, split over whether to co-operate with the Communist Party, and the ensuing victory of the conservatives within the ANC left the party small and disorganised through the 1930s. In the 1940s the ANC revived under younger leaders who pressed for a more militant stance against colour bars in South Africa. The ANC Youth League attracted Sisulu, Oliver Tambo, and Nelson Mandela, who in turn displaced the party's moderate leadership in 1949 at what many view as the party's watershed conference. Under Sisulu, Tambo and Mandela's leadership the ANC began sponsoring non-violent protests, strikes, boycotts, and marches, in the process becoming a target of police harassment and arrest. By the end of World War II the ANC had begun strong agitation against the pass laws, and when the largely white electorate voted in the National Party in 1948, the ANC's membership grew rapidly, rising to 100 000 in 1952.

In 1944, he married Nontsikelelo Albertina, with whom he was to have five children. Mrs Sisulu was a much-loved and internationally respected activist in her own right. Her work earned her the title Mama Africa.

Sisulu was elected ANC secretary general in 1949, a post he held until 1954 when banning orders forced him to resign the position. He served on the joint planning council for the Defiance Campaign, and led one of the first batches of passive resisters when the campaign began in 1952. Campaigners refused to carry the notorious "pass book" all native South Africans had to carry by law and hundreds were arrested. Sisulu was one of the accused in the Treason Trial, which began in 1956.

Source: News 24