Albertina sisulu biography history projects
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Albertina Sisulu
South African anti-apartheid activist (1918–2011)
Albertina SisuluOMSG (néeNontsikeleloThethiwe; 21 October 1918 – 2 June 2011) was a South African anti-apartheid activist. A member of the African National Congress (ANC), she was the founding co-president of the United Democratic Front. In South Africa, where she was affectionately known as Ma Sisulu, she is often called a mother of the nation.
Born in rural Transkei, Sisulu moved to Johannesburg in 1940 and was a nurse by profession. She entered politics through her marriage to Walter Sisulu and became increasingly engaged in activism after his imprisonment in the Rivonia Trial. In the 1980s she emerged as a community leader in her hometown of Soweto, assuming a prominent role in the establishment of the UDF and the revival of the Federation of South African Women.
Between 1964 and 1989, she was subject to a near-continuous string of banning orders. In addition to intermittent detention without tr
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Albertina Sisulu was a South African politician and nurse known for her anti-apartheid activism. Sisulu was born Nontsikelo Thethiwe on October 21, 1918 in Tsomo, Eastern Cape province, formerly a part of Transkei, then a British protectorate but later an autonomous region reserved for Xhosa people by the anti-apartheid government, until its dissolution in 1994. Her parents owned a small farm in Xolobe (also in Eastern Cape). Her father died when she was 11 and because her mother never fully recovered from the Spanish flu, Sisulu took on the role of a caretaker as the eldest daughter of five children.
Thethiwe took on the name Albertina while attending a Presbyterian mission school. In 1936, she won a scholarship to attend high school at Mariazell College in Matatiele, Eastern Cape Province. While there she converted to Catholicism and considered becoming a nun. However, Father Bernard Huss at Mariazell advised her that she would not be able to support her family in Xolobe because
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Albertina Nontsikelelo Sisulu
Introduction
Nontsikelelo Albertina Sisulu (née Nontsikelelo Thethiwe) was one of the prominent anti-apartheid South African leaders, widely referred to as the “Mother of the Nation”. Albertina Sisulu was one of five children born to Bonilizwe and Monikazi Thethiwe in the Tsomo district in the Transkei on 21 October 1918. She was a nurse, a political activist and council to her husband former Secretary-General and Deputy President of the African National Congress (ANC), Walter Sisulu.
Early Life
In September 1918 the Spanish Flu, a strain of the influenza virus that had killed 40 million people worldwide, reached South Africa and is estimated to have killed over 30 000 people in the Transkei. Monica Thethiwe (née, Mnyila), caught the virus and was seriously ill whilst pregnant with her first daughter and her second born, Nontsikelelo. “Umbathalala”, as the flu was called in isiXhosa, was lethal to pregnant women and small babies, however, bab