ANC 'engine' Sisulu turns 90

2002-05-17 18:28

Nicholas Kotch

Johannesburg - Walter Sisulu, Nelson Mandela's mentor since the 1940s and the "quiet engine" of South Africa's struggle for freedom, seems a contented man on the eve of his 90th birthday.

The snowy-haired patriarch has spent a dizzying week at speeches and parties in his honour and on Saturday, his birthday, 83-year-old Mandela will lead hundreds of South Africans in paying tribute to Sisulu in Johannesburg.

Sisulu, who is struggling with Parkinson's disease, expressed gratitude this week as he looked back at his 90 years.

"I'm feeling satisfied and grateful to the people of South Africa and to the people internationally who made it possible to reach this stage," he said this week.

His son, Max, recalled his father's years in prison at a function at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg. "The most painful part was when he was taken away from us for 27 years," he said.

Born in rural poverty

"My memories are of a regime that hounded our family day and night. I can't remember a day when there wasn't a policeman knocking on the door.

"We are so happy in the family that there is recognition for the role that my father played in our country's liberation," he said.

Walter Sisulu had already lived a full life as a miner, baker, Communist and implacable opponent of white minority rule, when he was sentenced at the age of 52 to life imprisonment in 1964, after a long spell in detention.

He was born in rural poverty in 1912, the son of a black domestic worker and a white magistrate who recognised his child, but played almost no part in his upbringing. Sisulu left school at 15 after the death of his maternal uncle, his father figure.

"I have never met in my life a man with greater lateral intelligence," said George Bizos, one of the lawyers who defended the African National Congress leaders at their 1963-64 trial, in an emotional tribute on Wednesday.

"A diehard, but intelligent"

Found guilty of political sabotage and revolution, after the ANC decided the apartheid regime could be removed only by armed struggle, Sisulu and his comrades faced the death penalty, but refused to plead for mercy.

With Mandela and other black political prisoners, Sisulu spent nearly two decades on Robben Island off Cape Town.

As South Africa tore itself apart, they would not renounce violence and were convinced victory would be theirs.

"He is a diehard, but at least an intelligent one," a prison governor noted in a prison report on Sisulu.

"We were united as prisoners. And we were determined to unite South Africa. That sustained us," said Sisulu during a 1995 visit to Robben Island, now a World Heritage site.

Wise tutelage for Madiba

His wife, Albertina, also a prominent activist, raised the family alone and was regularly arrested. In 1986, there were three generations of Sisulus in prison.

In 1994, Mandela was elected South Africa's first black president. Apartheid was over and Sisulu's role in the long struggle - as master organiser, kingmaker and the ANC's "quiet engine" in the words of one commentator - was enshrined.

"...More and more I had come under the wise tutelage of Walter Sisulu," Mandela wrote in his autobiography Long Walk to Freedom, referring to his early ANC years.

"Sometimes, one can judge an organisation by the people who belong to it, and I knew that I would be proud to belong to any organisation of which Walter was a member."

- Reuters