Tributes pour in for Sisulu

2003-05-06 23:46

Johannesburg - South Africa was on Tuesday preparing a state funeral for anti-apartheid giant Walter Sisulu as tributes continued to pour in for the little-educated farm boy who became a leading strategist in the transition to democracy.

UN Secretary General Kofi Annan said his qualities had made him known and loved around the world.

Former South African president Nelson Mandela visited the Sisulu home on Tuesday to pay his respects to the family of his mentor, who died on Monday at the age of 90 after collapsing in the arms of his wife Albertina after returning from a medical check-up.

"Xhamela (Sisulu's clan name) is no more. May he live forever! His absence has carved a void. A part of me is gone," said Mandela, 84, shortly after being informed of Sisulu's death.

Mandela told reporters at the Sisulu home in a northern Johannesburg suburb: "We have lost a remarkable man. He stood head and shoulders above all of us."

Sisulu was a modest man, Mandela said, always leading from behind the scenes.

"Xhamela has never been president of the ANC. He has never been a member of parliament, he has not been honoured as some of us have been honoured. He had the gift of humility," Mandela said, Sapa reported.

Flags half-mast

President Thabo Mbeki, who also visited Albertina Sisulu on Tuesday, was due to ask the Cabinet on Wednesday to grant Sisulu a state funeral and for the South African flag to be flown at half-mast throughout the country and at missions abroad, his office said.

The cause of Sisulu's death was not immediately known, but his health took a downturn in March because of a respiratory illness and he was hospitalised, said Johannesburg daily, The Star.

He also suffered from Parkinson's disease and had heart trouble.

A distraught Albertina Sisulu said that she had found a father figure in Sisulu, six years her elder, whom she married in 1944.

"Up to this day, he was very sweet," she told SABC radio news.

Mbeki called Sisulu "a massive force for enlightenment and freedom (who) earned his place in the annals of history ... "

Opposition politicians also paid tribute to the late Sisulu.

Marthinus van Schalkwyk, leader of the New National Party, the former ruling party under apartheid which jailed Mandela, Sisulu and others, said South Africa had lost a formidable leader who had striven his whole life to forge democracy and justice.

Bizos

"He will always be known and remembered as one of the great sons of our land. He succeeded in combining intellect with a common touch."

Said Democratic Alliance leader Tony Leon said: "Few visionaries are able to see their dreams fulfilled. Walter Sisulu was fortunate enough to enjoy the new South Africa that he had worked so hard and sacrificed so much to bring about."

George Bizos, one of the human rights lawyers who represented 10 of the top ANC leaders at the Rivonia Treason Trial in 1963, where they were charged with plotting to overthrow the apartheid state, described Sisulu as a man with a sharp intellect, whose court appearance had allowed him to argue the case for oppressed Africans.

"He came out on top. The prosecutor made the mistake of taking him on, by referring to so-called grievances of the otherwise 'happy and obedient' African people," Bizos said.

"He was hit for six (a cricketing term) by Walter Sisulu, by his knowledge of the facts, his beliefs in the justness of the struggle, his intelligence and his quick wit."

Robben Island

Sisulu was born on May 18, 1912 to a peasant family in the small town of Engcobo in the rural Eastern Cape province, where Mandela was born six years later.

Sisulu moved in the 1920s to Johannesburg, working in a dairy, a gold mine, factories and a bakery, before setting up a short-lived estate agency for blacks.

It was during this time he became politically active, organising a wage strike in the bakery, for which he was fired.

He was with Mandela and Govan Mbeki (the late father of Thabo Mbeki) during a raid in July 1963 when the leadership of the ANC was arrested.

Like the other leaders, he was sentenced in 1964 to imprisonment on Robben Island, from where he was released early with a handful of others on special orders from then president FW de Klerk in 1989.

- AFX