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Walter Max Ulyate Sisulu (18 May 1912 – 5 May 2003) was a anti-apartheid activist and member of the African National Congress (ANC). Between terms as ANC Secretary-General (1949–1954) and ANC Deputy President (1991–1994), he was Accused No.2 in the Rivonia Trial and was incarcerated on Robben Island where he served more than 25 years' imprisonment for his anti-Apartheid revolutionary activism. He had a close partnership with Oliver Tambo and Nelson Mandela, with whom he played a key role in organising the 1952 Defiance Campaign and the establishment of the ANC Youth League and Umkhonto we Sizwe. He was also on the Central Committee of the South African Communist Party.
In his mid-teens, Sisulu left school – an Anglicanism mission school – to find work. In Johannesburg, he worked a range of jobs, including as a bank teller, gold miner, domestic worker, and baker. He was fired from the bakery for trying to Labor organisers his co-workers.
He founded Sitha Investments in 1939. It was situated at Barclay Arcade between West Street and Commissioner Street in the business district of Johannesburg. Its objective was to help black and Indian people buy houses. During its operations, Sitha was the only black-owned real estate agency in South Africa.
In 1940, Sisulu joined the African National Congress (ANC), which had been founded in the year of his birth. The following year, Nelson Mandela moved to Johannesburg and was introduced to Sisulu, who by then was well connected among the city's activist class. Sisulu later said, ''I had no hesitation, the moment I met him, that this is the man I need" – the man, that is, "for leading the African people". Sisulu encouraged Mandela to join the ANC, occasionally contributed to his law school tuition, and introduced him to his first wife, Evelyn Mase, who was Sisulu's maternal relative.
The Youth League's drive for a more militant posture was given further fuel in 1948, when the National Party (NP) won national elections on a platform of legislating apartheid. In December 1949, at the ANC's 38th National Conference, the Youth League leadership carried out a "remarkable putsch", which successfully installed several younger and more militant members onto the party's National Executive Committee – including Sisulu, who was elected ANC Secretary-General. The League also tabled a broad Programme of Action, which was notable for its explicit emphasis on African nationalism and mass mobilisation techniques. The culmination of this new strategy was the 1952 Defiance Campaign of passive resistance. Sisulu was on the planning council for the campaign and was arrested for his participation. In December, he and other organisers, including ANC President James Moroka, were found guilty of "statutory communism" under the remarkably broad Suppression of Communism Act, but had their sentences – nine months' imprisonment with Penal labour – suspended for two years.
Sisulu, along with several others, formed part of an ANC delegation to the 1953 World Democratic Youth meeting in Bucharest; before returning to South Africa, the group also travelled to Warsaw, to London, to Israel, and to the China, where Sisulu was part of a meeting with the Chinese Communist Party leadership. In 1955, Sisulu, Mandela, and Ahmed Kathrada watched the Congress of the People gathering – which adopted the Freedom Charter – from a nearby rooftop, unable to attend the meeting because of the banning orders against them. By this time, Sisulu was active not only in the ANC but also, covertly, in the South African Communist Party (SACP).
After 1952, he was jailed seven times in the next ten years, including five months in 1960, and was held under house arrest in 1962. At the Treason Trial (1956–1961), he was eventually sentenced to six years, but was released on bail pending his appeal.
He was caught at Rivonia on 11 July, along with Govan Mbeki, Ahmed Kathrada and 14 others. At the conclusion of the Rivonia Trial, Sisulu was sentenced to life imprisonment on 12 June 1964. Part of his testimony during the trial included the commitment:
I wish to make this solemn vow in full appreciation of the consequences it entails. As long as I enjoy the confidence of my people, and as long as there is a spark of life and energy in me, I shall fight with courage and determination for the abolition of discriminatory laws and for the freedom of all South Africans irrespective of colour or creed.
Sisulu died at his home in Linden,Johannesburg on the evening of 5 May 2003, just shy of his 91st birthday, in the presence of his wife. He was given a "State funeral" on 17 May 2003. Among the tributes he received after his death, Mandela – joking that both he and Sisulu "had long passed the age when either of us would protest against the brevity of life" – said:
Our paths first intersected in 1941. During the past 62 years our lives have been intertwined. We shared the joy of living, and the pain. Together we shared ideas, forged common commitments. We walked side by side through the valley of death, nursing each other's bruises, holding each other up when our steps faltered. Together we savoured the taste of freedom. From the moment when we first met he has been my friend, my brother, my keeper, my comrade.After Mandela's death in 2013, Mac Maharaj – who had been on Robben Island with both men and later became a cabinet minister – told the media that he had had Sisulu and Mandela write obituaries for each other before 2003, and had kept both.
I've always said that one can't speak of Mandela without speaking of Sisulu. They complement each other... Mandela was highly respected, highly admired. But I would not be able to say he was as loved as Sisulu was. You know that difference between a father and a leader? That was the big difference between them.
Together, the couple had five children: Max Sisulu (born 1945), an ANC politician; Mlungisi Sisulu, a businessman (born 1948, died 2015); Zwelakhe Sisulu, a journalist (born 1950, died 2012); Lindiwe Sisulu (born 1954), also an ANC politician; and Nonkululeko (born 1958). They also Adoption three children: two – Beryl Sisulu, a diplomat, and Gerald Lockman – are biologically the children of Walter's deceased sister; while the third, Jongumzi, is the son of Sisulu's cousin. Jongi served a five-year sentence on Robben Island for his anti-apartheid activism in the 1980s, and other family members were also periodically detained.
In 2002, Max's wife, Elinor Sisulu, published a biography of her parents-in-law, entitled Walter and Albertina Sisulu: In Our Lifetime.
In 2004, Sisulu was ranked 33rd on SABC 3's list of Great South Africans. The Walter Sisulu National Botanic Garden, Walter Sisulu University and Walter Sisulu Local Municipality are named after him.
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