Struggle veteran Abertina Sisulu, who died in Johannesburg yesterday at the age of 92, had little interest in politics when she met Walter Sisulu, future general secretary of the ANC.
But she plunged wholeheartedly into the liberation struggle and emerged from years of detention, bannings and arrests as a major political figure in her own right.
"All these years I never had, you know, a comfortable life," she commented years later.
Sisulu was born Nontsikelelo Albertina Tetiwe in the Tsomo district of the Transkei on October 2, 1918, the second of five children of Bonilizwe and Monikazi Tetiwe.
Orphaned as a teenager, she was forced to help provide for her younger siblings. Abandoning her ambition to become a teacher, she left the Transkei to train as a nurse at Johannesburg's Non-European Hospital because nurses were paid while training.
She nevertheless continued for the rest of her life to be keenly interested in education, which she saw as central to the struggle.
"Even in the struggle, if people don't know what they are fighting for it is useless," she said in later years.
"We must educate our women because often they suffer the most - and their children with them ... if we all knew what was really important, we would just need to shout once."
Sisulu started work in Johannesburg as a midwife in 1946, often walking to visit patients in the townships.
In 1944 she married Sisulu, with whom she was to have five children: Max Vuyisile, Mlungisi, Zwelakhe, Lindiwe and Nonkululeko.
She and Sisulu were married for 59 years, until he died in her arms in May 2003 at the age of 90.
"I was told that I was marrying a politician and there was no courtship or anything like that," she recalled wryly.
At his funeral, their granddaughter read a tribute to him on her behalf: "Walter, what do I do without you? It was for you who I woke up in the morning; it was for you who I lived ... You were taken away by the evils of the past the first time, but I knew you would come back to me. Now the cold hand of death has taken you and left a void in my heart."
Political involvement was part of her life, particularly in women's organisations.
She joined the ANC Women's League and, when it was relaunched in 1990, she became its deputy president. She helped form the Federation of SA Women in 1954 and the following year helped launch the Freedom Charter.
Sisulu opposed Bantu education and ran schools from home.
She marched to the Union Buildings to protest against pass laws in 1955: "We said, 'Nothing doing - we are not going to carry passes'."
She spent three weeks in jail before being acquitted on pass law charges. Nelson Mandela was her lawyer.
Her husband was the ANC general secretary by then so she was the breadwinner "because my husband was just for ANC then".
By 1964 her husband was in jail for life and she was banned for five years, and then under house-arrest for 10 years.
"That was the worst."
She was alone with her five children plus her late sister-in-law's three.
She was in and out of jail. In one instance, she was imprisoned with her son, then 17 years old, who went into exile on his release.
Her children grew up in boarding schools and, by the mid-70s, two of them were in exile.
"None of the children in this house hasn't tasted jail."
She described the constant jailings and interrogations by the police as "the food in this house".
Once, three generations were in jail simultaneously - her husband, her son and her grandson.
She worked as a nurse until 1983 when she "retired" at the age of 65, only to start working for Soweto doctor Abu-Baker Asvat, who was murdered a few years later.
In 1983 she was elected co-president of the United Democratic Front.
In the same year she was charged with furthering the aims of the ANC. Her conviction was overturned on appeal but she was restricted to her home under the state-of-emergency provisions.
In 1989 she obtained a passport and led a UDF delegation overseas, meeting British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and American President George Bush Snr. In London, she addressed a major anti-apartheid rally to protest against the visit to the UK of National Party leader FW de Klerk.
In October 1989 her restrictions were lifted and the following day her husband was released.
In 1994, she was elected to the first democratic parliament, in which she served until retiring four years later. On her retirement she received an award from President Mandela.
In 2000, the family disclosed that their adopted son, Gerald Lockman, had died of Aids.
In 2003, now widowed, Sisulu celebrated her 85th birthday by unveiling the plaque for a new community centre in Orlando West for children with special needs. It was mainly through her tenacity that this centre became a reality - she worked on bringing into being for 20 years.
Weeks later, she and Mandela opened the Walter Sisulu Paediatric Cardiac Centre for Africa in Johannesburg.
Her contribution to the political landscape was so great that, in April 2004, Thabo Mbeki, at his inauguration as president, referred to her, and to Adelaide Tambo and his own mother, Epainette Mbeki, as "my mothers".
Still active in August 2006, a frail Sisulu attended the 50th anniversary re-enactment of the 1956 Women's March on Pretoria.
"There are many difficulties still in our path," she said in a message read to the participants on her behalf.
Her life is detailed in a biography by her daughter-in-law, Elinor Sisulu, Walter and Albertina Sisulu: In our Lifetime.
The Times
