Walter Sisulu: A Sense of Outrage

Tom Lodge with Roger Southall, Walter Sisulu: A Sense of Outrage (Johannesburg: Jacana, 2026)

THE LIFE of Nelson Mandela has been recorded in numerous books; one of them written by Tom Lodge. Yet it is widely accepted that the success of the ANC before liberation was largely due to the complementary contributions of a triumvirate that included Oliver Tambo ‒ and Walter Sisulu. The literature on the last two is sparse by comparison, but before he died in 2023 Lodge had almost completed a biography of Sisulu.

Sisulu’s daughter Lindiwe described him as the ‘ultimate revolutionary’, one who regarded both non-violent and armed struggle as the path to democracy. Indeed, much of his political life was spent balancing these two strategies. And for five decades he shared a warm friendship and remarkably co-operative relationship with Mandela. Tambo had been ordered overseas just before the ANC’s banning to run the organisation in exile.

When Sisulu joined the ANC in 1940 it was about to enter a long period of internal debate, sometimes strife, about Africanism and the relationship with the Communist Party of South Africa. Sisulu was not only a communist, but of mixed race. He was born in 1912 to Alice Sisulu, his father an Englishman named Victor Dickinson who later became a prosecutor in the Transvaal. Sisulu met his father only occasionally and grew up near Engcobo in the Transkei with the Hlakula family. At the age of fifteen he was working at Rose Deep mine near Germiston; followed by a year as a servant with a liberal family in East London.

In 1933 he was living in Doornfontein, Johannesburg, with his mother and working at Premier Biscuits (where he met Elliot Mngadi, later a leading member of the Liberal Party in northern Natal). A year later they were relocated to Orlando East. As secretary of the Orlando Brotherly Society, Sisulu became a civic figure moving in black intellectual circles in Johannesburg. He had a variety of jobs, but aimed to become his own boss and in 1939 obtained his estate agent’s licence; founding Sitha Investments, which briefly employed Mandela in 1942.

As a member of the ANC undergoing cautious modernisation, he was an initiator of its youth league which emphasised African cultural identity. Yet Sisulu was ahead of his fellow youth leaguers in acknowledging the value of working with whites and Indians and was particularly impressed by the 1946 Congress passive resistance campaign. He also appears to have been an intermediary with James Mpanza’s Sofasonke movement; and there is a possibility that he was involved with an abortive plan to sabotage the Soweto to New Canada railway line during the miners’ strike.

With the end of the ANC presidency of A.B. Xuma, Sisulu became secretary-general under James Moroka. During the 1950s he was the main strategist and chief organiser promoting his preference for mass resistance. At an early stage he was involved with the M-Plan, a blueprint for envisaged underground operation. In 1952 the Defiance Campaign against six unjust laws led to his detention. The initiative ostensibly failed and resulted in new legislation against protest action. But non-racial co-operation was now firmly established and international interest ignited. In 1954 Sisulu met John Collins, founder of Christian Aid and later its Defence and Aid Fund for Southern Africa.

Some ANC initiatives such as resistance to the Sophiatown removals (1954‒1956) were a failure; others such as the Congress of the People that produced the Freedom Charter in 1955 a major triumph. Sisulu was involved in collecting the demands that shaped the charter, but in 1954 he was banned and with Mandela could only observe the Kliptown proceedings from a distance. In 1953 Sisulu had travelled overseas, most notably to the Soviet Union and communist China whose multi-ethnicity and land reform he admired respectively. By 1955, Sisulu was involved in the South African Communist Party underground. Although a lifelong communist he was far from ideologically rigid. Part of the party’s attraction was its non-racialism and he was friendly with a fellow communist and Transkeian, Ivan Schermbrucker. His interest was also instrumental: the party was well-practised organisationally.

The campaigns of the second half of the 1950s ‒ women’s passes, the pound-a-day campaign, and potato and Alexandra bus boycotts ‒ saw less direction from a national ANC leadership immobilised by the treason trial of 156 accused that began in 1956. Sisulu was among the thirty who were finally acquitted on 29 March 1961 after being detained during the 1960 emergency. By this time the ANC had been banned for nearly a year.

Yet, in spite of obstacles Sisulu remained heavily engaged in organisational matters and an effective secretary-general. Officially he was coloured according to apartheid’s population registration system, so did not need a pass. But he insisted on carrying one, identifying as African, and had numerous brushes with authority. There is a sense that as a result he endured more harassment than most ANC leaders and a special branch officer, Sergeant Dirker, kept a close eye on him for ten years. As Lieutenant Dirker, he would triumphantly arrest Sisulu at Lilliesleaf Farm, Rivonia on 11 July 1963. When Sisulu’s son visited him during the Rivonia trial, Dirker arrested him for not having a pass although as a fifteen-year-old Mlungisi did not need one. The malevolence of the security police had no bounds.

From the mid-!950s, Albertina (née Thethiwe) whom Sisulu had married in 1944 was a tower of strength as she would remain until his death. She became a political figure in her own right in particular after the foundation of the Federation of South African Women in 1954 with which her husband had more sympathy than many ANC leaders. She would endure a long history of political persecution including seventeen years of banning orders, house arrest, detention without trial, conviction under the Suppression of Communism Act and acquittal in the Pietermaritzburg treason trial of 1985‒1986 during her husband’s imprisonment. Even while he was still at large, she had been the first woman held under the ninety-day law.

Between its banning on 8 April 1960 and the advent of a full-blown police state with the introduction of ninety-day detention on 2 May 1963, the ANC existed in a twilight, but exhilarating, zone. In the internal debate about armed struggle, Sisulu was not opposed but felt that political mass mobilisation should remain the priority. Sisulu and Moses Kotane visited Albert Luthuli at Groutville but this confirmed the gulf between Luthuli and the Johannesburg-based communists; especially since the award of the Nobel Peace Prize coincided with the launch of uMkhonto we Sizwe (MK). There was also competition from the Pan Africanist Congress, which concerned Mandela summoned home from his foreign travels. Sisulu cautioned against alienating minorities.

Plans for Operation Mayibuye, a mixture of Maoist tactics and Cuban inspiration, were advanced by mid-1962. Many thought the operation far-fetched and too dependent on foreigners; Sisulu being equivocal or dissenting. Nevertheless, he took the practicalities seriously. For much of 1963 he was in hiding and he took part in the 26 June broadcast on improvised equipment that managed to disrupt Springbok Radio. With the July 1963 arrests Sisulu was treated relatively civilly and his wife and son Max were released from detention.

The Rivonia trial began on 9 October 1963 with eleven defendants, four of those originally arrested having managed to escape. The incompetence of the prosecutor Percy Yutar required a restart on 3 December. Sisulu was chosen by Bram Fischer as lead witness as the best-informed defendant. In response to Yutar he used the tactic of partial concession: MK orders were to avoid casualties, but accidents happen; outlining a situation is not necessarily equivalent to endorsing it; and conditions were far from ready for Operation Mayibuye. Maintaining a distinction between the ANC and MK was tricky, but Yutar made some fundamental errors and missed crucial questions. Judge Quartus de Wet made significant interventions and at the end of the trial praised Sisulu as an honest and impressive witness. Fischer had chosen well.

All those convicted received life sentences and the six black prisoners were taken to Robben Island. Sisulu was to spend eighteen years there and another seven on the mainland at Pollsmoor. There is a famous early photograph of him with Mandela taken by Cloete Breytenbach who accompanied foreign journalists. Unusually, both senior ANC men were granted study rights from the outset but it was a harsh regime especially until 1973 sleeping on the floor in the cold.

Education and political activity flourished on the Island: for many it was their university.  Govan Mbeki took a hard line on Operation Mayibuye and bantustan leaders and Sisulu tended to be the peacemaker generally arguing for non-doctrinaire flexibility. For example, he was warm towards black consciousness inspired South African Student Organisation members, particularly Mosiuoa Lekota. After transfer to Pollsmoor in 1982, Sisulu missed the camaraderie of the Island and applied to return. Perhaps it was as well that he was unsuccessful because in 1987‒1988 he was able to advise Mandela prior to 47 meetings with Kobie Coetsee, Niël Barnard and others over seventeen months.

Sisulu was 77 when unconditionally released on 15 October 1989. By this time Oliver Tambo, president of the ANC, had been incapacitated by a stroke and Mandela was still in jail; so in old age Sisulu became de facto internal leader and in January 1990 headed a delegation to Lusaka. The situation was potentially fragile with four competing groups: exiles; inziles; the Robben Island elders; and MK. It was the task of the elders to steer a path towards negotiations and avoid anarchy. Sisulu refused to stand again for office on the grounds of age and was not directly involved in negotiations. But he did work towards re-establishing above-ground structures and quelling spiralling violence stoked by individuals like Harry Gwala and Mangosuthu Buthelezi that spread well beyond Natal.

Sisulu subscribed to the myth of the third force, which was simply the dirty tricks department of the State. He did, however, feel that the United Democratic Front had a future as civic grassroots body, but his wife took the majority ANC view that it would prove a troublesome rival so it was arbitrarily shut down. Sisulu retired formally in 1994 aged 82, but travelled overseas on behalf of the ANC and continued to mediate internally. He died on 5 May 2003 in his 91st year.

There is general agreement about Sisulu the man: stocky in physique; astute, tough, well-spoken and persuasive. The disguised, less-controlled part of his character emerged when his family was threatened. And it is well known that Mandela depended heavily on him for advice and would suggest, ‘Let’s ask Walter’ when stuck. Lodge makes the interesting point that incarceration meant that more is known about Sisulu on the Island than earlier in his life. But this was Sisulu the prisoner; not the man. What is beyond doubt is that this was a movement led by individuals who were naturally human and fallible; but politically highly principled to an extent unimaginable today.

Recently, two statues were unveiled in Durban commemorating Mandela and Tambo. There is now a call for a third: Buthelezi, a bantustan leader whose political movement took money from and was armed by the apartheid state and allied himself with organisations trying to wreck democratic elections in 1994. Reservations about statuary notwithstanding, the exemplary Sisulu should rather join the other members of the ANC triumvirate. A university, municipality and a botanic garden named after him seem less than adequate.