walter sisulu timeline

In 1933 Sisulu returned to Johannesburg and stayed with his mother. The ANC took the first steps to oppose the government by forming a committee to coordinate joint campaigns with the Indian Congress and the largely coloured Cape Franchise Action Committee. He secretly continued his ANC work, and was part of the organising committee that met in secret to organise the Freedom Charter campaign and The Congress of the People in 1956. They moved to a new house in Linden in Johannesburg only four years before Walter's death. Sisulu said later that his experience in the mines and his contact with Kadalie were formative political influences. It was at this conference that Leslie Gama proposed that the ANC should establish a Youth League. Soweto was awash with black, green and gold and a huge ANC flag was draped across the walls of the Sisulu house. Though still banned, the ANC had come out into the open.Less than three months later, on 2 February 1990, the ANC was unbanned and Nelson Mandela was released 9 days later.Sisulu subsequently met with the external wing of the ANC in Lusaka and was asked to lead the ANC inside South Africa. Many of the young ANC members who came to the island had no idea that the organisation had even been in existence in the 1920s and 1930s, through to the present day. One of the conditions that Mandela insisted on was the early release of his co-accused and on 15 October 1989, after 26 years in prison, Rivonia trialist’s Walter Sisulu, Ahmed Kathrada, Andrew Mlangeni, Elias Motsoaledi, Raymond Mhlaba and Wilton Mkwayi, were released along with Oscar Mpetha, the veteran ANC and SACP Cape Leader, and Japhta Masemola, a Pan Africanist Congress (PAC) leader. He led a group of passive resisters and was arrested and imprisoned for a brief period before being served with the first of his many banning orders under the Suppression of Communism Act.

Here he also lectured on the history of the ANC. However, the person who had promised to provide him with the bomb did not arrive and this early use of sabotage as a tactic of resistance failed.Sisulu rose very rapidly in the ranks of the ANC and became a member of the Transvaal executive in addition to being secretary of the Youth League. Nelson Mandela acknowledged Walter's contribution to Syllabus A:‘It was Walter's course that was at the heart of all our education. He was elected in 1991 as Deputy President of the ANC at the ANC’s first conference held inside the country since its banning more than three decades earlier. He continued to be passionately committed to the wellbeing of his community, especially children and young people and he and Albertina devoted much of their time to the Albertina Sisulu Foundation which built a multi-purpose community centre in Orlando West, Soweto. He remained in the position until after H. Lever, "The Johannesburg Station Explosion and Ethnic Attitudes", This involved re-establishing ANC structures within the country and preparing for a national conference to be held inside South Africa on 16 December 1990.

On 11 July the police raided the farm and he was arrested with Govan Mbeki, Raymond Mhlaba, Ahmed Kathrada and others.Sisulu and the rest of the “Rivonia group” were held in solitary confinement for 88 days. Sisulu was born out of wedlock. Educated in a local missionary school, he left in 1926 to find work. At the same conference he was elected ANC Secretary-General, narrowly defeating Dan Tloome, the candidate of the ANC's left wing. He was also detained without trial for two years.The political shift in South Africa and the southern African region that culminated in the release of political prisoners, the return of political exiles and a negotiated political settlement in South Africa marked the end of years of separation for the Sisulu family.In April 1982 Walter Sisulu was admitted to Groote Schuur hospital in Cape Town for a ‘routine medical examination’. He served as political commissar of MK with his friend Mandela as its Commander in Chief. With millions of their comrades, Walter and Albertina Sisulu celebrated the convincing electoral victory of the organisation to which they had devoted most of their lives. His father was a Mr. Dickenson, a white assistant magistrate. All 20 accused were sentenced to nine months' imprisonment with hard labour, suspended for two years.Sisulu was re-elected as ANC Secretary-General in the same month, and in 1953 spent five months touring China, the Soviet Union, Israel, Romania and the United Kingdom. Dr Xuma, then-president of the ANC, and Anton Lembede, president of the newly formed ANC Youth League, were the main speakers. The reason for the move was so that the Botha government could ensure greater secrecy in their effort to convince Mandela to accept their conditions for a negotiated settlement with the ANC. Much of their courting revolved around attending ANC meetings and Albertina soon became a freedom struggle leader in her own right.In 1944 Sisulu attended the ANC annual national conference in Bloemfontein as a delegate of the ANC Orlando branch. 9 March, Walter Sisulu was released on R6 000.00 bail. A key figure in the African National Congress (ANC) of the 1940s, it was he who brought future South African president Nelson Mandela into the organization. 29 March, Sisulu and other accused were found not guilty on a charge of High Treason, in the special court at Pretoria, and released. Albertina became the sole breadwinner of the family. In June 1961 he was one of four people, with Joe Slovo, Nelson Mandela and Govin Mbeki who secretly met and discussed the formation of Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK - Spear of the Nation), the ANC’s armed wing. A fifth member was co-opted on a rotational basis.By the time the post-1976 generation arrived on Robben Island, Walter's informal lectures on the ANC formed the major component of a fully-fledged course of study known as Syllabus A.

The tour to the socialist countries convinced Sisulu to join the outlawed and newly reconstituted the South African Communist Party on his return.