Walter Sisulu, co-founder of the ANCYL and Umkhonto we Sizwe, is born

Political leader, Walter Ulyate Sisulu was born in the Engcobo area in the Transkei on 18 May 1912. Sisulu worked as a miner, baker's assistant, domestic helper and factory hand and was an active trade unionist before joining the African National Congress (ANC) in 1940. He immediately demonstrated a talent for leadership and organisation. Determined that the movement should become more militant, he was instrumental, along with Oliver Tambo and Nelson Mandela, in forming the ANC Youth League (1944). He was elected its treasurer, and thereafter rose rapidly through the ranks of the parent body, serving as secretary-general from 1949 to 1954. Sisulu was a key figure in events leading up to the ANC's acceptance of the ANC Youth League’s  Program of  Action in 1949. He was one of the key figures in the 1952 Defiance Campaign and was banned in terms of the Suppression of Communism Act. He visited communist bloc countries in Eastern Europe, Israel, China and Britain.  At the end of the decade Sisulu had moderated his views somewhat to support the non-racial Congress Alliance. Early in the 1960s, following the Sharpeville massacre and the banning of the ANC and the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC) he helped form Umkhonto we Sizwe (1961), the ANC's military wing. Sisulu was charged with but acquitted of treason in 1961.  He was charged again in the Rivonia Trial in October 1963. On 12 June 1964 he was sentenced to life imprisonment for planning acts of sabotage. The following day Sisulu, Mandela and other convicted Rivonia trialists were sent to Robben Island to serve their prison sentences. In October 1989 the South African government released Sisulu from prison. In July 1991 Sisulu was elected ANC Deputy-President.  Walter Sisulu retired on the eve of South Africa's first non racial elections in 1994. He died at his home in Orlando on 5 May 2003. He is survived by 5 children and his wife Albertina Sisulu.  ES Reddy, one of the leading supporters of the liberation struggle at the United Nations wrote of Sisulu: "As international attention has rightly been focused on Nelson Mandela as the symbol of South African resistance, other eminent leaders of the freedom movement languishing in apartheid prisons are little known around the world. Among them the most deserving of respect is Walter Ulyate Max Sisulu, a mentor of Nelson Mandela in his youth, the Secretary-General of the African National Congress from 1949 to 1954 and the organizational genius of ANC. He was the moving spirit behind all the great campaigns in the 1950's, as well as the transformation of the ANC in 1960-61 for underground work and armed struggle" - ES Reddy 1987