October 21, 1918: Albertina Sisulu, banned for eighteen years by apartheid, nominates Mandela as president in 1994

On October 21, 1918, in the Tsomo district of Transkei (now the Eastern Cape, in South Africa), Nontsikelelo Thethiwe was born. The country would come to know her as Albertina Sisulu, the woman South Africans call the 'Mother of the Nation'.

She began her nursing training in January 1940 in the non-white wing of the Johannesburg General Hospital. On July 15, 1944, she married Walter Sisulu, the future secretary-general of the ANC; Nelson Mandela was his best man. That same year, she was the only woman present at the founding meeting of the ANC Youth League, according to South African History Online (SAHO).

Banned longer than anyone else

On August 9, 1956, she helped organize the march of more than 20,000 women on the Union Buildings in Pretoria against the extension of the pass laws to African women, according to the official biography from the South African government (GCIS). Seven years later, with her husband having gone underground, the police arrested her: she was the first woman detained under the so-called 90-day law, which allowed for solitary confinement without charge. Sources differ on the date: April 19, 1963, for SAHO, and June 1963 elsewhere.

Then came the banning, issued in 1964 after her husband's conviction at the Rivonia Trial: she was forbidden from speaking in public, being quoted, leaving her township of Orlando, and was subjected to years of house arrest. The GCIS cites eighteen years, 'longer than anyone else' in South Africa; other counts suggest seventeen years. Walter Sisulu remained on Robben Island until 1989. She raised their children, provided medical care in the townships, and paid for every wave of repression with her own freedom.

From imposed silence to the parliamentary podium

On August 20, 1983, while awaiting trial, she was elected in absentia as co-president of the United Democratic Front (UDF), the major anti-apartheid coalition. In June 1989, the woman the state had forbidden from being quoted led a UDF delegation abroad: she was received by Margaret Thatcher in London, and then on June 30 at the White House by George H. W. Bush.

On May 9, 1994, in the first National Assembly elected by universal suffrage, it was she who stood up to nominate 'Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela' for the presidency, the Nelson Mandela Foundation recalls. As a member of parliament, she left politics in 1999 and died on June 2, 2011, in Johannesburg, at the age of 92.

Her journey tells what liberation narratives often forget: women were not just the patient wives of heroes; they maintained the networks and organizations while the men were in prison.

Key takeaways

Born on October 21, 1918, Albertina Sisulu was the first woman detained under the 90-day law and the person banned for the longest time by apartheid. In 1994, it was she who nominated Nelson Mandela for the presidency.