Albertina Sisulu

It was August 9, 1956, in South Africa.

In Phefeni, Soweto, women were boarding trains. They were heading for Pretoria. The woman who had arranged their journey was Albertina Sisulu.

In Pretoria, there were about 20,000 of them. They marched toward the Union Buildings, the seat of government. They were refusing the passes that apartheid wanted to force on Black women.

Albertina was born on October 21, 1918, in Camama, in the Tsomo region of the Transkei. It was the year of the Spanish flu. Her family was Xhosa.

Her father worked far away, in the mines. He died in 1929. Her mother was ill for a long time.

So the little girl took care of others. Her brothers and sisters. Her cousins.

At the mission school in Xolobe, she was chosen as head girl. In 1936, she won a scholarship to Mariazell College, in Matatiele.

In January 1940, she left for Johannesburg. There she became a trainee nurse.

At the general hospital, Black nurses were not allowed leave. In 1941, her mother died. She was not allowed to go to the funeral.

That year, at the nurses' residence, she met a young man, Walter Sisulu.

In 1944, she qualified. She was the only woman at the first conference of the ANC Youth League. On July 15, she married Walter. The best man was Nelson Mandela.

They lived at No. 7372 Orlando, in Soweto.

In 1954, she became a midwife. For the city of Johannesburg, she went from house to house in the townships, visiting patients.

That same year, she was elected to the first executive committee of the newly founded Federation of South African Women. Two years later came the march on Pretoria.

The price was heavy. In 1958, after another protest, she spent three weeks in detention. She was acquitted. Her lawyer was Mandela.

On June 19, 1963, she became the first woman detained under the 90-day law. She was held in solitary confinement. She was released in July.

Then came the bans. From 1964, she was banned almost without interruption for seventeen years. For part of that time, she was under house arrest.

Walter, for his part, was in prison.

She kept on fighting.

In 1983, the United Democratic Front, the UDF, was born. She was elected co-president while she was in detention.

In 1984, she worked with Dr. Abu Asvat, in a mobile clinic in Soweto.

In 1985, she was charged with treason, along with other UDF leaders. In December, the charges were withdrawn.

In 1989, Walter was finally released.

In 1994, Albertina Sisulu entered the National Assembly. It was she who formally nominated for president Nelson Mandela, the best man at her wedding.

She sat there until 1999.

On June 2, 2011, she died at home, in Linden, Johannesburg. She was ninety-two. The country gave her a state funeral.

People called her Ma Sisulu. Many called her the mother of the nation.

All her life, she had cared for others: her siblings, the mothers of the townships, a wounded country. In South Africa, that humanity which is only lived with others is called ubuntu. Albertina Sisulu made it her profession, and her struggle.

Thousands of women marched on Pretoria in 1956.

Some of them got there on the trains she had filled.