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Albertina Sisulu
The nurse and "Mother of the Nation" who held South Africa's liberation struggle together at home while its men filled the prisons.
The rise
A trained nurse from rural Transkei, she was drawn into politics in 1940s Johannesburg and married fellow activist Walter Sisulu. When apartheid's repression and her husband's life imprisonment after the Rivonia Trial decimated the ANC's male leadership, she stepped to the front.
What they did
She helped lead the 1950s women's anti-pass campaigns, in 1963 became the first person detained under the new 90-day detention law, endured house arrest and banning orders for nearly two decades, and in 1983 became joint president of the United Democratic Front, the mass movement that revived internal resistance. In 1994 she had the honour of formally nominating Nelson Mandela as president.
The full picture
Her stature owed much to the Sisulu name and her marriage to Walter, and critics note she was less a strategist than an organiser and moral anchor. She remained loyal to the ANC even as it later drew accusations of corruption, and like much of that generation rarely broke ranks publicly.
Why it matters
She embodies the often-erased role of women in African liberation: while celebrated men were jailed or exiled, it was figures like her who sustained the struggle's daily fabric across half a century.
“"Women are the people who are going to relieve us from all this oppression and depression."”