'You Strike a Woman, You Strike a Rock': South Africa Remembers Albertina Sisulu, 'Mother of the Nation'
'You Strike a Woman, You Strike a Rock': South Africa Remembers Albertina Sisulu, 'Mother of the Nation'
On the 108th anniversary of her birth, Sputnik Africa reflects on the legacy of Ma Sisulu, a trained nurse and longtime ANC activist whose leadership and family sacrifice shaped the anti-apartheid struggle.
Highlights from her legacy:
🟠Mobilizing Women: Helped organize the 1956 Women's March, where 20,000 women protested pass laws, birthing the slogan "You strike a woman, you strike a rock."
🟠Keeping Resistance Alive: After her husband Walter's 1964 life sentence, she linked internal and external movements, enduring roughly 18 years of bans and solitary confinement. Mandela said she "kept the embers of resistance alive."
🟠Leading the UDF: In 1983, while detained, she was elected co-president of the United Democratic Front, the coalition that spearheaded 1980s mass resistance.
Her work building multiracial women's organizations and sustaining resistance under repression contributed to the internal pressure that—alongside international isolation—forced apartheid's retreat. She died on June 2, 2011, at 92.
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