By Barbara Ludman
"WE are grateful as a city that Tata Sisulu has agreed to associate the good name of his family with that of the City of Johannesburg."
Executive Mayor Amos Masondo was speaking at the launch of a biography of African National Congress stalwarts Walter and Albertina Sisulu, and reminding the glittering audience of several hundred guests that Sisulu had been given, and had accepted, the Freedom of the City of Johannesburg.
There were other current city connections to the 90-year-old patriarch. The launch was staged in the Walter Sisulu Hall at the Randburg Sports Complex; publishers New Africa Books thanked the city manager for donating the use of the hall for the event.
Among the huge murals in the entrance hall, reproducing scenes from the anti-apartheid struggle, is what is arguably the best-known photograph smuggled out of Robben Island: a much younger Sisulu and Nelson Mandela, garbed in green prison fatigues, their heads close in conversation.
"Our generation is fast disappearing," Mandela told the audience of politicians - including a number of Cabinet ministers - leading business people, veterans of the anti-apartheid struggle and others; but still, with Sisulu, "the youth of this country have a role model.
"Many of us have been honoured. We have gone so far as to receive the Nobel Peace Prize. We have been members of Parliament, deputy presidents, president, of our organisation as well as the government. But there is one man who … stands head and shoulders above all of us."
On Robben Island, there were inmates from all political parties, but Sisulu was able to bridge the divide. "Walter was considered as a father figure by all camps because of his humility and his simplicity, and the fact that he was always in the background."
On Tuesday night he was in the foreground, for a change, to receive the extensive, exhaustively-researched biography written by his daughter-in-law, author and academic Elinor Sisulu, who described her parents-in-law as "the most delightful subjects any biographer can hope for".
Copies of Walter and Albertina Sisulu: In Our Lifetime, published by David Philip and New Africa Investments Ltd, sold briskly at the launch, and - thanks to Gauteng Premier Mbhazima Shilowa - should soon be in every school library in the province. From the podium, he called on businessmen to buy the book for all the schools in Gauteng "so our children can learn about our history" - and extracted pledges for 10 books, 20 books, 50 books and more.
