Antoinette Musi (now Antoinette Sithole) is Hector Pieterson's sister. She is one of the three people in Sam Nzima's famous picture of the uprising, and she is the only one whose voice has remained with us. The memories of the Soweto uprising have become part of the fabric of her life, assigned simultaneously to the deeply personal life story and to the intensely public discourse. Her multiple narratives, testimonies, and statements are another example of how one person's story traveled through time and historical change (Helena Pohlandt- McCormick)

Antoinette's father changed their Tswana family name Pitso to Pieterson to seem more "coloured", and therefore enable him to benefit from apartheid law by earning better salary than blacks.  Antoinette was not a politician. She was born in a church-going family. She joint the riots because she felt strongly about having to study in Afrikaans.

Her brother, she says, was never meant to be there. "He was in the wrong place at the wrong time." Sithole is the figure to the left in the background photograph (opposite), taken by Sam Nzima, showing her dead brother in the arms of student Mbuyisa Makhubo. The way the photograph became the most striking symbol of the uprising and the brutal state response to it took Sithole by surprise, and thrust her into the spotlight. It was, she says, “like a bombshell that came out of the blue”. That moment changed her life. “I can't run away from that,” she says. “For me it’s a big change.” Now Sithole works as a guide at the Hector Pieterson museum in Soweto. The eldest of six children, she lived with her grandmother. Pieterson, the only son, alternated between living with his mother and his grandmother. Their grandmother, says Sithole, was very strict.

Their father was a carpet-fitter in Johannesburg. Their mother worked at a butchery. Years after Pieterson's death they divorced. Her mother has since remarried, her father died earlier this year, and Sithole says proudly that her younger sister is in the police force. Sithole is now married to her second husband, Meshack, and is in the process of learning his home language, Zulu. They have two children, aged 15 and 11. Sithole’s eldest child (22) from her deceased first husband is named after his posthumously famous uncle. Meshack works as a warehouse manager and together they lead a peaceful life. Sithole says she is not a celebrity; her life is very normal.

At home she "sometimes reads, watches telly and sleeps late" which is the way she prefers it. After the 1976 uprising Sithole stopped attending school, returning only in 1979. In between, she says, “I just kept myself busy doing dramas.” These dramas, about domestic life in Soweto, were a way of proving her independence to her strict grandmother. Before the uprising Sithole wanted to study pharmacy because she enjoyed science. “I loved it [science], I was always visualising myself coming up with new things and helping people.” But her schooling came to an abrupt end in 1980 when she married and left school to care for her ill mother-in-law. She wrote three matric subjects in 1998, and still dreams of finishing grade 12.

Now, she feels, doors have opened in South Africa. "We can take the children wherever they feel that they want to go." She is amazed at how language no longer segregates people and found her first opportunity to vote in 1994 very exciting. Sithole finds it stressful working at the museum because she has to relive June 16 every time people ask her about that fateful day. “I thought working here would help me cope with healing. Sometimesit does.” To make the healing process easier, she sometimes imagines that her brother's death happened to someone else, who has told the story to her.

Her unwanted fame has taken her overseas several times: once to Germany in 1989 to a school named after Pieterson, once to The Netherlands in 1999, and three times to Sweden. Sithole wants to let Pieterson's death go, to let her brother rest in peace. She says, philosophically, that "we will all die". Yet it is, nonetheless, hard to deal with. “The only thing that [consoles] me is that I was there when he died. I was lucky — I got to say goodbye.” Sithole says that she tries hard to remain an anonymous face. Sometimes, when people recognise her, she tells them they are looking at a sister or a cousin of the girl in the photograph, and not actually her. The only time she puts herself in the public eye is when journalists, like me, bother her for interviews.

Reference:

Nicola Mawson: Living memory

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Albertina Sisulu: Story of a Freedom Fighter

Albertina Sisulu was born in an Estern Cape town called Tsomo, on 21 October 1918.  Her parents died when she was 15 years old, and this impacted on her plans for further education.  Instead, she chose a career of nursing, where she could earn an income as she trained.  This much-needed income went towards her upkeep and that of her siblings.  She qualified as a nurse in 1944, and as a midwife in 1954.  She worked as a midwife until 1980, when she was appointed matron to a small hospital in Orlando East.

Albertina met Walter Sisulu in 1941 and they married in 1944.  It was at this time that she joined the ANC Women's League, and joined the struggle against apartheid.  She was also instrumental in the formation of the Federation of South African Women in 1954.  This was an organization which aimed to pull all women’s organisations together, so that South African women could speak with one voice.  In 1956, the Federation arranged for 20 000 women to travel to and protest against Bantu Education at the Union Buildings.

From 1957 – 1989, she was harassed constantly, and spent lengthy periods in jail or under house arrest.  All of her family suffered the same.  In her own words, "None of the children in this house hasn't tasted jail".  This was a huge problem for her, because due to her husband Walter's long imprisonment, she was the main breadwinner in her household.  Due to the continual police harassment, she eventually had to send her children to a boarding school, and could only afford annual visits home.

In 1989, as South Africa moved inexorably towards freedom, Albertina was accorded international recognition as an important leader of the struggle and as Walter Sisulu's wife, when the United States and British Governments invited her to visit President Bush and Prime Minister Thatcher "as the patroness of the principal black opposition group in South Africa."  She represented the United Democratic Front on this historic trip.

She helped re-establish the ANC Women's League in South Africa in 1990 and serves on its executive committee. In 1994, she was elected to Parliament as an ANC representative.

She has been a patron of the Masakhisizwe Women's Empowerment Trust, Streetwise, the Job Creation Trust, the All Africa Games, the Informal Business Training Trust and the Albertina Sisulu Foundation.

Albertina Sisulu lost her husband Walter on 5 May 2003.

Quote from Albertina Sisulu

"But to us really, apart from what is happening, we think the country's future is bright. Because starting from so many hundreds of years back when the people were fighting, now at this level we feel that we are near the goal. That is why we are hopeful. Really, we have been always optimistic that the end of this country will end up being what the people want it to be."
www.anc.org.za/people/sisulu_a.html

" ... Although politics has given me a rough life, there is absolutely nothing 1 regret about what I have done and what has happened tome and my family throughout all these years. Instead, 1 have been strengthened and feel more of a woman than I would otherwise have felt if my life was different "
www.anc.org.za/people/albertina.html

Further articles on Albertina Sisulu:

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• http://www.gradnet.wits.ac.za/Archive/Citations/240699-1.aspEastern Cape Tourism

Helen Suzman was born Helen Gavronsky on 7 November 1917 in Germiston, Gauteng, SouthAfrica as the daughter of Lithuanian-Jewish immigrants.

She was an anti-apartheid activist and politician. She studied as an economist and statistician at Witwatersrand University.

She married Dr. Moses Suzman when she was 20, and had two daughters with him before returning to university as a lecturer in 1944. She gave up teaching for politics, being elected to Parliament in 1953 as a member of the United Party. She switched to the liberal Progressive Party in 1959, and represented the Houghton constituency as that party's sole member of parliament, and the sole parliamentarian unequivocally opposed to apartheid, from 1961 to 1974.

Suzman was noted for her strong public criticism of the governing National Party's policies of apartheid at a time when this was unusual amongst whites, and found herself even more of an outsider by virtue of being an English-speaking Jewish woman in a parliament dominated by Calvinist Afrikaner men. She was once accused by a minister of asking questions in parliament that embarrassed South Africa, to which she replied: "It is not my questions that embarrass South Africa, it is your answers".

Later, as parliamentary white opposition to apartheid grew, the Progressive Party was renamed the Progressive Federal Party, and Suzman was joined in parliament by notable liberal colleagues such as Colin Eglin. She spent a total of 36 years in parliament.

She visited Nelson Mandela numerous times in prison, and was at his side when he signed the new constitution in 1996. In his autobiography Long Walk to Freedom, Mandela said of Suzman: "It was an odd and wonderful sight to see this courageous woman peering into our cells and strolling around ourcourtyard. She was the first and only woman ever to grace our cells."

Suzman retired from politics in 1989, with Tony Leon succeeding her as MP for Houghton. In recognition of her role, Suzman received honorary doctorates from a number of leading universities throughout the world and South Africa.

Sadly, she died peacefully at the age of 91at her home in Johannesburg on the 1st of January 2009. Private funeral will take place this weekend and the public memorial would be held in February and details would be announced nearer the time.May her soul rest in peace, her couragious soul will always remain with us and her legacy lives on. Hamba kahle qhawekazi!!!

For more information, read the following links.

• Mail&Guardian
• Helen

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