Sisulu, Walter Max Ulyate (1912-2003)

South African civil-rights activist, deputy president of the African National Congress (ANC). In 1964 he became, with Nelson Mandela, one of the first full-time secretaries general of the ANC. He was imprisoned following the 1964 Rivonia Trial for opposition to the apartheid system and released in 1989, at the age of 77, as a gesture of reform by President F W de Klerk. In 1991, when Mandela became ANC president, Sisulu became his deputy.