Sisulu, who began his political career by leading a strike at a bakery that got him fired, became one of the leading members of the ANC. " Together we shared ideas, forged common commitments," said Nelson Mandela. While Mandela became the public face of resistance – and eventually South Africa's first black president – quiet, charismatic Sisulu, perhaps his closest confidant, remained the clear-thinking strategist in the background.

" Sisulu stands head and shoulders above all of us in South Africa," Mandela told a group of South African children recently. "You will ask what is reason for his elevated status among us. Very simple, it is humility. It is simplicity. Because he pushed all of us forward and remained quietly in the background."

Sisulu was a diminutive man who knew harsh poverty and the indignity of racial discrimination first hand. Born in 1912, the year the ANC was created, he was a founding commander of its armed wing in the battle to end racial segregation and secure political equality for black South Africans.

In 1963 he was arrested and subsequently tried with Mandela and other activists for planning acts of political sabotage and revolution.
The death penalty was expected, but under international pressure, the judge gave the defendants life sentences, and Sisulu and Mandela were sent to the notorious Robben Island prison in shark-infested waters off Cape Town.
Sisulu was transferred with Mandela to Pollsmoor prison in Cape Town before his release in 1989 to cheering crowds in Soweto.

Sisulu's family threw itself into the anti-apartheid struggle and suffered deeply. His wife Albertina's movements and speech were restricted from 1964-81 and she spent 10 years under house arrest. Four of their five children have spent time in exile or in prison.
" This government doesn't feel comfortable unless it has a Sisulu in jail," his son Zwelakhe once joked.

"May he live forever. His absence has carved a void. A part of me is gone," Mandela said in a statement about his contemporary and long-time friend.