Former South African President Nelson Mandela said he was warned by the man who articled him as a lawyer that he “should stay away from Walter Sisulu”.
Paying tribute to his long-time friend Walter — who died in Soweto on Monday night — the former African National Congress leader said: “The fellow who articled me used to say to me … leave Walter Sisulu alone, you will stand the rest of your life in jail if you stay with him… and that happened!
“But I didn’t listen to him … I was now fired up that this is the role I should play,” Mandela told SABC radio. Sisulu served 26 years in prison alongside Mandela — who served 27 years — and other leading opponents of apartheid.
Mandela first met Sisulu soon after arriving in Johannesburg in 1941 at the latter’s estate agency offices in Market Street. According to Mandela’s biography, Long Walk to Freedom, Sisulu’s name was becoming prominent as both a businessman — he specialised in properties for black Africans — and as a local leader “and he was already a force in the community”.
“I was introduced to a man who looked to be in his late twenties, with an intelligent and kindly face, light in complexion, and dressed in a double-breasted suit. Despite his youth he seemed to me an experienced man of the world.”
He introduced Mandela to Lazar Sidelsky, a Jewish lawyer, of the firm Witkin, Sidelsky and Eidelman who oversaw property transactions for African customers. Sisulu brought the firm clients who needed mortgages. Sidelsky was interested in African education and Sisulu promised to talk to him about taking Mandela on as an articled clerk.
Commenting on his first meeting with Sisulu — who was to be a fellow warrior in the struggle and prisoner of apartheid — Mandela was surprised to find that Sisulu only had a standard six education. “He was from the Transkei, but spoke English with a rapid urban fluency. In those days I believed that proficiency in English and success in business were the direct result of high academic achievements and I assumed as a matter of course that Sisulu was a university graduate. I was greatly surprised to learn … that Walter Sisulu had never gone beyond Standard VI … In Johannesburg I found that many of the most outstanding leaders had never been to university at all.” – I-Net-Bridge