Walter Max Ulyate Sisulu was a South African anti-apartheid activist and member of the African National Congress (ANC), serving at times as Secretary-General and Deputy President of the organisation.
Sisulu was born in Ngcobo in the Union of South Africa. His mother, Alice Mase Sisulu, was a Xhosa domestic worker and his father, Albert Victor Dickinson was a white. Dickinson worked in the Railway Department of the Cape Colony from 1903 to 1909 and was transferred to the Office of the Chief Magistrate in Umtata in 1910. He later went on to become the Attorney General of the Transvaal. Dickinson did not play a part in his son's upbringing, and the boy and his sister, Rosabella, were raised by his mother's family.
Educated in a local missionary school, Sisulu left in 1926 to find work. He moved to Johannesburg in 1928 and did a wide range of manual jobs. He married Albertina in 1944. The couple had five children and adopted four more. Sisulu's wife and children were also active in the struggle against apartheid.
Sisulu joined the ANC in 1941. In 1943, together with Nelson Mandela and Oliver Tambo, he joined the ANC Youth League, of which he was initially the treasurer.