On June 12, 1964, Nelson Mandela and seven others were sentenced to life imprisonment in the Rivonia Trial. What most histories do not mention is that the ANC's intelligence networks, communication chains, and underground support structures during Mandela's imprisonment were maintained substantially by women.

Among them was Albertina Sisulu, whose husband Walter was sentenced alongside Mandela. Albertina was banned under apartheid — meaning she could not be quoted, could not attend gatherings, could not speak to more than one person at a time — for much of the next two decades.

She continued organizing anyway. She was the president of the Federation of South African Women and a nurse who maintained community health networks. She was arrested and detained without charge multiple times. Her passport was seized for decades.

When Walter was released in 1989, he returned to find that his wife had sustained an entire movement in his absence. She was elected to Parliament in 1994.

The history of the anti-apartheid struggle is routinely told through the male leadership imprisoned on Robben Island. The women who held the networks together from the outside — at constant legal risk, without the martyrdom narrative — are substantially absent from the story.