“Her husband was imprisoned for more than 20 years, her children were harassed and detained, and she was herself banned for many, many years,” he said in a statement.

“But try as they might, they could not break her spirit, they could not make her bitter, they could not defeat her love,” Tutu said.

Sisulu died Thursday at her Johannesburg home at the age of 92.

“It was people like Ma Sisulu who made the new South Africa possible, who kept the home fires burning, who calmly and resolutely demonstrated by example that we are all members of one family, God’s family,” Tutu added.

Sisulu and her late husband, African National Congress (ANC) leader Walter Sisulu, were key figures in the fight against white-minority rule, enduring decades of persecutio/cwn by the apartheid regime.