William Lacy Swing

Flying to South Africa for President Mandela’s funeral, it dawned on me during the long hours in the air that– quite coincidentally and somewhat ironically — it was 50 years ago, almost to the day, that I arrived in South Africa on my first diplomatic posting.

This sad occasion that brings me back to South Africa reminds me that my arrival here in December 1963 coincided with the arrest of Nelson Mandela at Rivonia, an affluent “white” suburb some weeks later — and three years after the banning of the ANC and the Sharpeville massacre that killed 69 people.

In those heady days of the administration of newly-elected President John F. Kennedy, his Assistant Secretary of State G. Mennen Williams (nicknamed “Soapy” after the family shaving products fortune in Detroit) insisted on personally briefing every US diplomat and their spouse and children on our policy towards South Africa. Williams imparted to us the essential elements of the new policy: no more US Naval visits to Simonstown in the Cape; all US official representational functions (receptions, dinners, National Day celebrations) henceforth must be multi-racial and wide-ranging sanctions. Thus, each diplomat proceeded to South Africa with very clear anti-apartheid instructions.

I arrived in the midst of a particularly violent period. In Port Elizabeth and the Eastern Cape, where I was posted at our two-person Consulate, a seemingly unending series of trials, for example, were taking place under the so-called “Suppression of Communism Act”. Like others, this law served as a pretext to arrest and imprison indefinitely anyone the apartheid regime considered a threat.

The Verwoerd government’s “Bantustan Policy” was also on full display in the Eastern Cape where two of these new “independent” black African ‘states” were to be established. Aside from my consular duties and reporting on the local automobile industry (which had considerable US investments), I also reported on the status of the implementation of government policies in the Transkei and the Ciskei — two of the more prominent and political of the nine or so “Bantustans”. Thus it was that I covered the first two Transkei legislative elections. My principal contacts were with the opposition leaders, notably Victor Poto and Knowledge Guzana. It became clear early on that the Bantustan policy was largely fictional in nature and was doomed to failure because these two “states” would never be credible in the eyes of the black people of South Africa – the majority.

Thus, when I completed my assignment in 1966, I vowed never to return to an apartheid South Africa, and I didn’t…well almost. Twenty-four years later, President George H.W. Bush appointed me ambassador and gave me a letter to Mandela, expressing support for him and his release. I witnessed his release from prison on 11 February 1990, less than six months after my arrival. From his release from Paarl prison until I left South Africa a year before the post-apartheid elections, I visited Mandela often at his office and home in Soweto.

And, after his release I asked him how it felt being in a new South Africa and his reply was: “…a sense of physical contact with history.” History lives. We live history. We make history. History is what we are.

In this period I arranged a phone call through Archbishop Desmond Tutu to President Bush in which he invited Mandela to visit him at the White House. I vividly remember accompanying Mandela in June 1990 to his White House meeting with President Bush, together with Winnie Mandela, Thabo Mbeki and other ANC leaders. During this meeting, I was once again impressed by the personal qualities for which I and so many others still remember Mandela: his warmth, his commitment to his principles and the political astuteness with which he so successfully pursued reconciliation.

He is the most impressive political leader I have ever had the honour of meeting or communicating with. I was and remain extremely impressed by his courage, lack of bitterness, and his commitment to reconciliation. Mandela remains an inspiration to all leaders. The main lesson we should take from his life is his generous spirit and always seeking compromise in life to come up with lasting solutions to complicated issues and to find ways to move forward together. He taught us that no one gets all of one’s way…that life is about give and take and that we should never give up. He taught us that we should always remain positive and keep the people in the centre of all our policies. His willingness to reach out, his openness and transparency in all things he set out to do is what we should always remember and try to emulate.

To his wonderful widow Graca Machel, children and entire family, we extend our profound condolences for this irreplaceable loss. But I would urge them to take courage from his love and the legacy he has left for us and not to be discouraged by the terrible loss we have suffered. When I attended the memorial service legacy, I was impressed by the way his grandchildren spoke about the love and caring for all humans. Even in his death nelson Mandela brought us all together. You had people who would not normally come together, coming together regardless of their ethnic, colour, gender, political, religious or linguistic differences. That is such credit to Nelson Mandela and the legacy he is leaving us with.

William Lacy Swing is Director General, of IOM. This is a personal reflection which captures his long experience with Nelson Mandela as published by South Africa’s Mail and Guardian Newspaper.