Ambassador Joseph, board member, reflects on Nelson Mandela
Posted December 13th, 2013 by James DeWolf PerryCategory: Repair and reparations Tags: Ambassador James A. Joseph, Nelson Mandela, South Africa
Ambassador James A. Joseph is a member of the Tracing Center’s board of directors who first met Nelson Mandela when they shared a dais in Washington, D.C. during Mandela’s first visit to the United States in 1990, and who served as U.S. ambassador to South Africa when Nelson Mandela was president.
Ambassador Joseph, who was holding a sign reading “Free Mandela” outside of the South African Parliament in Cape Town when President de Klerk announced that Mandela would be freed, recalls beginning his tour as U.S. ambassador with this story:
In 1996, I was back in South Africa to present my credentials to President Mandela as the U.S. Ambassador. “I have come to exchange my ‘free Mandela’ sign for my credentials as the United States Ambassador,” I said. He loved it.
In this essay for the Huffington Post’s “Black Voices,” Ambassador Joseph seeks, like so many others, to “take full measure of the man.” He settles on three attributes for which he believes Nelson Mandela ought to be best remembered: as an exemplar of the power of the human spirit to solve problems without resorting to violence; as a model of effective leadership, being both pragmatic and grounded in a principle higher than power; and as a healer who embraced the values of community and pluralism, showing that there is strength in diversity and unity.
December 14th, 2013 at 8:26 pm
President Nelsom Mandela belongs now in death as he did in life to the world and the infinite universe. He transcends the mediocrity and the mundane we as humans often get mired down in. He rose above the station he was relegated to by his foreign captures and occupiers of his homeland and yet he held no malice towards the white minority. How many of us other than Christ could have been so benevolent and forgiving. He suffered alone for 27 years and I choose to believe that his innate compassion for peace,justice,forgiveness and love for all mankind became an invisible aura around him which sustained him and helped him survive against the odds.
The could have killed him rather than allow him to become a martyr as a Black man’s life had no value to them and yet they did not…it was as though he was under the protection of a higher power a more tolerant loving power and his destiny was predetermined that he went from prisoner to president.
I had the opportunity to work against Apartheid during the 80s and challenged American corporations to divest in the racist oppressive government of South Africa. America had much blame in turning a blind eye to the sufferings of millions of Black people and made profit off of their subhuman treatment just as they did during our enslavement. I found great pride in helping a friend of mine and a student here in Connecticut obtain an absentee ballot to vote for Mandela. He was from Soweta and told me about the largest mountain there and the riches of their diamond minds. I fear white people will not rest until they control Africa. I can only pray for another Mandela and that white people discontinue occupying and raping the resources of foreign lands in order to continue their need for overabundance and depletion of the worlds natural resources for their luxury lifestyle while the majority of the worlds population suffers.
The Slave holding me stated in first person in a news article during her lifetime, she lived to be 111 and also suffered much, that her mother’s, mother who were all Slaves, was kidnapped feom South Africa and that she was the daughter of a Governor Bull, a village chief. I had hoped to meet President Mandela and bring the Slave’s remains back to her homeland of South Africa and let him see one Slave returned home to Africa….a mission I still hold dear and in resolve.
Once, while working at the Connecticut State Capitol, I had the honor of attending on behalf of my Senator, an anti Apartheid conference and I heard South Africans speak out against Apartheid and I gave them a copy of the news article on the Slave and they all embraced me saying…our sister, our sister. This was when I truly felt like I had never been taken from Africa and that through the generations and all the sufferings, we were one…we were all kindred and I believe Mandela em bodied this love for all mankind….Father Forgive Them for They know not What they Do.
Blessings to his family and Happy Holidays to you All….Stella for the Slave