Ambassador Joseph, board member, reflects on Nelson Mandela

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.