12

Mandela

Nelson Mandela was coming to New York.

Mandela was a genuine hero. He was also my personal hero, a transcendent symbol of freedom. He had the capacity to lead people. He truly had the courage of his convictions. He was a lawyer and an activist, a very smart man who, knowing that if he was captured he would be convicted of treason, nevertheless fought a system that was ruining his people. He believed, against overwhelming odds, that he was going to one day succeed. And he was ready to die for his beliefs. There may have been people who were his equal in modern history, but I would dare say no one was ever greater.

In the first year of my mayoralty, this was not a universally held view. His image as a world statesman had not yet been burnished. In fact, Mandela and the African National Congress (ANC) were perceived by some in positions of power to be part of the international communist conspiracy. The ANC was a revolutionary organization fighting South Africa’s apartheid government. In 1962 the CIA, whose director at the time was George H. W. Bush, is said to have tipped off the South African security police, and Mandela was captured, tried, and sent to prison. After twenty-seven years of hard labor for sabotage and armed revolt against the white regime, Mandela was released on February 11, 1990. Through a campaign of organizing and information, the efforts to win his freedom grew into a worldwide movement, with many countries boycotting or imposing economic sanctions against the government of South Africa to end apartheid and bring about his release. Minus these sanctions, he would still be in jail. A mere four months into his freedom, friends in his country were organizing a six-week, fourteen-nation tour to celebrate this triumph, raise funds, and encourage the continuation of economic sanctions against the white regime that had imprisoned him.

Harry Belafonte, who is a god in South Africa and a celebrated civil rights leader and entertainer here in the United States, was instrumental in planning the American leg of this tour, along with Bill Lucy, the secretary-treasurer of the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), AFL-CIO, president of the Coalition of Black Trade Unions, and the most powerful African American in the US labor movement. They and others were organizing an event in Washington, DC, but weren’t certain which city would have the honor of welcoming him to the United States. He was scheduled to visit eight cities while he was here. We knew Harry and Bill, they were close friends, and we got involved in the negotiations.

Someone might have made the argument for going to the nation’s capital first, but George H. W. Bush was now president. He was no great fan of Mandela, and his administration had not been particularly forceful in opposing apartheid. Bill Lynch had the notion that Mandela should arrive in New York City. “Works for me,” I told him. It was a stroke of genius. We said, “New York. We’ll give him a real party!”

The idea took hold, and Bill was thoroughly involved in every aspect of bringing it to fruition. Ultimately, the decision was made: New York City would be this great man’s first stop in the United States. Harry Belafonte, Cleveland Robison of the United Auto Workers, and I were co-chairs of the Nelson Mandela New York Anti-Apartheid Welcome Committee.

Mandela and his wife, Winnie, would be staying with me and my wife, Joyce, in a guest suite at Gracie Mansion. Gracie is not a spacious home and includes only three main bedrooms. The Mandelas might have had more commodious accommodations at one of New York’s many five-star hotels. Nevertheless, I thought it was important that they be accorded the honor and respect of New York and reside with us in the mayor’s official residence; it was the right thing to do, and I wanted this visit to be perfect.

I surveyed the room where they would be staying and said to my bride, “I think he is too tall for this bed.” In my mind Mandela was ten feet tall. Joyce said, “He’ll fit.” Of course she was right.

...

On June 20, 1990, Nelson Mandela flew from Canada to New York, arriving at Kennedy International Airport. The plane was two hours late, but when he finally touched down, I was truly moved to be in his presence. The city of New York literally rolled out a red carpet for him, and he was most gracious in receiving a line of fifty that included Gov. Mario Cuomo and Gov. Jim Florio of New Jersey, then stepped beyond it to greet several hundred supporters who had massed behind us. “It is a source of tremendous joy and strength for us, my wife, our delegation,” he said, “to be received with such a rousing welcome by the people of the city. . . . Join us in the international actions we are taking. The only way we can walk together on this difficult road is for you to ensure that sanctions are applied.” This was why he was here, and I could not have agreed more.

In fact, a week earlier, I had drafted a bill that would give New York City the most stringent anti-apartheid sanctions in the United States. I was a longtime opponent of apartheid and had made this a key element in my mayoral campaign. Now I was going to keep my promise. There was some movement in Congress to reconsider the sanctions, which were intended to force the South African government to abandon its racist policies, but sanctions were the ANC’s main leverage and I could not abide any attempt to curtail them. Under my bill, the city would not contract with companies or banks that had business ties to South Africa. We would rate banks according to their efforts to exert pressure on the South African government to end apartheid and give our business to those with the highest ranking. We would make strong efforts not to invest the $43.1 billion in city pension funds in companies doing business there. This bill passed, and over the years our sanctions were effective. Large companies doing business in South Africa, like IBM and 3-M, and others seeking to do business with the city were clearly influenced. There was a lot of money to be made in New York, and lucrative contracts would go only to those companies that stood with us. These sanctions would remain in effect until there was tangible, fundamental political change, the cornerstone of which would be a democratic South Africa and the destruction of apartheid as South Africa’s law of the land.

We had a full first day prepared for Mandela. A visit to Boys and Girls High School in Brooklyn, followed by a ticker-tape parade on Lower Broadway and up the Canyon of Heroes and a welcoming ceremony at City Hall. Why a ticker-tape parade? Because Nelson Mandela was a man of stature. Not everybody gets that parade. Look at a short list of people who have been deemed worthy: Teddy Roosevelt, Charles Lindbergh, Admiral Richard Byrd, Jesse Owens, Winston Churchill, Dwight Eisenhower, Charles de Gaulle, John F. Kennedy, Pope John Paul II; the Apollo 11 astronauts who walked on the moon; the World Champion New York Yankees and New York Mets; and Vietnam War veterans. Nelson Mandela deserved his place among them.

Fifty thousand people were at the airport and lined up along the route in Queens. Things take time in New York, and our forty-car motorcade plus State Department security personnel, led by two dozen police motorcycles, with police helicopters hovering overhead, was running late. It was suggested that because we were behind schedule, maybe we should skip Boys and Girls High. Lynch said, “Nope, they’ll be waiting.”

And sure enough, they were. The Parks Department had set up a stage on the school’s Fulton Street football field, and the kids were yelling and screaming. “Mandela! Mandela!” There must have been ten thousand people on the field and in the stands to hear and see him. In school and at home they had learned he was a hero, and here he was in front of them. At that moment we knew we were on to something. “We in South Africa have always known that we have loyal friends among the people of New York,” Mandela told the crowd, “but we had no idea that we were perceived with such love and warmth!” As we were leaving, hundreds of kids ran alongside the car, whooping and hollering as they sent him off. His security detail was a little perturbed, but Mandela loved it. He just loved it.

We drove through the streets of Bedford-Stuyvesant, East New York, Fort Greene—all African American neighborhoods—and police estimated that 100,000 people were lined up, sometimes four-deep, cheering wildly. On the other hand, the New York Times reported that in a white neighborhood in Queens, “one man with a video camera held his hand in front of the lens with a finger raised, so that the motorcade became the background for an obscene gesture.”

Because of concern for his safety—the worry was that white South Africans might have a hit out on him—the NYPD built a secure vehicle with a clear bubble top in which Mandela could see and be seen as he rode up Broadway. A similar vehicle had been crafted for Pope John Paul II and dubbed the Popemobile. So we had the Mandelamobile. Ticker tape is obsolete—it’s all computerized now, there are no more tickers!—so confetti made of computer printouts rained on us. The NYPD estimated the crowd at 400,000, but to me it looked like at least a million.

Standing at a lectern in front of City Hall, Mandela said some kind words, praising me as New York’s first black mayor, which I greatly appreciated. Then he told a packed crowd, “Apartheid is doomed. South Africa will be free. The struggle continues.” Bill Lynch, sitting a row behind him, broke down in tears.

It was a day of tremendous significance. A genuine African freedom fighter was welcomed as a hero by the people and the city of New York. And it wasn’t just black folks; on the drive from City Hall to Gracie Mansion, people on the Upper East Side were standing three- and four-deep to catch a glimpse of this man. He was received as a statesman throughout his American tour, and I would argue that we set the tone for the rest of the country.

Mr. Mandela was seventy-one years old, fresh out of prison, and had already toured several cities in Europe just prior to his arrival in New York. By the end of the day he appeared to tire noticeably. Meetings with black journalists and South African exiles were canceled, and what had been planned as a twenty-two-person formal dinner became an intimate meal with Mandela, his wife Winnie, my wife Joyce and me, our children Donna and David Jr., our granddaughter Kalila, and Bill Lynch. Bill doesn’t remember what we talked about. “I have no idea,” he says. “I was in such awe, they could have been talking about Mickey Mouse.” I recall talking with Mandela at length. You never know for certain what a person is about until you sit with him or her comfortably. I was pleased, but not surprised, to find that there was an absolute and total lack of bitterness in the man. Well, you might think, he just behaves that way in public—in reality he’s an angry fellow. No, he is a man of grace. Strong-willed—you don’t last twenty-seven years in prison the way he did without strength of purpose—but calm and completely focused on the task at hand. What he and others accomplished in South Africa demonstrates to me that one day there will be peace in the Middle East.

Personally, I was thinking, This mayor stuff is pretty good! I had been in office only a couple of months, and here I was sitting over coffee with the great Nelson Mandela.

The next day Mandela got up and went for a walk. This was his custom—he got up early in the morning and took a walk. The concept being that if he had done it in prison on Robben Island, he could do it anywhere else. It just happened that he was walking the streets of New York. The Secret Service went crazy running after him. “Mr. Mandela!” Maybe the special agents thought New York’s streets weren’t safe, but we knew better.

Mandela had another full day. He was interviewed by Ted Koppel, a crackerjack journalist, for ABC’s Nightline. Mandela had long been criticized by some for his membership in the South African Communist Party, and Koppel tried to use that to get him in a corner. Mandela would not be intimidated and calmly responded by saying, in effect, that the Communists “were the only ones that helped us. Next question.” I found that very impressive.

The demands for his time were plentiful: ministers, politicians, schoolchildren, all wanted to be in his presence. Songwriters wanted to sing him their songs. Organizations of all stripes wanted to honor him and share his visibility. “The greatest amount of lobbying I’ve heard about,” said one of my senior advisers, Ken Sunshine, “is from folks in Brooklyn and folks in Harlem. It’s a traditional rivalry.” Harlem and Brooklyn had put that rivalry aside during my campaign, but there was no way to please everyone. Mandela would speak at an ecumenical service at the Upper West Side’s Riverside Church, and we decided to hold a rally at 125th Street and Lenox Avenue, followed by an event at Yankee Stadium.

The tour was in part a fund-raiser for the children of South Africa, and at Riverside Church Mandela received a check for $200,000, earmarked for South African schools, housing, medicine, and refugee assistance. “We have risen up on the wings of angels,” he said. “We have walked and not fainted. Our destination is in sight. Our victory will be your victory!” He had people literally dancing in the aisles.

In Harlem the streets were jammed with 200,000 celebrants. Folks were hanging out of windows. The emotion was almost physical, you could feel it in the air. It was an absolute exaltation of everyday people. Racial pride at its best. Mr. Mandela used soil brought over from the black township of Soweto to plant a tree to honor black children who had been killed by South African authorities.

And here’s how politics works. Several speakers had been scheduled, including me and Congressman Charles Rangel. Some of Harlem’s black nationalists, who had been active in the anti-apartheid movement, figured that they were the true representatives of the people and thought they were going to take over 125th Street. They had been given one speaking place in the program, but they had a former Black Panther who was himself newly released from prison, and they were going to upstage us and showcase him. This is the kind of crap some of these guys would pull from time to time. But Bill Lynch had a good relationship with all of them, and he would not be intimidated. Bill said, in so many words, “This is my mayor, now all of you back off.” Congressman Rangel got hold of the microphone, introduced me, and a crisis was averted. The crowd was chanting “Viva Mandela! Viva Mandela!” I introduced him.

Mandela looked out over this massive crowd and told them that he and the ANC had been following the struggles of the people of Harlem for thirty years. He said he felt “a kinship of solidarity. . . . Harlem signifies the glory of resistance.

“Sojourner Truth . . . ,” he intoned.

“Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. . . .

“Marcus Garvey . . .

“Paul Robeson . . .

“Rosa Parks . . .

“Adam Clayton Powell. . . .”

At each incantation the crowd erupted.

He was standing at the corner of 125th Street and Lenox Avenue, which only two years earlier had been renamed for . . .

“Malcolm X!”

“There is an umbilical cord that ties us together,” he said. “My only regret is that I am unable to embrace each and every one of you.” He ended by crying, “Death to racism!” The crowd was in a frenzy.

...

We’d had some difficulty booking Yankee Stadium for the big rally. Yankees owner George Steinbrenner refused to let us use it. He never quite came out and said it, but my impression was that he thought the community would get in there and tear the place up. We talked about holding the event at a stadium on Randall’s Island, but that was too small. Madison Square Garden was out of the question; it held only twenty thousand. Ken Sunshine, who had had a successful career in the music industry, contacted promoter Ron Delsener, who was representing Billy Joel. Joel had scheduled a three-night stand at the Stadium and had rented the place outright. In one of the great magnanimous gestures in rock-and-roll history, Billy Joel let us have one of his nights and also donated the staging and equipment. So now we had Yankee Stadium, and there was nothing George Steinbrenner could do about it.

We sold the place out. Seventy-five thousand people. A lot of money was raised that night. There were performances by Judy Collins, Richie Havens, Tracy Chapman, and calypso legend the Mighty Sparrow. Many speeches were given, including by Bronx borough president Freddy Ferrer and Harry Belafonte. I addressed the crowd.

Jesse Jackson wanted to speak. He had run for president two years earlier and carried New York City in the New York primary. He had accompanied the Mandelas to Riverside Church earlier in the day. Jesse is a dynamic and powerful speaker, and there is little doubt the crowd would have loved him.

Harry Belafonte would have none of it. There is a tension between the two men that exists to this day—certainly it was evident that day at Yankee Stadium. Bill Lynch was part of the organizing and program committees and friendly with both men, but Belafonte ran the Yankee Stadium program. Earlier in the day there had been a cordial disagreement between them right on the steps of Gracie Mansion. Jesse was trying to get in, and Harry just let it be known, “Not gonna happen.”

After hours of music and speeches, when Mr. Mandela finally came onstage the place was rocking. People had seen news reports from South Africa of crowds chanting “Amandla! Amandla!” and had taken the call as their own. Many thought it meant “freedom” or “victory.” In fact, amandla is the Zulu word for power. Even better. The chant shook the Stadium.

Mandela was moved by the reception. He spoke about apartheid and the need for continued sanctions. He spoke about the commonalities of our peoples. He ended his speech by saying, “The people of New York, we admire you, we respect you, and, above all, we love you.”

I walked over and, in front of the entire screaming crowd, placed a Yankees jacket—blue and white, with the NY logo over the heart—across his shoulders. I put a Yankees cap on his head. He beamed and said to the crowd, “You now know who I am. I am a Yankee!”

The photo of Nelson Mandela in the Yankees jacket and cap was transmitted all over the world.

The next day George Steinbrenner called and said, “I’ll pay for the event!”

...

Bill Lynch convinced me that we ought to go to South Africa. New York was leading the way with our insistence on maintaining economic sanctions, and negotiations that would ultimately result in South African national elections had begun. We wanted to create a “sister cities” effect—take some of New York City’s health, housing, police, and education commissioners, as well as business and religious leaders, and team them up in preparation for the day when their South African counterparts would take over the government. This was not a junket but the pursuit of a business opportunity. Not only would it be socially and morally positive, but it would redound to New York’s economic benefit when South Africa did finally change governments and went looking for people with whom to do business. The ANC would remember who stood by them.

Lynch wanted to rent an airplane and create something of a New York–South Africa Express, but the cost was high; rather than have New York City foot the bill, I asked that the trip be privately financed, that each of the travelers pay his or her own way. Although reservations were made and schedules put in place, we could not raise sufficient funds, and that plan ultimately did not materialize. A month later, on an extremely scaled-down budget, a group of us—including Carl McCall, president of the New York City Board of Education; Betty Shabazz, Malcolm X’s widow and director of institutional advancement at Brooklyn’s Medgar Evers College; Herbert Daughtry, pastor of Brooklyn’s House of the Lord Pentecostal Church; health commissioner Dr. Margaret A. Hamburg; NYPD deputy inspector Jules Martin; Lee Dunham, owner of several McDonald’s franchises in Harlem; and a contingent of press—flew to South Africa via Al Italia. We would stop over in Rome, where we had arranged an audience with the pope, and fly from there to the South African capital of Johannesburg.

When we touched down outside the Italian capital, we were escorted into the center of the city by a motorcade flanked by police motorcycles. While New York’s City Hall is an impressive edifice, the piazza on Rome’s Capitoline Hill was designed by Michelangelo. We walked on a red carpet up a long column of stairs flanked by a phalanx of heraldic trumpeters costumed out of Cecil B. DeMille. We lunched with the mayor of Rome and dined later that evening with the area’s governor. Speeches were delivered, and gifts exchanged. I was pleased to be so honored, but I didn’t take it entirely personally; the mayor of New York is accorded rare privilege and respect in faraway lands.

I had never been to Rome. I visited the Trevi Fountain and dropped in three coins.

While a papal audience had been on our original itinerary, we learned that the pope would not be available when we actually came to town. This was unfortunate but not unexpected; I suspect it had something to do with my decision earlier that year to march with gays and lesbians in New York’s St. Patrick’s Day parade.

Everything is connected. In 1991 the issue of gay and lesbian rights was unavoidable—at least for me. The St. Patrick’s Day parade is one of New York City’s major events, and for the first time a gay organization applied to march under its own banner. The Ancient Order of Hibernians, which organized and ran the parade, refused to accept them. The Hibernians could not prevent gays and lesbians, Catholic and otherwise, from marching. Because of the Freedom of Assembly Clause of the Constitution, they could do nothing about it. What concerned the parade organizers was that they and the Church did not want to implicitly condone homosexuality by authorizing an openly gay entity to participate.

Negotiations got under way with representatives of the Hibernians in one room and a representative sample of gay activists in another. Bill Lynch and our director of European-American affairs, Debra Pucci, shuttled back and forth trying to put together an agreement. Finally, they got everybody in the same room, and an arrangement looked imminent. The negotiations were down to specifics: where they would march, what kind of banner, with whom. Things were getting closer and closer. Imagine: an agreement between such divergent parties on so important and visible a stage. This would be unprecedented!

Then the Hibernians received a call from John Cardinal O’Connor, the Roman Catholic archbishop of New York and head of the New York archdiocese. One of their leaders left the room to take the call. When he came back, it was all over. No deal.

Nothing was ever stated in the open, but it was Lynch’s impression that the word was out: the archdiocese would be “displeased” if the parade officially included gays. Within a couple of minutes, the negotiations were disbanded.

I suppose I could have stayed away, either in boycott or out of an unwillingness to offend some of my constituents. But I refused to stand idly by; history tells us that one should not be silent in the face of persecution. In a display of amity, Division 7 of the Ancient Order of Hibernians, the midtown Manhattan chapter, invited the Irish Lesbian and Gay Organization (ILGO) to participate with them. ILGO is usually a pretty loud bunch, and I agreed to join their group of around two hundred. I began my march on Fifth Avenue, a block from St. Patrick’s Cathedral. It was not a pleasant journey.

Fifth Avenue at St. Patrick’s is the epicenter of the parade, and every year it is crowded to overflowing with the faithful and the curious, and sometimes the drunk and the belligerent. Historically, people pour in from Long Island, New Jersey, Connecticut, and all five boroughs to participate and partake. Nor do I make the assumption that everyone was Irish. I saw signs reading Gay Sex, No Way and One-Term Dinkins. The booing started as soon as I arrived, and the crowd got ugly. As I began to walk I heard people call out, “You’re a disgrace!” “This isn’t your parade!” “Nigger!”

When we reached the cathedral, Cardinal O’Connor did not come down to greet us as he had done with other mayors in the past, so I climbed its steps and greeted him. He was not smiling. We exchanged a perfunctory embrace, said a few words, and I returned to the march. The booing continued for the forty blocks I walked. I responded to it by vigorously waving a shillelagh.

When we crossed Central Park South, we were doused with beer. The New York Times described it as an “arc of liquid” raining down on us. I saw it in slightly less poetic terms. My police escort quickly opened umbrellas to protect me. Then it got worse. Full cans of beer flew over my head. Not empties, full cans. If they had hit someone, they could have caused real injury. The vitriol was unceasing. I imagined it was like marching in Birmingham, Alabama, during the civil rights movement. I had known there would be deep emotions about gays marching and me marching with them, but I did not anticipate this. Whether or not one agrees with gays and lesbians, they are God’s children and should be treated as such. What kind of a coward would throw a full beer can into a crowd?

Two men, five blocks from one another, were arrested and charged. Cardinal O’Connor’s response was telling. He said, “I asked people that there be no violence, either oral, physical, or even mental. That’s not what we’re about. We don’t return disrespect with disrespect.” Yet he was not the one being disrespected.

His response to the gay marchers? “I don’t determine who will march.”

Some years later, Deputy Mayor Barry Sullivan tried to reach out and improve the relationship between our administration and the archdiocese—to very little avail. He was told, “If he just hadn’t marched past the cathedral!”

I don’t know this to be true, but the assumption I make is that the archdiocese let the folks in Rome know that they’d be just as happy if the pontiff didn’t reschedule. And newspapers make their choices; although I had been received like a head of state by the mayor of Rome, the headlines back home read, “Pope Snubs Dinkins.”

...

One would have thought that our trip to South Africa would be roundly praised. The apartheid government was so clearly on the wrong side of the moral equation, and the history of the United States is so heavily invested in the pursuit of liberty, yet we faced significant criticism from the press and some high-ranking members of government. In a remarkably graceless moment, New York’s senior senator, Alphonse D’Amato, told reporters, “Maybe if he wants to go over there on a long sabbatical and let someone else run the city, we’d be better off.”

I found this clearly to be race-baiting—sending the first black mayor of New York back to Africa?! D’Amato was far too astute and calculating a politician for this to have been a casual slip of the lip—and I said so immediately. Rudy Giuliani added his opinion: “I would not find those comments offensive.”

Bill Lynch did. He told the papers, “The senator is treating us like a bunch of jungle bunnies.” This caused serious political difficulty for all of us. Bill ultimately apologized. “Senator,” he told D’Amato, “I shouldn’t have been such a smart-ass.” D’Amato, on the other hand, refused to acknowledge the obvious. It was in this atmosphere that we left New York. I to this day have a hard time understanding the resistance to our making this trip.

As guests of the ANC, we arrived in South Africa with hope and expectation. The front page of the main black newspaper, the Sowetan, ran a picture of me with the headline, “Welcome Home, Comrade.” We were not granted an appointment with the acting president, Gerrit N. Viljoen, who was in charge while President F. W. de Klerk was traveling that week, although I cannot say this was a surprise; we had enacted sanctions, I was in their country speaking forthrightly against apartheid, and we were guests of the ANC, which was trying to remove them from power. We met with South African business executives, visited former ANC leader Oliver Tambo in the hospital where he was under care, spoke with peace groups, and toured the townships.

One afternoon we were running late, as often happens. We were supposed to visit a small village, and someone said, “Maybe we’ll skip it and catch up to schedule.”

“No, no,” I said, “they’ll be waiting.”

And they were. When we arrived, we found an array of cookies and sodas—it might have cost the equivalent of a month’s worth of food there. For us. I encouraged the townsfolk to share in it. What seemed like the whole village was dancing and singing, “Keep the pressure on!” This was the slogan for the movement to continue the sanctions. “Keep the pressure on!” I was very glad we had come.

Several political parties were competing for control of the country, and it was important to me that, despite the fact that I was the ANC’s guest, I not show favoritism to one at the expense of the others. I was there to facilitate and encourage change; South Africans themselves, I felt, should be the ones deciding which specific changes were best for the country. And the trip was a success; we made important contacts, and I came away with a far greater understanding of the economic, political, and social dynamics of South Africa than I’d had when I arrived.

One of the highlights of that trip was a conversation I had at the home of South African novelist and Nobel Prize winner Nadine Gordimer. “I’m going to ask you something hard, and I hope it’s not going to upset you,” Ms. Gordimer told me. Already I admired her candor. “I find, having been coming back and forth between the States now for years, that there’s more separation now between black and white than there was some years ago, even among the small circle that I move in, of writers, journalists, TV people, and people in the arts. We mix much more here under apartheid on that kind of level than they do.”

“That’s quite an indictment,” I said.

“It’s a terrible thing to say, but this is my experience,” she told me. Ms. Gordimer had significant bona fides. A white South African, she was noted for her anti-apartheid works and political activism on behalf of the ANC. She was a woman of true perception whose opinions I respected.

I was surprised to hear this. My impression of apartheid from afar did not include this level of contact between the races. And she was right: I was aware of the growing racial insularity in America. I tried to find an explanation. “You know what I think it may be,” I said. “When I was a child, and that’s a long time ago, but when I was a child, if you came into an area with strangers, you very deliberately . . . tried to integrate. And then there came a time still later in my experience when you came into a room, a conference or whatever, you would seek out the other African Americans and say: ‘What’s happenin’? We need a caucus.’

“And so today there may be greater awareness of the heritage each of us has, which I think is a good thing.” When I was growing up, the image of Africa held by many in the black (at the time known as the Negro) community—in fact, in America as a whole—came from books and Hollywood with such works as Tarzan of the Apes. That had changed. I mentioned that my being elected mayor of New York was a sign of progress, “because, if nothing else, many of us who are African American have come to have some confidence in our own abilities.”

The term “African American,” I said, was gaining wider use in the United States as a sign of respect. We no longer defined ourselves simply by our color; we were increasingly conscious and proud of our heritage. “It’s what we use and how we describe ourselves.”

“But the fact is,” she told me, “you’re all Americans.”

Yes, but black Americans were often made to feel less equal than others in our country. I honored the pride and concerns of Jews for Israel, the Irish for Ireland, and other ethnic groups for their native lands, but often the feelings were not reciprocated. “So I’m perplexed when folks seem not to understand my concern and desire for South Africa,” I said. “I really cannot understand it.”

“No, but you see, I think your desire and concern for South Africa surely go beyond that,” she said. “I don’t think you have to be an interested party, so to speak, to be against racism.”

“I hasten to agree with you,” I said. “This is not a black and white issue; it’s human rights.”

“But isn’t it difficult to get people to see it like that?” Ms. Gordimer asked. She was asking about my vision of the future.

“Well,” I said, not unaware that I was surrounded by journalists as I spoke, “we will get them to see it when we convince enough writers and editors and publishers and those who control the mass media, when they are persuaded, then that’s what the story will be because that’s how the story gets out.”

The one group we did not meet with was the white ruling National Party. The South African government had an embassy in New York, and although they wanted to meet with us to discuss our economic policies, we refused to allow them into City Hall. Apartheid was in and of itself a disqualifier, and we refused to meet with them. That is, until just as we were leaving their country.

We got a call from the United States ambassador, William L. Swing. Was I still at the airport? Yes, I was. Well, he told me, Pieter Willem Botha would also be there. The former South African prime minister was arriving by plane from outside the country shortly and would like to meet with me. Was I amenable? It would be below the radar; there would be no official imprint of our conversation, just an informal meeting between two men. Ambassador Swing would appreciate it if I would accede.

I knew about Botha. He had been the official face of apartheid. As prime minister, he had defied international opinion and isolated his country rather than initiate any change in its racial policies. “South Africans will not allow themselves to be humiliated in order to prevent sanctions,” he had said. “We do not desire and we do not seek it, but if we are forced to go it alone, so be it.” Although he had been the South African government official to authorize contacts with Mandela, he refused to negotiate with the ANC and almost personally brought on the economic sanctions that were now doing so much damage. He had suffered a stroke two years earlier and been forced to retire. He had left grudgingly. Why did he want to see me?

I agreed to find out.

We met in a conference room at the Johannesburg airport. In addition to Botha and myself, there were two of his aides and Bill Lynch. Lynch described it as Sugar Ray Robinson meeting Jake LaMotta. Or Joe Louis versus Primo Carnera.

Botha was a very large man. He towered over me, and his bulk was substantial. The first thing he did was offer me a drink. One of his assistants brought in a tray of what appeared to be bourbon, or its South African equivalent. I accepted. Botha poured a highball glass full for himself and downed it. Then we got down to business.

“Mandela is playing the sanction card,” he told me quite forcefully.

“That’s the only card he has to play,” I answered.

“It is harming our country. You must lift the sanctions!”

One sees news reports of formal negotiations around large tables staffed with aides and seconds. This was not such a negotiation. Far from it. “If you get the ANC or Mr. Mandela to agree to lift sanctions,” I told him, “we will lift sanctions.”

“He is harming our country,” he repeated.

“I understand your point, Mr. Prime Minister. I will tell you again: if you convince Nelson Mandela to lift sanctions, we will be glad to oblige. Failing that, we intend to maintain our position—for the good of South Africa.”

“Mr. Mayor,” he bellowed, “I am a South African!”

The meeting was short. Neither of us budged. Finally, Mr. Botha left the room to return to Johannesburg and I boarded the plane for America.

New York’s sanctions were particularly effective. We were among several cities in the United States to make such a municipal decision, and it is one of which I am extremely proud. “New York City’s sanctions are meaningful because there are major corporations that find them inconvenient,” a State Department official said. “The ANC would be giving a signal” if it encouraged us to lift them. William Moses, an analyst with the Investor Responsibility Research Center in Washington, DC, said that our actions would have an effect on the thinking of cities like Los Angeles, Boston, and Chicago, plus states like Massachusetts and California, which had imposed sanctions of their own.

And yet, our position was not without controversy; there was always pressure. Several people whose opinions I respected—from the unions, from business, from government—told me, “Dave, I know you think you’re doing the right thing, but by denying the country the ability to do business, you’re really hurting the very people you want to help.” I remained steadfast.

Several months later, in May 1992, Bill Lynch received a call from David Rockefeller, at the time the chairman of the International Advisory Board of Chase Bank. Rockefeller and I always had a very respectful relationship. He was a Republican and had been instrumental in my administration, landing Deputy Mayor Barry Sullivan at a time of heightened economic anxiety. This was important. The city was in difficult fiscal times, and here we got a Rockefeller Republican coming on as deputy mayor for finance and economic development. That gave us a boost and showed those in the business community, who had their suspicions about a liberal Democrat from Harlem, that we were serious about our approach to business and not to be taken lightly. Chase had done significant business with South Africa prior to our sanctions and clearly wanted to resume those profitable ventures. Rockefeller met with Bill Lynch in the basement of City Hall and told Bill that we needed to lift the sanctions. He said quite directly, “Mandela wants the sanctions lifted.”

David Rockefeller was a powerful and respected man, and although I had not heard such a change in directive from Mr. Mandela, I took David’s words very seriously. The next day Bill Lynch was on a plane to South Africa, along with Percy Sutton, corporation counsel Peter Sherwood, and finance commissioner Carol O’Cleireacain to get the facts. The decision to make this trip was tactical. If the delegation could meet with Mandela himself and return with a signed document in hand, there would be no confusion regarding his intentions and no further discussion of the matter.

In Johannesburg they met with ANC international representative Thabo Mbeki and deputy president Walter Sisulu, who had been in jail with Mandela. In two days the second round of talks was scheduled to begin among South Africa’s nineteen political parties—the Convention on a Democratic South Africa—which would ultimately lead to the establishment of an interim government, followed by national elections that would change the direction of the country entirely. Lynch and our delegation received an audience with Mr. Mandela at ANC headquarters. He told them directly, “Do not lift sanctions!” New York’s economic heft was a heavy bargaining chip for the ANC. Not content with a verbal directive, which might be questioned or denied, Bill asked for and received a handwritten, signed letter from Mandela saying this directly: do not lift sanctions.

We remained resolute.

Mr. Mandela visited New York again in August 1992, during the Democratic National Convention. I was proud to bring a delegation of the country’s mayors to Gracie Mansion to meet him. Although it must have been ninety degrees and muggy in ways that only New York gets in August, Mandela stood outdoors on the back porch and delivered an hour-long speech about apartheid and freedom and the economics of sanctions. I thought a couple of the mayors were going to faint. Mandela was, once again, relentless in pursuit of his goal!

I was also pleased that week to introduce Mandela to Bill Clinton and Al Gore, who were being nominated to head the Democratic ticket. The two presumptive nominees recognized that they were in the presence of greatness, and Mr. Mandela was glad to meet the responsive men who he felt would soon be the leaders of the free world. All were suitably gracious, and Mandela was invited to attend the convention. What an impression he would have made! But Mandela respectfully declined to attend. At first I thought, Hey, you’re supposed to be with us. What do you mean you don’t want to go to our party?! In my admiration, I somehow forgot that he was a statesman. Mandela was my friend and hero, but he was also a leader who might have to work with the other side and therefore could not demonstrate partisanship. Again I appreciated his political skills.

I developed a comfortable relationship with Nelson Mandela. He stayed at Gracie Mansion once again and spent some time sitting at an old-fashioned writing desk signing autographs for my children and grandchildren. I am a great believer that people reveal themselves in the way they respond to children, and I am pleased to say that Mr. Mandela showed himself to be the best of men in that regard.

...

In 1993, shortly after I left office, I was asked by the ANC to travel to South Africa to serve as one of many official observers of that country’s first free elections. I was, of course, honored by the selection, and I agreed instantly. Having just completed a grueling campaign and endured a difficult loss, I was ready to be uplifted. The old regime had crumbled, and it appeared that Mandela, having endured all those years in prison and a lifetime of abuse, might finally ascend to the South African presidency. Bill Lynch had preceded me and gone on the stump with him, working to get the ANC elected in Pretoria, Durban, and the country’s rural areas and mountains. He had witnessed Mandela travel to the white Afrikaners’ farmland—these people were supposed to hate him!—and seen him turn their resistance into belief. If Bill had anything to do with it, I felt Mandela’s election was secure.

We visited Bishop Desmond Tutu’s residence, which was modest, and Oliver Tambo’s, which was magnificent. We went to Bishop Tutu’s church and heard him preach. The building was substantial; the crowd was sizable, a couple of hundred at least, and jubilant. Bishop Tutu, it turned out, was a hell of a preacher!

We stayed at the home of Walter Sisulu and visited with Mr. Mandela at his house in Soweto. On election day a group of us traveled to a polling station and found it rather empty. With time on my hands, I perused the ballot and found it to be quite different from what I was used to in America. First, the design was complicated, not a simple list of candidates’ names and parties. It made Florida’s butterfly ballot look like a study in simplicity. Then there was a photograph of each candidate printed directly on each ballot! For a moment I was taken aback, but then it occurred to me that this was to assist those voters who were not able to read. Still, it was quite a shock the first time I saw it. We waited for voters to arrive in great numbers.

Nothing was going on, at least not at that polling place, so three or four of us climbed into the car and drove to another, looking for action. A few miles down the road we found some.

As we arrived we witnessed a phalanx of vehicles and television cameras and lights and people standing around with tape recorders and pencils in their hands. What were they so excited about? First in line to vote was Bishop Tutu. He cast his ballot in the box, then jumped in the air and let out a joyful noise.

“Wheee!”

This, to me, was the sound of freedom.

...

It is testament to the grace and power of the man that, upon his election as president of South Africa, Mr. Mandela invited his captors, his jailers!—the men who had been physically responsible for the minute details of his incarceration, separate and apart from the people on high in the government—to attend his inauguration. Such forgiveness! I also attended and was standing near Gen. Colin Powell when South Africa’s air force performed a flyover of the grandstand. The former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff looked up at the planes streaking by and said, “They’re all his!”

South Africa’s future was hopeful but not secured. So many wrongs would not miraculously be cured the day Mandela took office. So many expectations would not be met even in one wonderfully symbolic term. No one was more aware of that than I. But there was enormous work to be done, and a country to heal. I had faith in the men who would try. Who but Mandela and Bishop Tutu could have conceived and created a Truth and Reconciliation Commission? White or black, you could come before the commission and confess to dastardly “politically motivated” acts committed during the apartheid regime, and if your story was accepted, you would be granted amnesty and accepted back into a new and civil society. Can you imagine if someone had suggested such a commission in lieu of the Nuremburg trials after World War II? We’d have had World War III!

When Mandela retired after one term as president, at the age of eighty-one, he remained a presence for good. I continue to find him an inspiration.