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 fifty years ago, almost to the day, that I arrived in South Africa on my first diplomatic posting.
 
The sad occasion that brings me to South Africa reminds me that  my arrival there in December 1963 coincided roughly with the trial of Nelson Mandela at Rivonia, an affluent "white" suburb some weeks later -- and three years after the banning of the ANC and the Sharpville massacre that killed sixty-nine men, women and children.
 
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 -- prior to departure for South Africa.  Williams imparted to us the essential elements of the new policy: (a) no more US Naval visits to Simonstown in the Cape; (b) all US official representational functions (receptions, dinners, National Day celebrations) henceforth must be multi-racial; and, (c) wide-ranging sanctions.
 
Thus, each diplomat proceeded to South Africa with very clear anti-apartheid instructions, about which there could be no doubt or debate on our part.
 
I arrived in South Africa in the midst of a particularly nasty, 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 so much of legislation in this period, this law served as a pretext to arrest and imprison indefinitely anyone the apartheid regime considered to be engaging in anti-apartheid acts or rhetoric.
 
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 to South Africa and gave me a letter to Mr. Mandela, expressing support for him and his release. I would witness Nelson Mandela's release from prison on 19 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 Mr. Mandela often at his office and home in Soweto.
 
In this period I arranged a phone call through Archbishop Desmond Tutu to President Bush in which he invited Mr. Mandela to visit him at the White House. I vividly remember accompanying Mr. 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 Mr. 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 honor of meeting or communicating with. I was and remain extremely impressed by his courage, lack of bitterness, and his commitment to reconciliation. Mr. Mandela remains an inspiration to all leaders.
 
William Lacy Swing, Director General,  International Organization for Migration Johannesburg, 10 December 2013