The Foreign Service Journal, May 2004

panied by an armed American secu- rity employee. There was one bul- letproof vest, my husband’s size, hanging in the car. To the Stadium As we drove toward the stadium, I became increasingly fearful as we heard the angry shouts of the young men walking to the service. Fires had been set, and rocks were being thrown at the steel military and police vehicles that were visible all along the road. Although we arrived early, the stadium was already packed and people were standing everywhere in order to see, including the rooftops of the small buildings around it. So it was that we found ourselves the only diplo- mats and, indeed, the only white faces that I could see, at the entrance of a football field crowded with 10,000 agitated ANC and communist mourners. Once inside the stadium, the ambassador and I were taken over by four huge men wearing red shirts with “Communist Party” printed in large black letters on the front and back of the shirts. Trying to smile and not show our nervousness in the midst of the chaos and noise, we explained who we were and were greatly relieved when we realized that these tough looking young men had became our self-appointed body guards. We sincerely hoped that they were up to the job. Very unceremoniously, two of these hefty men held my husband’s arms down by his sides, lifted him off the ground and literally carried him through the crowds. The two others did the same for me. Thus they transported us safely across the length of the stadium, to the platform where they thought we belonged. During this time my heart rate was going through the roof and I felt we had been stupid to come to this event. In our protected white world we could not comprehend the feelings of the masses around us. Later, much later, we were able to joke that, were we to have appeared on American TV surrounded by men in Communist Party shirts, our stay in South Africa might have ended quite abruptly. Politically correct or not, they kept us from any threat of harm and, looking over the livid faces of the crowd chanting anti-everything slogans, we were grateful for their protection. We sat through increasingly irate speeches and became ever more concerned about where this outrage would take the crowd and where it would take the country. When Nelson Mandela finally arrived on the scene, even he seemed in dan- ger of losing control of the crowd; he was booed several times when he spoke out against taking revenge. In the end, to our great relief, he did manage to quiet the people, partly by stressing the fact that it was, after all, a white woman who had taken down the license plate number of the car of Chris Hani’s assassin. After his speech Mandela was told of my husband’s presence and we were informed that he was coming over to greet my husband. I was (and am) used to standing in the background while my spouse conducts business at receptions and dinner parties and all manner of social occasions. I am rather shy, and especially uncomfortable around celebrities. So it was with relief that I stepped back as a world hero stepped up to speak to the American ambassador who, by attending a memorial service, was expressing his support of Mandela’s goals for South Africa. Mandela noticed me in the background and our eyes met. Although he did not know me, he seemed to size up the situation immediately. I could feel him thinking: “Awwww, poor thing, she’s shy.” And then, in spite of the tension we could still feel in the stadium — in spite of the concern he must have had about what he needed to say and do in the next few days to keep the black population’s anger from erupting into a violence that would kill his dreams of a peaceful change of government — over he marched to give me a hug. Nelson Mandela is loved and respected worldwide for his charisma, courage, and the fact that he is a strong leader whose integrity is legendary. But as that encounter demonstrated, it is his kindness and sensi- tivity to others that have made him my hero. F O C U S M A Y 2 0 0 4 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 51 Mandela is loved and respected for his charisma, courage and leadership, but it is his kindness and sensitivity to others that have made him my hero.