Norton Remembers Nelson Mandela

WASHINGTON, DC – Congresswoman Eleanor Homes Norton (D-DC), who was a leader in the Free South Africa movement before being elected to Congress, was in South African on the day that Nelson Mandela was released from prison, and met him when he became president of his country, today released the following statement upon learning of his death.

"Nothing about Nelson Mandela's life was predictable, not even his passing on his own time, rather than months ago when it was predicted that he was dying. He could not have predicted that he would spend his most productive years in prison at Robben Island. Or that his imprisonment would inspire a world-wide movement and that many of the governments of the world, including our own, would employ sanctions to secure the end of apartheid and his release from prison.

The world could not have predicted that out of his harsh imprisonment, Mandela, would become a model of selfless, even self-effacing leadership the world had not seen. When, along with Walter Fauntroy, Mary Frances Berry, and Randall Robinson, I went into the South African Embassy years before being elected to Congress, I did not foresee that our visit would help spur a Free South Africa movement and the arrests of the well known and the little known at the South African Embassy for the end of apartheid and the release of Nelson Mandela. I did not foresee that there would emerge from Robben Island a man who would convert his personal suffering to the highest uses of reconciliation and a new democratic South Africa. I did not foresee that Mandela could gently and peacefully lead his racially torn nation so that blacks and whites together would want to begin the work of developing multi-racial egalitarian society. Nelson Mandela's legacy in history was written long before he died today. Securing and spreading his model of leadership are the challenges he has left to today's world."

Published: December 5, 2013