Mandela’s successors, Thabo Mbeki and Jacob Zuma, struggled with translating his legacy into reality for a nation that was still too violent and too poor. Both men harbored suspicions of the West left over from the decades when the United States supported the apartheid government as a bulwark against Communism during the Cold War. They wanted South Africa to be respected as the most powerful nation in the region and taken seriously on the world stage. That’s what we wanted too, and I hoped that a strong and prosperous South Africa would be a force for peace and stability. But respect comes from taking responsibility.
In some instances South Africa could be a frustrating partner. President Mbeki’s denial of the science around the HIV/AIDS epidemic was a tragic mistake, and South Africa usually opposed international humanitarian intervention, even in dire cases such as Libya and Côte d’Ivoire, when civilians were under attack. Sometimes it was difficult to interpret the reasons behind the government’s actions. Just before my final visit to the country, in August 2012, the South Africans refused at the last minute to allow my Diplomatic Security team to bring the vehicles and weapons they needed into the country. My plane sat on the tarmac in Malawi, waiting to hear how the negotiations unfolded. In the end the matter was resolved, and we were finally able to take off. I was leading a delegation of American business leaders from FedEx, Chevron, Boeing, General Electric, and other companies who were looking to expand their investments in South Africa.
We had worked with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to organize the trip because more trade between America and South Africa promised to create jobs and opportunities in both countries. More than six hundred American businesses had already put down roots in South Africa. In 2011, for example, Amazon opened a new customer care center in Cape Town that employed five hundred people, with plans to hire as many as a thousand more. A renewable energy company based in Louisville, Kentucky, called One World Clean Energy, signed a $115 million deal for a biorefinery in South Africa to simultaneously produce electricity, natural gas, ethanol, and biodiesel from organic material. The facility was built in the United States and shipped to South Africa in 2012, employing 250 people in South Africa and up to a hundred skilled trade workers in Kentucky. The American executives I brought along had a chance to meet two hundred South African business leaders to talk about prospects for similar mutually beneficial investments.
At a dinner in Pretoria we were greeted by a rare snowfall (August is winter in the Southern Hemisphere), and some South Africans started calling me Nimkita, “The one who brought the snow.” There was a lot to discuss with my diplomatic counterpart, International Relations and Co-operation Minister Maite Nkoana-Mashabane. She is a strong woman with a good sense of humor and firm views on her country’s prerogatives, who became a friend. Maite hosted dinners for me on both my visits. The guests were predominantly women leaders, including Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, who became the first woman elected to head the African Union. During the 2012 visit a talented South African jazz and pop singer got us all up on our feet. We danced, sang, and laughed together on that snowy night.
On that trip I also paid a final visit to my old friend Madiba, who was living in his ancestral village of Qunu, in the Eastern Cape province of South Africa. There he had spent much of his boyhood, and according to his autobiography, it was the scene of his happiest years. As I walked into his modest house among the rolling hills, I was struck, as always, by his incredible smile and uncommon grace. Even in failing health, Mandela was the embodiment of dignity and integrity. He was, until the end, the captain of his “unconquerable soul,” as described in his favorite poem, “Invictus” by William Ernest Henley.
My spirits were still soaring from our time together when I arrived at the University of the Western Cape in Cape Town for a speech about the future of South Africa and the continent. In my closing sentences I tried to evoke for the young people there just how far they and we had all come because of Mandela. Recalling his humanity toward his former jailers, I asked them to help us create a world of mutual understanding and justice, where every boy and girl can have a fighting chance. I reminded them that the great burden of coming from a country admired by the rest of the world, as both the United States and South Africa are, requires adherence to a set of higher standards. It was his willingness to accept that heavy burden that always set Nelson Mandela apart.
On December 5, 2013, Nelson Mandela died at the age of ninety-five. Like so many others around the world, I grieved the passing of one of the greatest statesmen of our time, and the loss of a dear friend. He had meant so much to our whole family for so long. President Obama asked us to accompany him to the funeral, along with Michelle and George W. and Laura Bush. I joined them, and Bill and Chelsea, who were in Brazil, flew to meet us there.
On the flight over in Air Force One, the President and Mrs. Obama occupied their cabin at the front of the plane. Its two beds, shower, and office make the long flight more bearable for any First Family. The Bushes were assigned the room usually occupied by the medical team. I was in the senior staff room. The Obamas invited the Bushes and me to join them in the big conference room. George, Laura, and I talked about “life after the White House,” and George described his newfound passion for painting. When I asked him if he had any photos of his work, he fetched his iPad to show us his latest subjects, bleached animal skulls found on his ranch. He explained that he was practicing how to paint different shades of white. It was clear he had a natural talent and had worked hard to learn the art. The atmosphere was warm and relaxed. Regardless of politics, we’ve had a unique experience, and finding time to catch up and trade stories is invariably educational and often entertaining.
The memorial ceremony was held in a stadium in Soweto under a steady rain. Present and former Kings, Queens, Presidents, Prime Ministers, and dignitaries from around the world joined thousands of South Africans to pay tribute to the man President Obama called “a giant of history.”
After the public ceremony, Bill, Chelsea, and I visited privately with Graça, other family members, and close staff at their home in Johannesburg. We signed a book of memories in Mandela’s honor and recalled stories of his remarkable life. Another friend, the rock star and activist Bono, had also come to the public memorial. He had become a passionate and effective advocate for fighting poverty across the world, and he developed a partnership and deep friendship with Mandela. Back at the hotel where we were staying, he sat down at a big white piano and played a song in Madiba’s memory. I’m no Condi Rice on the piano, but Bono was generous enough to let me sit next to him and hit a few keys, which delighted my more musical husband.
I thought back to Madiba’s inauguration in 1994 and marveled at all he and his nation had accomplished. But I also hoped that South Africa would take this sad moment to recommit itself to following the course Mandela had begun, toward a stronger, more inclusive democracy and a more just, equal, and humane society. I hoped the same for all of us around the world. When he accepted the Nobel Peace Prize, Mandela shared his dream of “a world of democracy and respect for human rights, a world freed from the horrors of poverty, hunger, deprivation and ignorance.” With that kind of vision, anything is possible, and one of my fondest hopes is that a 21st-century Africa will emerge that creates opportunity for its young people, democracy for its citizens, and peace for everyone. That would be an Africa worthy of Nelson Mandela’s long walk to freedom.
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PART FIVE
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Upheaval
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The Middle East: The Rocky Path of Peace
The Palestinian flag has three horizontal stripes, black, white, and green, with a red triangle jutting out from the hoist. From the time of the Six Day War in 1967 until the Oslo Peace Accords in 1993, it was banned in the Palestinian territories by the Israeli government. It was seen by some as an emblem of terrorism, resistance, and the intifada, th
e violent uprising against Israeli rule that rocked the Palestinian territories in the late 1980s. Even seventeen years after Oslo, the flag remained a controversial and inflammatory symbol among some conservative Israelis. So it was a surprise to arrive in mid-September 2010 at the official residence in Jerusalem of Prime Minister Benjamin “Bibi” Netanyahu, leader of the right-wing Likud Party, and find the black, white, green, and red colors of the Palestinians hanging next to the familiar blue and white flag of Israel.
Flying the Palestinian flag, which Bibi had criticized when his predecessor, Ehud Olmert, had done it some years before, was a conciliatory gesture from the Prime Minister to his other guest that day, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. “I’m glad you came to my house,” Bibi said, as he greeted Abbas. The Palestinian President stopped in the entryway to sign the Prime Minister’s guest book: “Today I returned to this house after a long absence, to continue the talks and negotiations, hoping to reach an eternal peace in the entire region and especially peace between the Israeli and Palestinian peoples.”
The exchange of kind words could not paper over the pressure we all felt that day. As we sat down in Netanyahu’s small private study and began to talk, a deadline hung over our heads. In less than two weeks a ten-month moratorium on the construction of new Israeli settlements in the West Bank would expire. Unless we could reach an agreement to extend the freeze, Abbas had pledged to withdraw from the direct negotiations we had only just begun—and Netanyahu was holding firmly to his position that ten months was more than enough. It had taken nearly two years of difficult diplomacy to get these two leaders to agree to negotiate face-to-face on resolving a conflict that had plagued the Middle East for decades. They were finally grappling with core issues that had eluded all previous efforts at peacemaking, including the borders of a future Palestinian state; security arrangements for Israel; refugees; and the status of Jerusalem, a city both sides claimed as their capital. Now it looked like they might walk away from the table at a crucial moment, and I was far from confident that we would find a way out of the impasse.
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I visited Israel for the first time in December 1981 on a church trip to the Holy Land with Bill. While my parents babysat for Chelsea back in Little Rock, we spent more than ten days exploring the Galilee, Masada, Tel Aviv, Haifa, and the ancient streets of Jerusalem’s Old City. We prayed at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, where Christians believe Jesus was buried and resurrected. We also paid our respects at some of the holiest sites for Christians, Jews, and Muslims, including the Western Wall, the Al-Aqsa Mosque, and the Dome of the Rock. I loved Jerusalem. Even amid all the history and traditions, it was a city pulsing with life and energy. And I deeply admired the talent and tenacity of the Israeli people. They had made the desert bloom and built a thriving democracy in a region full of adversaries and autocrats.
When we left the city and visited Jericho, in the West Bank, I got my first glimpse of life under occupation for Palestinians, who were denied the dignity and self-determination that Americans take for granted. Bill and I both came home from that trip feeling a strong personal bond to the Holy Land and its peoples, and over the years we held on to the hope that one day Israelis and Palestinians might resolve their conflict and live in peace.
Over the next thirty years I would return to Israel again and again, making friends and getting to know and work with some of Israel’s great leaders. As First Lady I developed a close friendship with Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and his wife, Leah, although I don’t think Yitzhak ever forgave me for banishing him to the cold air of the White House balcony when he wanted to smoke. (After Rabin accused me of endangering the peace process with this policy I finally relented and said, “Well, if it will further the effort toward peace, I will rescind the rule, but only as it applies to you!”) The signing of the Oslo Accords by Rabin and Arafat, accompanied by their famous handshake on the South Lawn of the White House, made September 13, 1993, one of the best days of Bill’s presidency. Rabin’s assassination on November 4, 1995, was one of the worst. I will never forget sitting with Leah and listening to their granddaughter Noa’s heartrending eulogy at his funeral in Israel.
Nor will I forget the Israeli victims of terrorism I met over the years. I’ve held their hands in hospital rooms and listened to doctors describe how much shrapnel was left in a leg, arm, or head. I visited a bombed-out pizzeria in Jerusalem in February 2002 during some of the darkest days of the second intifada, in which a few thousand Palestinians and about a thousand Israelis were killed between 2000 and 2005. And I’ve walked along the security fence near Gilo and talked to families who knew a rocket could fall on their home at any moment. These experiences will always be with me.
Here’s just one story of an Israeli who touched my life. In 2002, I met Yochai Porat. He was only twenty-six but already a senior medic with MDA, Israel’s emergency medical service. He oversaw a program to train foreign volunteers as first responders in Israel. I attended the program’s graduation ceremonies and remember the pride in his face as yet another group of young people set off to save lives. Yochai was also a reservist with the Israel Defense Forces. A week after we met, he was killed by a sniper near a roadblock, along with other soldiers and civilians. MDA renamed its overseas volunteer program in his memory. When I visited again in 2005, I met with Yochai’s family, who spoke passionately about how important it was to continue supporting the MDA and its mission. I went home and began a campaign to convince the International Red Cross to admit MDA as a full voting member after half a century of exclusion. In 2006, they agreed.
I am not alone in feeling so personally invested in Israel’s security and success. Many Americans admire Israel as a homeland for a people long oppressed and a democracy that has had to defend itself at every turn. In Israel’s story we see our own, and the story of all people who struggle for freedom and the right to chart their own destinies. That’s why President Harry Truman waited only eleven minutes to recognize the new nation of Israel in 1948. Israel is more than a country—it’s a dream nurtured for generations and made real by men and women who refused to bow to the toughest of odds. It’s also a thriving economy that’s a model for how innovation, entrepreneurship, and democracy can deliver prosperity even in unforgiving circumstances.
I was also an early voice calling publicly for Palestinian statehood. During satellite remarks to the Seeds of Peace Middle East Youth Summit in 1998, I told the young Israelis and Palestinians that a Palestinian state would “be in the long-term interest of the Middle East.” My comments received considerable media attention, coming two years before Bill, near the end of his presidency, proposed statehood in a plan Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak accepted but Arafat didn’t, and three years before the Bush Administration made statehood official U.S. policy.
The Obama Administration came into office during a perilous time in the Middle East. Throughout December 2008, militants from the Palestinian extremist group Hamas fired rockets into Israel from the Gaza Strip, which it had controlled since forcing out its rival Palestinian faction, Fatah, in 2007. In early January 2009, the Israeli military invaded Gaza to stop the rocket attacks. In the final weeks of the Bush Administration, Israeli troops battled Hamas gunmen in the streets of densely populated areas. “Operation Cast Lead” was deemed a military victory for Israel—Hamas suffered heavy casualties and lost much of its stockpile of rockets and other weapons—but it was also a public relations disaster. More than one thousand Palestinians died, and Israel faced widespread international condemnation. On January 17, just days before President Obama’s inauguration, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert announced a cease-fire beginning at midnight, if Hamas and another radical group in Gaza, the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, stopped firing rockets. The next day the militants agreed. The fighting stopped, but Israel maintained a virtual siege around Gaza, closing the borders to most traffic and commerce. Hamas, using secret smuggling tunnels that went under the border with Egypt, i
mmediately began rebuilding its arsenal. Two days later President Obama took the oath of office in Washington.
With the crisis in Gaza dominating world attention, my first call to a foreign leader as Secretary of State was to Olmert. We immediately turned to how to preserve the fragile cease-fire and protect Israel from further rocket fire, as well as address the severe humanitarian needs inside Gaza. We also talked about restarting negotiations that could end the broader conflict with the Palestinians and deliver a comprehensive peace to Israel and the region. I told the Prime Minister that President Obama and I would announce former Senator George Mitchell as a new Special Envoy for Middle East Peace later that day. Olmert called Mitchell “a good man” and expressed his hope that we could work together on all the areas we discussed.
At the start of March, I joined representatives from other international donor countries at a conference in Egypt to raise humanitarian aid for needy Palestinian families in Gaza. It was a step toward helping traumatized Palestinians and Israelis put the latest violence behind them. Whatever you thought of the tangled politics of the Middle East, it was impossible to ignore the human suffering, especially the children. Palestinian and Israeli children have the same right as children everywhere in the world to a safe childhood with a good education, health care, and the chance to build a bright future. And parents in Gaza and the West Bank share the same aspirations as parents in Tel Aviv and Haifa for a good job, a secure home, and better opportunities for their kids. Understanding that is a vital starting point for bridging the gaps that divide the region and providing the foundation for lasting peace. When I made this point at the conference in Egypt, members of the normally hostile Arab media broke into applause.
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