First Person: Riding Along on Nelson Mandela's First U.S. Tour
A South African journalist remembers life on the Mandela plane—and what it taught him about America.
The visit was part of Mandela's 13-nation, six-week Freedom Tour celebrating and cementing his release from incarceration. He wanted to thank supporters, to raise money for the African National Congress (ANC), and to appeal to foreign governments to forgo relaxing sanctions on South Africa until the white minority government had been replaced by a multiracial democracy.
So many journalists applied for seats on Mandela's tour plane that the organizers rotated them, giving preference to hometown press for each leg of the trip. As a reporter for the Johannesburg Star, I was among a handful of journalists to fly on Mandela's plane for the whole American tour.
I joined the plane in New York in June 1990, and for 12 hectic
