Publications
Partners
It is unusual for a tribute to be paid to a legend when he is still alive. As human beings, we are less appreciative of the giants that walk among us and choose only to appreciate them when they have been called to their eternal rest.
However, we continue to draw lessons from people like Andrew Young, who epitomise selflessness as a solid rock on which we should build our struggle to better the lives of others.
I first came to hear of Young when I was a 15-year-old student at St Augustine College in 1968. On April 4 that year, the rector, Father Bethuel, broke the sad news that Dr Martin Luther King, Jr, a friend and colleague of Young, had been assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee.
Dr King had become the face of the civil rights movement in the US. But standing firmly behind him were other men of character, including Young. There is a corollary of this collective leadership that resonates with our own struggle against apartheid.
While Mandela became the face of the struggle against injustice, it was Walter Sisulu who had not only recruited both Mandela and Oliver Tambo to the ANC, but groomed them to be the leaders they became.
When Father Bethuel broke the sad news of the assassination, I never imagined that one day I might share a platform with Young. For us, in those days of 1968, we thought the waters of the Atlantic were so solid that our struggle was not linked to that of our brothers and sisters in the US.
It was Young and leaders like him who gave us hope that our blood was thicker than the waters of the ocean that separated us. It was a hope that the injustice in South Africa was the same injustice in the southern states of the US.
Through thick and thin, in happiness and sadness, Young was there with Dr King until the end. When that racist bullet ripped through Dr King’s flesh, Young was there as his comrade in arms.
Like the biblical Moses, Dr King did not live to see the Promised Land, but I am sure he must be smiling in his grave, as the keys of the White House are today in the hands of a black man.
President Jimmy Carter in 1977 appointed Young as the first African-American ambassador to the UN, just a year after the Soweto uprisings.
His appointment defied the logic of the apartheid government that black people could not be capable leaders in their own right.
Young was later instrumental in the huge investment drive Coca-Cola made into South Africa through the provision of shares in their company to the Kunene Brothers.
They are now the largest black Coca-Cola bottlers in Africa. They have gradually increased their interest in bottling operations since 1994 and now control 75% of the soft drink giant’s geographic bottling area in South Africa.
Apart from this, Young also facilitated scholarships for young South Africans to study and gain knowledge in the US.
As we were preparing to govern, I had the honour of inviting him to attend the first Black Business Summit in Durban as a guest speaker.
I can say without fear of contradiction that Young’s insights at this conference aided our understanding of black economic empowerment and how to develop small and medium-sized enterprises.
Both have become the cornerstone on which we as government are driving our agenda for economic transformation.
As if this were not enough, Young also organised US celebrities and activists such as Danny Glover and Angela Bassett to assist in voter education for our first democratic elections in 1994.
In 1996 he chose to be married to his beautiful partner, Carolyn, in South Africa. I was honoured that my wife, Bridgette, and I were asked by the now late Adelaide Tambo to host the African part of their wedding at our home in Johannesburg.
They could have chosen any other marriage officer in the world, but they chose our own Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu.
As mayor of Atlanta, Young provided the needed leadership in the successful bidding of that city for the centennial Olympics in 1996.
I was honoured to be invited by him to be the special guest during those centennial Games. In my previous capacity as minister of transport, I dispatched a team of officials to learn from the city about how we could adequately prepare for hosting the Fifa World Cup.
We learnt a valuable lesson from those experiences, such that our World Cup in 2010 was considered to be among the most successful global events in history.
