U.S. President Bush Gets Bill to End Blocks to Mandela

30 June 2008

By William C. Mann

Congress sent President Bush a bill on Friday that once signed into law will allow Nelson Mandela to visit the United States without the secretary of state having to certify that he is not a terrorist.

Negotiators from the Senate and the House agreed Thursday night on a final version of the bill to remove from U.S. databases the names of the former South African president and anybody else marked only because of a relationship with the African National Congress.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told lawmakers in April that she was embarrassed by the situation.

The ANC has been South Africa's ruling party since the country's rebirth in 1994 as a majority-ruled democracy rather than a white-ruled state where the vote was based on race. The ANC was removed from the State Department's list of terror organizations years ago, but its members have remained on U.S. immigration watch lists. During the Cold War, the West considered the ANC a communist organization that wanted to bring down pro-Western South Africa.

The Mandela situation came up as Rice testified in a legislative hearing in April.

"It is frankly a rather embarrassing matter that I still have to waive in my own counterpart -- the foreign minister of South Africa -- not to mention the great leader, Nelson Mandela," Rice said.

Mandela was awarded the 1993 Nobel Peace Prize with then-South African Prime Minister F.W. de Klerk for peacefully ending the apartheid segregation system and bringing the vote to all South Africans. He easily won the nation's first election where everyone could vote in 1993 and became president.

Mandela turns 90 on July 18. He spent 27 years in prison for his work with the ANC, which the apartheid government banned in 1960.

The State Department alluded to the sensitivity of the ANC situation in a report last year on global terrorism.

In speaking of South African help against terrorists, the report noted: "The South African government is sensitive to distinctions between 'terrorist organizations' and 'liberation movements,' since the ruling African National Congress was long branded a terrorist group during the struggle against apartheid."

Rep. Howard Berman (D-Calif.) introduced the bill to remove the stigma from Mandela and other ANC members.

"The Senate and House have now both affirmed that America's place is on the side of those who fought against apartheid, and there should be no discrimination in our legal code based on their ANC association alone," he said after announcing agreement on the final legislation.