First Woman South African Ambassador Meets With JET/EBONY Editorial Board

Jet, June 7, 1999

Ambassador Sheila Violet Makate Sisulu, South Africa's first woman envoy to the United States, told the JET and EBONY Editorial Board that the country faces new and exciting challenges in the forthcoming transfer of power from the legendary Nelson Mandela to his designated successor, Vice President Thabo Mbeki. The country, she said, has had "its miracles and its Mandela," and the task now is to consolidate the Mandela revolution, especially on the economic level.

The ambassador, who is a member of one of South Africa's First Families --her father-in-law, Walter Sisulu, was a major leader of liberation struggle --thanked African-Americans for their support in the South African liberation struggle and called for a deepening of the historic relations between South Africans and African-Americans.

Before the Editorial Board meeting, she toured the Johnson Publishing Company headquarters, including Fashion Fair Cosmetics, a line which is distributed in South Africa, and viewed direct transmission of computer images from the headquarters of EBONY South Africa to EBONY.