Page 148 - Leadership Lessons of the White House Fellows

LEADERS TAKE RISKS

in prison. One of those imprisoned was former African National Congress
leader Nelson Mandela, whose wife, Winnie, remained an outspoken oppo-
nent of apartheid despite herself being incarcerated and harassed repeatedly.
In the mid-1980s, antiapartheid activists were stepping up the pace of boy-
cotts, protests, and uprisings in response to the regime’s racist practices, and
violence was bloodying the region. Black South Africans and their sympa-
thizers desperately needed help dismantling the apartheid system.
That’s why Ron Quincy was thrilled when he was assigned to work
during his Fellowship as a foreign affairs advisor in the State Department,
where his focus would be on South Africa. After successfully handling some
small in-office projects, Quincy was tapped to organize an education mis-
sion to South Africa for fifteen presidents of historically black American
colleges and universities that were going to team up with colleges and uni-
versities in South Africa. Faculty exchanges, research collaborations, and
student scholarships would be part of the program, and Quincy was in
charge of planning and carrying out the advance trip for the college pres-
idents. “It was so funny because I had never traveled abroad in my life. But
suddenly here I am with a diplomatic passport, off to South Africa,”
Quincy said. “We stopped first in London to meet the U.S. ambassador to
the Court of Saint James’s, and then we moved on for two weeks over to
South Africa. It was a very successful mission. They all said I was all right
for a guy who had never been anywhere!”
Quincy was so “all right” that at the end of his Fellowship year he was
asked to stay on at the State Department to work with the South and South-
ern African Working Group. In that role he helped craft the Comprehen-
sive Anti-Apartheid Act of 1986 which imposed economic sanctions on the
South African government and required U.S. corporations working in South
Africa to divest their holdings. It also mandated that the U.S. government
work with and provide financial assistance to black South African human
rights organizations and labor unions and barred South African government
leaders from traveling to the United States without special permission.

During his tenure at the State Department, Quincy again had to dust off
his diplomatic passport for a trip to South Africa, and although travel
throughout the region was always risky in that era, this trip would be espe-
cially perilous. He would have to watch not only his own back but also that
of a very special traveling partner. Secretary of State George Schultz had

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