Barbara Mosima Joyce Masekela

Barbara Masekela combined a career in English literature with organizing against apartheid. After leaving South Africa in the 1960s, she studied in Botswana, Swaziland, Ghana, and the United States. She taught at Staten Island Community College and Rutgers University, while chairing the African National Congress’s regional political committee in the United States. ¹

In 1983 Masekela took charge of the ANC’s arts and culture department. She returned to South Africa in 1990, worked as an assistant and chief of staff to Nelson Mandela, and joined the ANC’s National Executive Committee in 1991. Her later public work included trusteeships with the Nelson Mandela Children’s Fund and the Nelson Mandela Foundation. ^{1, 2}

Masekela became ambassador to France and South Africa’s representative at UNESCO in 1995. After returning home in 1999, she directed public and corporate affairs at De Beers. She retired from that executive role in 2003, the year Thabo Mbeki appointed her ambassador to the United States. ²

Her ANC membership subsequently obstructed a private American visit. An April 2008 congressional bill cited her inability to obtain a visa waiver before an ill cousin died in 2007. Legislators used her experience to illustrate immigration restrictions that continued to affect former anti-apartheid activists after South Africa’s transition to democracy. ³