page_title: Harry Schwarz
section_title: South African Ambassador to United States
hierarchical_section_title: Harry Schwarz / South African Ambassador to United States
caption_attribution_description: English: The new post-apartheid South African flag being unveiled to the United States by Ambassador Harry Schwarz to US President Bill Clinton and Vice-President Al Gore. 6 May 1994 at the State Department.
context_page_description: Harry Heinz Schwarz was a South African lawyer, statesman and long-time political opposition leader against apartheid in South Africa, who eventually served as the South African Ambassador to the United States during the country's transition to majority rule.
  Schwarz rose from the childhood poverty he experienced as a German-Jewish refugee to become a lawyer and a member of the Transvaal Provincial Council, where from 1963 to 1974, he was Leader of the Opposition. In the 1964 Rivonia Trial he was a defence lawyer. Advocating a more aggressive political opposition to the National Party's racial policies in the 1960s and 1970s, as Leader of the United Party in Transvaal and leader of the liberal "Young Turks", he clashed with the United Party establishment. He pioneered the call in white politics for a negotiated end to apartheid and in 1974 signed the Mahlabatini Declaration of Faith with Mangosuthu Buthelezi for a non-racial democratic society in South Africa. He was in the opposition for over 40 years and was a founding member of the Democratic Party.
context_section_description: Harry Schwarz was the first serving politician from the parliamentary opposition ranks to be appointed to a senior ambassadorial post in South African history as well as the first Jewish ambassador. He was also accredited as the first South African High Commissioner to Barbados in 1993 when diplomatic relations opened. Schwarz had previously received behind-the-scenes offers to accept a Cabinet position, by President P.W. Botha and Prime Minister B.J. Vorster, but refused every time due to his opposition to apartheid. He agreed to the appointment of ambassador because of the government's commitment to the fundamental reforms that he had fought for, as well as on the terms that the National Party would not try to take his seat in Yeoville.
  In an interview with the New York Times Schwarz said that "He hasn't asked me to change my political convictions," speaking of President de Klerk. "He knows that I'm implacably opposed to apartheid. Otherwise, there's no logic in asking me to do this job." Nor, Mr. Schwarz added, was he bound for Washington to represent South Africa's five million whites. "I've made it clear that I want to be ambassador for 37 million people." A comment in the Boston Herald, typified the reaction among much of the US press: "When a man who has devoted most of his life to the struggle for a new South Africa tells you that apartheid is dead and that sanctions are holding up its burial, he speaks with a moral authority that is difficult to assail." The fact that Schwarz, a well known and respected anti-apartheid leader was willing to accept the post was widely acknowledged in South Africa as a further demonstration of President F. W de Klerk's determination to introduce a new democratic system.
caption: Ambassador Harry Schwarz unveiling the new South African flag to the United States and President Bill Clinton in May 1994
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