George Houser first met Nelson Mandela in March of 1990, just one month after the South African leader was released from 27 years in prison.
Houser, a retired minister who lives in Santa Rosa, has dedicated most of his life to working on civil rights issues, especially in Africa. Like Mandela, who died Thursday at 95, Houser spent much of four decades working to free South Africa from its white minority apartheid regime.
From his first meeting with Mandela, Houser recalls a feeling of being in the presence of a great man.
"He had such an aura about him," said Houser, who is a spry 97 years old with a tremendous memory. "You couldn't help but be conscious that here was this unusual man, this icon."
Houser founded Americans for South African Resistance in 1952 to organize support for the African National Congress, Mandela's party, and its defiance campaign against apartheid.
He first visited South Africa in 1954 and met with activists including Oliver Tambo, Joe Matthews and Mandela's mentor, Walter Sisulu. Mandela, an up-and-comer in the ANC at the time, was not available for a meeting.
Houser's activism got him banned from South Africa for the next 40 years, but he continued to support the ANC's struggle and led the call for American sanctions and divestment for the apartheid regime. Mandela's defiance campaign landed him in Robben Island prison.
Houser worked closely with Sisulu, who first told him about Mandela. Later, Houser wrote a book based on his conversations with Sisulu, a former ANC secretary-general.
"I learned a lot about Mandela from Walter Sisulu," Houser said. "Mandela was younger, but he certainly had prestige. Sisulu said &‘When I met Mandela, I knew he was the one.' I believed him."
After Mandela was elected as South Africa's first post-apartheid president in 1994, Houser visited the country many times. In 1995, he met Mandela at the presidential office in Cape Town.
"Mandela came striding out of his office and said &‘Where's George Houser?'" he said. "He had been in prison for 27 years, so we had a little chat about that. We talked about the success of the resistance campaign."
Houser keeps a framed photograph taken at that meeting, of the two smiling men in suits shaking hands, on a bookshelf at the Rincon Valley home where he lives with Jean, his wife of 71 years.
In 1998, Mandela and Houser spoke at a memorial service for Anglican bishop and anti-apartheid leader Trevor Huddleston.
"I spoke after he had spoken, and he waved me to come over to where he was sitting," Houser said. "What an impressive personality he was. He remembered that we had supported the defiance campaign, and we touched on the things that brought us together."
Houser met with Mandela four or five times, he said. On his last trip to South Africa, in 2010, current South African president Jacob Zuma presented Houser with the Oliver Tambo prize for his work fighting against apartheid.
The award included a hardwood walking stick with a copper snake coiled around the shaft, which Houser proudly displays. During that trip, Mandela's health was already failing, and he had retired from public life.
Though Mandela's death was not a surprise, Houser said the occasion has allowed him to reflect on the life of one of the most luminous figures in modern history.
"It was a long struggle, the fact that he had been in prison for all those years, and then the campaign to support Nelson Mandela becoming international," he said. "All of this made Mandela a larger-than-life figure. One felt that in his presence."
(You can reach Staff Writer Matt Brown at 521-5206 or matt.brown@pressdemocrat.com.)
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