In June 2003, John Thornton stepped down as Goldman Sachs’ president to begin a second career as director and professor of global leadership at Beijing’s Tsinghua University, where he became the school’s first non-Chinese full professor. Thornton, 51, is still shuttling between New York and Beijing, but now he has another cause, and another continent, to champion. Last month he was named founding chairman of the Nelson Mandela Legacy Trust in the U.S., created to raise a permanent endowment to support the work of three foundations begun by Mandela, and focused on development across Africa.
“The purpose of this new, independent and prestigious body will be to support the work, on the ground in Africa, of my legacy organizations,” Mandela, 86, said at a gathering of supporters at a private dinner last month in New York. “I am excited about what they can achieve if they have proper backing in the U.S. and elsewhere.”
The three legacy organizations are the Nelson Mandela Foundation, established in 1999 to fund health and education projects; the Nelson Mandela Children’s Fund, begun in 1995 to promote the social, legal, economic and political rights of children; and the Mandela Rhodes Foundation, started in 2002 to offer scholarships and fellowships to university students in South Africa.
“It’s disgraceful the way the world treats Africa,” says Thornton. “Africa is in dire straits, and something needs to be done about it. The moral issue is overwhelming.” A registered charity, the Mandela Legacy Trust is in the process of assembling a board of trustees and preparing a fundraising campaign to channel resources to Mandela’s South African operations.
“In the end, people help themselves the best, but where is the impetus to change going to come from?” Thornton says. “Many African governments haven’t been effective, and businesses are too embryonic and small. Nelson Mandela is uniquely able to create an organization that can have an unparalleled moral standing in the world and use it to create a world-class capability on the ground that can support and encourage efforts throughout the region.”
