"Mandela and Coke: How One of the World’s Most Well-Known Companies Courted a Black Revolutionary"

This paper tells the story of how one of the world’s most well-known companies, The Coca-Cola Company, courted South African freedom fighter and later president, Nelson Mandela. This story is all the more remarkable considering that at the time Coca-Cola faced heavy criticism from anti-apartheid activists protesting the companies continued sale of its products in South Africa in spite of calls for divestment, and Nelson Mandela was still widely considered to be a communist and on the U.S. terrorist watch list. More than a case of strange bedfellows, the history of Coke’s partnership with Mandela is illustrative of how certain American corporations re-branded themselves amid debates on the role of U.S. business in Apartheid South Africa. In the face of repeated calls for sanctions and divestment against South Africa, U.S. corporations like Coke gradually relinquished their previous stance that South African Apartheid was a “domestic” matter, better left to the South African government and people to handle. Instead, with the help of black American executives like Coca-Cola VP Carl Ware and others, they began to court black South African businesspeople and political activists through offering financial and other forms of assistance. In doing so, these companies succeeded in pulling off one of the most spectacular transformations in the history of modern business. They re-branded American business a partner in building a post-apartheid, and post-racial, world.
Brands, as others have shown, have become one of corporations’ most valuable assets. Yet, not enough attention has been paid to the deployment of race and black bodies in corporate branding. Through analyzing how Coca-Cola used its partnership with Mandela and other anti-apartheid heroes like Desmond Tutu, including the strategic use of photographs alongside the company’s logo, this paper further shows how U.S. companies profited from their partnership with prominent black figures.