Invictus - Carlin [102]
“Then I looked at Mandela there in the green jersey, waving the cap in the air, waving and waving it, wearing that big, wide, special smile of his. He was so happy. He was the image of happiness. He laughed and he laughed and I thought, if only we have made him happy for this one moment, that is enough.”
Rory Steyn, one of the members of Mandela’s presidential bodyguard, also had a front-row seat. He had been deployed as head of security for the All Blacks, which meant he was down on the field with them, by their bench. “Mandela, in that single act of generosity, he carried the entire South Africa into one new nation,” said Steyn, a former security policeman whose business for years had been to persecute the ANC and its allies. “The message from the black population was one we received with gratitude and relief. We share in your elation, they were saying; we forgive you for the past.”
With forgiveness came atonement. That was also what the cries of “Nelson! Nelson!” meant. In paying homage to the man whose prison sentence had been a metaphor for the bondage of black South Africa, they were acknowledging their sin, uncorking their bottled-up guilt.
Linga Moonsamy, standing one step behind Mandela on the grass, drinking it all in, experienced an attack of sensory overload. On the one hand, he was tasting the dream to which he had dedicated his life as a young ANC fighter; on the other, he had a cold-eyed mission to fulfill. “There I was, stuck almost to his back, and there was this roar and the cries of ‘Nelson! Nelson!’ and even though I felt so emotional, more deeply moved than I had ever been in my life, I was also doing a job, I was on full alert, scanning the crowd. And then over to the right-hand corner of the grounds I saw some old South African flags being waved and that caused a totally contrary response in me. The sight sent a chill down my spine. It was a sudden and alarming security alert. I knew we had to keep an eye on that sector of the crowd and I made a note of mentioning it as soon as I could to the rest of the team. Yet I was so torn, because I was absolutely blown away by the understanding of what it meant politically.”
The symbolism at play was mind-boggling. For decades Mandela had stood for everything white South Africans most feared; the Springbok jersey had been the symbol, for even longer, of everything black South Africans most hated. Now suddenly, before the eyes of the whole of South Africa, and much of the world, the two negative symbols had merged to create a new one that was positive, constructive, and good. Mandela had wrought the transformation, becoming the embodiment not of hate and fear, but generosity and love.
Louis Luyt would not have known what to make of it a couple of years earlier, but now he got it too. “Mandela knew this was the political opportunity of his life and, by God, he seized it!” said Luyt. “When that crowd exploded, you could see: he was South Africa’s president that day without one vote against. Yes, the presidential inauguration a year earlier was a great thing, but it was the conclusion of an election which some had won and some had lost. Here we were all on the same side. Not