Invictus - Carlin [103]
That was the point. Mandela had accurately gauged the power of his gesture when he had said that wearing the jersey “would have a terrific impact on whites.” He was everybody’s king that day. He had already had one coronation, at the soccer stadium in Soweto on the day after his release. That day, he was crowned king of black South Africa. Five years later, his second coronation was taking place at Afrikanerdom’s holy of holies, the national rugby stadium.
Van Zyl Slabbert, Morné du Plessis’s youthful inspiration and Braam Viljoen’s boss at the Pretoria think tank, was in the stadium. “You can have no idea what it meant to me to see these classic Boers all around me, with their potbellies, in their shorts and long socks, real AWB types, drinking brandy and Cokes, to see these guys, these northern Transvaal rednecks singing ‘Shosholoza,’ led on by a young black guy, and cheering Mandela,” said Slabbert, aghast at the recollection of the scene. “You would have expected him when he became president to say, ‘I’m going to get you . . .!’ Yet, no, he contradicts every stereotype of vengeance and retribution.”
Archbishop Tutu, who as a child would tramp over to Ellis Park to watch games with his mother’s sandwiches, had to live with the cruel irony of being prevented from attending the game due to a prior engagement in the United States. But he would not have missed the game for anything. He watched it, early in the morning, in a bar in San Francisco.
“Nelson Mandela has a knack of doing just the right thing and being able to carry it off with aplomb,” Tutu said. “Some other political leader, head of state, if they had tried to do something like he did, they would have fallen flat on their faces. But it was just the right thing. It’s not anything that you can contrive . . . I believe that that was a defining moment in the life of our country.”
No one captured the sea change that Mandela had effected better than Tokyo Sexwale, who had spent thirteen years on Robben Island convicted of terrorism and conspiracy to overthrow the government; who out of prison had become the assassinated Chris Hani’s closest friend; who as premier of Gauteng (previously Transvaal) Province had become one of the half dozen most prominent figures in the ANC.
“This was the moment when I understood more clearly than ever before that the liberation struggle of our people was not so much about liberating blacks from bondage,” Sexwale said, picking up on the core lesson he had learned from Mandela in prison, “but more so, it was about liberating white people from fear. And there it was. ‘Nelson! Nelson! Nelson!’ Fear melting away.”
And what of the last Doubting Thomas? What of Justice Bekebeke, the only one of the gang of eight at the Paballelo barbecue not wearing a Springbok jersey? It was a defining moment in his life too. He finally capitulated, powerless before the rushing tide of new South African sentiment that Mandela had unleashed.
“An hour before the game I was still torn and confused,” he said. “But then we turned on the TV and we saw these guys singing ‘Shosholoza’ and then that amazing fly-past and then the old man, my president, wearing the Springbok jersey. Well, I was battling! I still could not quite shake off the old resentment and hatred, yet something was happening to me, and I realized that I was changing, I was softening, until I just had to give up, to surrender. And I said to myself, well, this is the new reality. There is no going back: the South African team is now my team, whoever they are, whatever their color.
“This was a watershed for me. For my entire relationship with my country, with white South Africans. From that day on everything changed. Everything was redefined.”
CHAPTER XVIII
BLOOD IN THE THROAT
“I couldn’t sing the anthem,” François Pienaar admitted. “I dared not.” He had been desperate to rise to the occasion, to set an example, not to let Mandela down. He had rehearsed the scene over and over in his mind. But when the time came, when the two teams lined