Invictus - Carlin [118]
NELSON MANDELA: a few weeks short of his eighty-sixth birthday, in June 2004, he called a news conference to announce his retirement, at the end of which he said, “Thank you very much for your attention, and thank you for being kind to an old man—allowing him to take a rest, even if many of you may feel that after loafing somewhere on an island and other places for twenty-seven years the rest is not really deserved.” Since then he has dedicated himself to his three personal charities: the Mandela Rhodes Foundation, the Nelson Mandela Foundation, and the Nelson Mandela Children’s Fund, dedicated respectively to promoting education, fighting poverty, and combating HIV/AIDS.
LINGA MO ONSAMY: is chief of corporate security for South African Airways, but remains close to Mandela. He is married to a niece of Mandela’s wife, Graça Machel, and is often over at Mandela’s home for Sunday lunch.
EDDIE VON MALTITZ: still lives on his farm in the Orange Free State, still wears military camouflage gear, still carries a gun, and still phones South African radio stations to denounce perceived wrongs.
MORNÉ DU PLESSIS: runs the Sports Science Institute of South Africa and is a member of the World Sports Academy, a body of former sporting greats that includes Jack Nicklaus, Dan Marino, Martina Navratilova, and Sir Bobby Charlton. Each year they gather to select the winners of the Laureus World Sports Awards, sports’s closest equivalent to the Hollywood Oscars.
CONSTAND VILJOEN: runs a farm peacefully in what is now called Mpumalanga Province (it was the Eastern Transvaal when he grew up there) and takes occasional vacations in Cape Town, staying with his wife at a seashore house available to retired servicemen called “el Alamein.”
BRAAM VILJOEN: devotes his working hours to his farm north of Pretoria. He and his brother are closer than at any time since their childhoods. They enjoy talking politics.
FRANÇOIS PIENAAR: works as a senior executive for First National Bank in Cape Town. Mandela, who is the godfather to his eldest son, Jean, has invited him, his wife, Nerine, and their children to his home on several occasions. Mandela nicknamed Pienaar’s younger son, Stephane, “Gora,” which means “Brave One” in Xhosa.
TOKYO SEXWALE: a philanthropist and multimillionaire businessman, with interests in diamond and platinum, remains a leading force in the ANC.
EUGENE TERREBLANCHE: the leader of the far-right Afrikaner Resistance Movement (AWB) was jailed in 1997 for grievous bodily harm and attempted murder, both involving defenseless black men. He was released in 2004 and now delivers sermons preaching repentance and redemption.
AWB: an editorial in the organization’s newsletter, Storm, published in 2002, said, “Since the 1994 election, patriotic Afrikaner organisations have been debilitated by the uncertainty existing among their supporters about whether they should vote or not. The unity which existed prior to the 1994 election has been destroyed. Our people are disappointed that the ANC has taken over power, and a feeling of powerlessness has overtaken us. Since then the attitude is one of ‘Every man for himself ’ and all interest in politics has disappeared.”
THE SPRINGBOKS: they won the Rugby World Cup again in 2007, beating England in the final, still wearing the green and gold jersey. Yet again, the whole country exploded in celebration, black and white and all shades in between.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
First of all, a thousand thanks to the many players in the South African drama who took the trouble to talk to me for this book.
Thank you to Pearlie Joubert, for fixing for me to see them, and just for being so great.
Thank you to Stephen Glover, as well as Andreas Whittam Smith, for appointing me South Africa bureau chief of the London Independent. Had they not showed such faith in me way back in 1989, this book would never have happened.