Invictus - Carlin [18]
Mandela thought hard. He had subdued all his other commanding officers, but the prickly, insecure Van Sittert would put his powers of seduction seriously to the test. Mandela spoke to Brand, probing for weaknesses. And, through Brand, he found one. Sittert was a rugby nut. So Mandela, who had no special interest in rugby, set about zealously learning about the game in preparation for the major’s monthly visit. He read the rugby pages in the newspapers for the first time in his life, watched the sports programs on his TV, and generally boned up on all the latest news so that he could engage the major on his life’s passion with seeming plausibility.
Mandela had an incentive beyond the political satisfaction of snaring more white prey. He had a particular need, a request he wished to make that would impinge significantly on his immediate well-being and that only the major could grant. He didn’t want to wait another month for a chance to satisfy that need, so he had to seize the moment when it came. Mandela met Major van Sittert for the first time in the corridor outside his cell. And while he found himself at a sartorial disadvantage, as he had on the day he met Kobie Coetsee, wearing prison clothes while the major was decked out like an army officer, Mandela again was the master of the situation. He welcomed the major as if he were a guest at his home. Then, realizing how unhappy Van Sittert was speaking English, he addressed him in Afrikaans.
“Mandela was very polite, as usual,” Brand recalled. “He greeted him with a big smile and then immediately started talking rugby. Well, I was very surprised! There he was saying that such and such a player was doing very well, but such and such was below his best, and had really disappointed in the last game, and maybe it was time to give such and such a young player a chance, because he seemed a very promising prospect, and so on, and on.” Once the major got over his own amazement, he became quite animated, agreeing with Mandela on practically every point he made. “You could see all those doubts of the major’s just melting away,” Brand said.
Having laid the trap, Mandela lured the major into it. Gingerly, he steered him into his cell, casually mentioning that he had a little problem, one that he felt sure the major would not wish a rugby man like him to endure. He told him that he received more food for lunch than for dinner, and for this reason he had gotten into the habit of keeping some of his lunch until the evening came. The trouble was that by then the food was cold. But there was a solution, Mandela said. He had heard about a device called a hot plate. It seemed like just the thing to resolve his dilemma. “Major,” he said, “would it be at all possible for you to help me obtain one?”
To Brand’s surprise, Van Sittert capitulated without a struggle. “Brand,” he ordered, “go and get Mandela a hot plate!”
He got all that and more, meeting again secretly with Kobie Coetsee, this time at his home. The minister, anxious to afford Mandela the dignity he saw he deserved, arranged for the prison authorities to dress him in a jacket for the first time in twenty-three years, and to drive him over not in a prison van but in a stately sedan. At this second encounter the content of the discussion was more explicitly political. Coetsee, pleased, reported to Botha that prison did indeed seem to have mellowed Mandela, that