Invictus - Carlin [62]
Real life carried on regardless. Half a mile away from the World Trade Centre, people were working at offices and factories as usual. A mile farther away, passengers checked in for flights at Johannesburg Airport and airplanes continued to take off and land without interruption. The city bustled on as usual, the traffic lights turned red and green, the coffee shops were full. And Pienaar’s Springboks trained like demons, 375 miles away in Durban, for the game the next day against France.
The ANC had had by now ample reason to say, “Enough is enough, we’re taking the carrot away now and never giving it back.” But they did not. Again Mandela, supported by Steve Tshwete, prevailed, arguing that it was not the Viljoens and Terreblanches and the Von Maltitzes they were appealing to, for they were a lost cause for now, but to the ordinary Afrikaners. Like ordinary people everywhere when a country is poised between war and peace, they put safety and prosperity before ideology, watched what way the wind was blowing, tried to judge which option would best serve the interests of their families. For those people, rugby remained an inducement; taking it away would cause them pain, tempt them to lean closer to the Viljoen camp. Mandela understood that rugby was the opium of apartheid, the drug that dulled white South Africa to what their politicians were doing. It might well be useful to have on hand a drug that could anesthetize white South African minds to the pain of losing their power and privilege.
The game against France, a powerhouse in world rugby against whom South Africa had not been allowed to play in thirteen years, was the proudest moment in François Pienaar’s twenty-six years. Played before an exuberant full house of 52,000, it eclipsed, in the popular imagination, the events at the World Trade Centre twenty-four hours earlier. The game ended in a 20-20 draw, but to Pienaar, and to most of white South Africa, it tasted like victory.
CHAPTER X
ROMANCING THE GENERAL
In 1838, the Boer general Piet Retief led a thousand ox-wagons laden with men, women, and children deep into Zulu country. Dingaan, the Zulu king, eyed the trekkers with apprehension. He had received reports that they were gobbling up land wherever they went, but he had also heard that they had inflicted terrible losses on the black tribes that had tried to oppose them. Dingaan’s first instinct was to stand and fight. The Zulus were, after all, the bravest, most disciplined, and most feared warriors in southern Africa. Earlier generations of his people had swept all before them the way the Boers appeared to be doing now. But this enemy had horses and rifles, and the Zulu king reckoned he might be better off trying to strike a deal than pitting his spear-wielding impis against them. So he sent out emissaries to General Retief and invited him to his royal kraal, proposing they come up with a formula to allow them to live side by side in peace.
Retief, whom history holds to have been an honorable man, accepted the invitation, despite warnings from some of his people not to trust the Zulu king, who had ascended to the throne after murdering his half brother, Shaka. Retief calculated, however, that Dingaan would not be so rash as to do the same to the leader of a large contingent of heavily armed white men.
On February 3, Retief arrived at the Zulu capital of uMgungundlovu, which means “the secret place of the elephant,” with a party of sixty-nine men and gifts for Dingaan of cattle and horses. Things went well. Before the end of the next day the two sides agreed to a treaty whereby Dingaan ceded large tracts of land to the Boer pioneers. To celebrate the deal the king invited Retief and his party to a feast two days later featuring traditional Zulu dances. They received instructions, which they politely obeyed, to leave their guns outside the royal kraal. They went in, sat down, and then, as the dancing reached its frenzied high-stepping