Invictus - Carlin [76]
“François Pienaar was the captain of rugby and if I wanted to use rugby, I had to work with him,” Mandela said. “I concentrated in our meeting on complimenting him for the role which he was playing and which he could play. And I briefed him on what I was doing about sports and why I was doing so. And I found him a highly intelligent person.” The time had come, as Mandela explained to his guest, to abandon the old perception of the Springbok rugby team as “enemies” and see them as compatriots and friends. His message was, “Let us use sport for the purpose of nation-building and promoting all the ideas which we think will lead to peace and stability in our country.”
Pienaar had become the latest Afrikaner to be “enveloped,” as he himself put it, in Mandela’s aura; but he did not become an overnight evangelizer. He was a straightforward rugby man, for whom big words like “nation-building” carried little meaning. The message he took away from that meeting was a straightforward one: Get out there and win, wear that shirt with pride, certain of my support. Mandela bade Pienaar good-bye as if they were already the best of friends.
Mandela returned to his job, Pienaar to his, neither realizing the uncanny similarity between the enterprises each faced. Pienaar, new to the captain’s job, viewed with some reservation by a sector of the rugby fraternity that questioned his character and his ability, had a tough task ahead: consolidating his authority and uniting the rugby team. This required a significant measure of political skill, for the Springboks were big men with big egos drawn from provincial teams accustomed to see each other as fierce enemies in the big domestic competition, the South African Super Bowl, the Currie Cup.
The Afrikaans-English divide presented another challenge. Handling James Small, one of the most talented “Englishmen” in South African rugby, proved an early test of Pienaar’s leadership. Small, a relatively short and light member of the team at six feet and two hundred pounds, was one of the team’s fastest sprinters—and most volatile characters. Pienaar’s joy at beating England the week before he met Mandela had been tarnished by the memory of something Small had said to him on the field during the game. A lapse by Small had led to England being awarded a penalty kick. Pienaar rebuked him with a gruff “Come on, James!” to which Small replied, “Fuck off !” Pienaar was shocked. The role of captain in other sports often has a token or ceremonial quality to it, but in rugby it carries real weight. Not only does the captain exercise a great deal of tactical authority during a game, calling moves that in American football, say, would be made by coaches on the sidelines, he also carries, by rugby tradition, a special mystique. The rest of the team is expected to relate to him with something of the deference schoolchildren regard a school principal, or soldiers a commanding officer. Small’s “Fuck off!” was an act of insubordination so serious that, unchecked, it could have ended up corroding Pienaar’s influence over the entire team. After the game, Pienaar, who towered over Small, took him to one side and firmly informed him that he would never, ever swear at him on the field again. Small had a reputation as a barroom brawler way beyond Pienaar’s, even, but he heard his captain loud and clear. He never did swear at him again.
South Africa, making up for the lost years of isolation with a sudden blur of international games, traveled to New Zealand for the first