Invictus - Carlin [79]
The conservative paper Rapport soon published an article that confirmed what Mandela’s sources had told him. The right-wing coalition was hatching a plot to kill the Zulu king, which was supposed to spark a black rebellion against the ANC. Mandela immediately put his intelligence people and his most trusted police officers on the case. He also went on the political offensive, with rugby once again as his instrument, his carrot. But there was a problem.
Everybody in the ANC leadership, by far the dominant party in the coalition government Mandela was heading, had come around to the idea that staging the Rugby World Cup in South Africa was a good thing. But what many could not stomach was the notion of preserving the Springbok name. They had gotten rid of the old flag, they had half gotten rid of the old anthem, and this, the third great symbol of apartheid, could not be allowed to remain the badge of a team that represented the new South Africa. Word leaked out of the desire of the ANC’s national executive to change the name, and the rugby-loving Afrikaner fraternity was up in arms.
Mandela said he had initially agreed to do away with the Springbok. But the tensions precipitated by the death of Heyns and the sacking of the police chiefs, followed by this latest news of a right-wing plot, made him pause. Looking at the bigger picture, he decided that he had to do something to placate the restless right.
“I decided to act. I made a statement. I suggested that we must retain the Springbok.”
The ANC leadership had responded meekly a year earlier to his chiding on the matter of the anthem, but this time the response was openly rebellious.
“You would not believe it! People like Arnold Stofile! They came out and attacked me! So I called them in one by one and I briefed them. I explained to them the situation.” For Mandela the Springbok was a matter of ultimately cosmetic interest; for the likes of Stofile it was close to their hearts—a source of much accumulated indignation. They could not see the funny side of the argument, as Mandela did.
Mandela phoned Stofile and asked him to stop by his house. “I would like us to talk about this animal,” he said.
“I don’t follow you,” replied Stofile.
“You know, this sports animal.”
They met the next day, and after some hand-wringing, Stofile, informed by Mandela that there was a matter of national security involved, caved in. “In the end,” Stofile said, “we agreed to disagree.” As did the rest of the ANC’s rugby rebels. Mandela had imposed his will once again. In time for the World Cup, the Springbok had been saved.
CHAPTER XIII
SPRINGBOK SERENADE
The question now was whether the Springboks would save Mandela. He had stuck his neck out for the rugby people and now it was up to them to pay him back in kind. Stofile and other members of the ANC National Executive Committee still smarted at the memory of the rugby authorities’ response three years earlier to their decision to allow them to play international rugby again. At the game against New Zealand in 1992, Louis Luyt, the president of the South African Rugby Football Union, had delibarately encouraged the crowd to flout the conditions imposed by the ANC and wave the old flags, sing the old anthem. Luyt, a huge former rugby player himself, had risen from relative poverty