Invictus - Carlin [85]
Pienaar was as moved as his friend, but his motivation was even more personal. He was the only Springbok to have sat down with Mandela one-on-one, and he was particularly anxious that his team project an image that would please Mandela. But he was also thinking, as he did always with relentless detail, what the team did off the field might improve their performance on it. And as he heard himself and his teammates singing, his rugby brain clicked into action. He understood that victory in a top-class rugby game was 50 percent psychology, and saw a sporting value in the song, beyond the politics. “I made up my mind right there and then that this was an unexpected plus that Morné had given us; that it could give us something special going into a game, if we respected it and felt the energy of it,” Pienaar said, before adding, with a smile and a shake of the head, “but . . . it’s amazing to think about. The Afrikaans boys singing that anthem!”
Anne Munnik was about to wrap up the lesson when the team’s three largest players, Kobus Wiese, Hannes Strydom, and Balie Swart, made a request: could they sing the song one more time, just the three of them? “I said, ‘Of course!’ And then they began, like three giant choirboys, softly at first, rising, rising to the high notes. They sang it so, so beautifully! The other players just stood there with their mouths open. No laughing, no jokes. They just stood and stared.”
For the big men, singing this song had the power of an epiphany. “That was my innocent ignorance shattered!” Wiese exclaimed. “When I learnt the words of that song, doors opened for me. Ever since then, when I hear a whole group of black people sing ‘Nkosi Sikele,’ it’s, like, stunning, man. It’s so beautiful.”
You could be as dubious about the Springboks as Justice Bekebeke or as generous-minded as Mandela, but any black South African who walked into that room at the moment when this Boer trio burst into song would have been stunned too.
CHAPTER XIV
SILVERMINE
On May 25, 1995, the Springboks would meet the reigning world champions, Australia, in the first match of the World Cup in Cape Town. The day before, the team was gathered at Silvermine, an old military base inside a mountainous nature preserve on the Cape Peninsula, where they had established a temporary training camp. On the eastern half of the peninsula’s narrow waist, Silvermine was one of the most beautiful spots in South Africa. Looking north, you saw the totemic monolith of Table Mountain. Looking south, you saw the rocky extremity where the Indian and Atlantic oceans met. All around were cliffs, forests, valleys, and sea.
The team had just finished an afternoon training session when they looked up and saw a big military helicopter throbbing down from the sky. Morné du Plessis, who had been tipped off about the visit, had put on a suit and tie. As they gawked up at the flying machine descending toward the field, he announced that this was Mandela on his way to see them. They continued to stare as Mandela himself stepped out from under the rotor blades in a bright red and orange shirt, worn loose below the waist, in what had become his trademark presidential style. As Mandela strode smiling toward them, the players crowded forward, jostling each other like photographers at a press conference, craning their necks to get the best