Invictus - Carlin [87]
It also remained to be seen how much support black South Africans would really give the Springboks, how effective Mandela had been in his efforts to persuade his people that the old green-and-gold jersey was now theirs too.
The Presidential Protection Unit provided as good a barometer of the national mood as any. They were one group of South Africans who went to bed on the night before the game against Australia feeling as tense as the Springboks themselves. But for different reasons. “For that first game against Australia the security challenge was huge and the security arrangements enormous,” said Linga Moonsamy, the former ANC guerrilla and a member of the PPU since Mandela’s inauguration. “We spent weeks planning for that day. We went up and down examining every high-rise around the stadium. We placed snipers on rooftops at strategic points, we placed people at the points of weakness inside the stadium.”
The PPU was united in its sense of mission but split down the middle between blacks and whites, between former members of Umkhonto we Sizwe, like Moonsamy, and former members of the security police. “The Umkhonto guys and the police guys: people who’d been each other’s mortal enemies, literally—we had wanted to kill each other for years,” Moonsamy said, “though they succeeded, it should be said, more than we did.”
The split extended to rugby. Being in Mandela’s presence day in, day out for a year had smoothed Moonsamy’s sharper edges. But he was still some way from actively supporting the Springboks or, for that matter, understanding what the game was about.
“There had been plenty of rumors that the white far right would use the competition to stage a terrorist act against the new democracy, against Mandela himself,” Moonsamy recalled. “Our white colleagues were as aware of that possibility as us, and they were prepared, like us, but the big difference was that they were, if anything, even more nervous about the outcome of the game itself. We looked at them, smiled, and shook our heads. We just didn’t get it.”
At the event, the PPU’s preparedness paid off. The South Africa- Australia game went without a hitch. Mandela was helicoptered from the presidential residence in Cape Town to a tall building near the stadium. From the building he traveled in a silver armored BMW to the stadium, with Moonsamy, who was number one bodyguard on the day, sitting in the passenger seat before him. Amid all the excitement, Mandela had not forgotten Hennie le Roux’s cap. He wore it at the tournament’s opening ceremony, where the sixteen teams taking part in the tournament went on parade there at Newlands Stadium alongside 1,500 dancers (or 1,501, Mandela himself joining and performing a lively jig), before the inaugural game itself. And he wore it when he went out onto the pitch to shake the hands of the two teams, to a warm cheer from the overwhelmingly white 50,000-strong crowd, among whom new South African flags abounded. He kept wearing it when the Springboks sang the twin national anthems, into which they now invested equal emotion, if in the case of “Die Stem” they still showed more familiarity with the words.
The game itself was a triumph for the Springboks. All the pressure had worked in their favor, in the end, and they beat Australia, whom none had beaten for fourteen months, more comfortably than the score—27 points to 18—suggested. Joel Stransky was the man of the match, scoring 22 of the Springbok points, 17 of them from kicks, one a try over the line. As the game neared the end a hastily painted banner emerged from the crowd that read, “Forget the Rhino. Save the Wallaby!” The Australians, themselves ferocious competitors in every sport they played, were gracious in