Invictus - Carlin [93]
CHAPTER XVI
THE NUMBER SIX JERSEY
June 24, 1995—morning
On the day before the Rugby World Cup final against New Zealand, just after the Springboks had finished their final training session, François Pienaar was in the locker room about to take his boots off when his mobile phone rang inside his kit bag. “Hello, François, how are you?” It was Mandela calling to wish the team good luck. Morné du Plessis made a point of relaying the news to the press. Mandela was delighted to read Du Plessis in the papers, that morning of the final, giving his spin on the phone call. “Mr. Mandela told François he was almost more nervous than the team,” all the papers quoted Du Plessis as saying. “These calls prove he is now part of our camp and our campaign.”
Everything indicated that this day would turn out well, that South Africans had moved on, that a new era of political maturity loomed—but you never quite knew. If he had talked to Niël Barnard, the old Boer spymaster would have told him that in June 1995 “the political situation was still very raw: many whites felt alienated, out of it.” It was hard to tell how those alienated, many of whom would undoubtedly be at the stadium, might react. That was maybe why Mandela, recalling the tense eve of the game, popped out with the surprising remark, “I have never been very good at predicting things.” It was his way of confessing to the misgivings he felt. What if, for all his best efforts, he had misjudged the mood of the Afrikaners? What if some fans jeered during the singing of “Nkosi Sikelele”? What if people started unfurling the flags of the old South Africa, as they had done in that ill-starred game against New Zealand three years earlier?
Those questions floated through his mind as he sat down to the papaya, kiwi, mango, porridge, and coffee breakfast he always enjoyed at his Houghton home. He was concerned, but it would be a mistake to say that he was consumed by worry. The good news outweighed the bad portents. One of the reasons Mandela dispensed with his 4:30 a.m. walk on the day of the rugby final was to devote more time to the morning papers. Usually he devoured the political pages and skimmed the sports section. This time both demanded his attention. Never had he enjoyed the morning press as much as today. The national consensus he had striven so hard to forge around the Springbok cause was reflected in the celebratory unanimity of the editorials and the political analysts. South Africa was giving itself a huge pat on the back. And while there was caution regarding the game’s outcome, reflected in vast respect for New Zealand’s All Black rivals (Die Burger said, “The All Blacks stand like Himalayas before the Boks”), there was a quiet confidence that destiny would be on South Africa’s side. The headline in Cape Town’s main newspaper, the Argus, trumpeted the exultant national mood. “Viva the Boks!” it read. “Viva” was a war cry of black protest down the decades, borrowed somewhere along the way from the Cuban revolution. But better than the headline was the story immediately below it by the newspaper’s “political staff.”
“The Rugby World Cup has led to a spectacular upsurge of national reconciliation among all races in South Africa, researchers and social scientists reported this week.” The article then quoted a well-known Afrikaner academic named Willie Breytenbach saying that the right-wing terrorism threat had been “virtually annihilated” and that the clamor for a separate Afrikaner state had been substantially weakened. “At the same time the mainly black streets of Johannesburg have become remarkably empty when the Springboks play. Township dwellers flock home to watch the matches on TV. . . . Rugby, the remarkable new nation-building phenomenon, has amazed analysts as all races eagerly seize on the event which has released a wave of latent patriotism through