Invictus - Carlin [94]
The Argus then listed the five “key factors” that enabled rugby to become “a unifying catalyst”: Mandela’s vociferous support for “our boys” and his wearing of the Springbok cap; Archbishop Tutu’s public support; the rugby team acting in concert with the “One Team, One Country” slogan; the team’s success on the field; the singing of the new combined anthem and the waving of the new flag.
Here was the fruit of all Mandela’s behind-the-scenes orchestration, and he was thrilled to see patriotic variations on the same points made in all the papers. He was pleased to see black newspapers entering into the spirit of the thing. The big-selling Sowetan was especially memorable because it was they who coined a new South African word that would catch the imagination of the whole of black South Africa—“AmaBokoBoko,” a new word for the Springboks, one that at last gave black people ownership of them too. But what gave Mandela special satisfaction were the Afrikaans newspapers, for they could barely contain their euphoria at the manner in which black South Africa had embraced the Springboks. Die Burger quoted a statement from the famously radical ANC Youth League that said, “Bring the cup home, Boks! We’re waiting!” Beeld quoted the ANC’s chief negotiator in the constitutional talks, former trade union chief Cyril Ramaphosa, declaring, “We’re proud of our national team, the Springboks.” Mandela especially enjoyed seeing himself quoted on the front pages of both Beeld and Die Burger. “I have never been so proud of our boys,” Mandela read himself saying. “I hope we will all be cheering them on to victory. They will be playing for the entire South Africa.”
That word “hope” revealed a glimmer of concern. The crowd he would face today would be the most daunting of all his life. Down at Newlands Stadium in Cape Town, for the first game against Australia, it had been a different matter. The Cape was South Africa’s white liberal stronghold. The Afrikaners there were softer, gentler. They were the descendants of those Boers who had decided not to head off on the Great Trek north, who had not taken such grave offense at the British Empire’s decision to abolish slavery. But the Transvaalers at Ellis Park, they had Piet Retief and the Battle of Blood River written into their DNA. These were the people, many of them, who would have cheered the attack on the World Trade Centre, for some of whom, as Bekebeke had bitterly observed, the phrase “Give way, kaffir!” had been the habit of a lifetime. These were the people who had “voted Nat” all their lives and who had, in some cases, since shifted their allegiances to the far right. Of the 62,000 at Ellis Park that afternoon, many, if not the majority, would look as if they had stepped straight out of a Boer defiance rally. They’d be sporting their game-warden khaki outfits, their long woolen socks, their big bellies, home to countless Castle lagers and innumerable boerewors sausages. Mandela had been the chief attraction at more mass gatherings than anyone alive, but he had never ventured into a crowd like this.
Glancing out of the window of his living room, Mandela caught sight of his bodyguards outside, in the driveway, muscular men, sixteen of them, checking their weapons, filling out forms, looking under the hoods of the cars, and chatting amiably with each other. He’d noticed that, until a few weeks ago, his black and white bodyguards had offered a bleak picture of apartheid separateness. Now he could see them chatting away together, gesturing emphatically, smiling, laughing.
“We were chatting away about what to do to stop the All Blacks, some reckoning we had no chance, others that we’d be better on the day,” Moonsamy said, “when in the middle of it all the idea popped out that it would be great if the president wore the green-and-gold Springbok jersey to the stadium.” When pressed, Moonsamy admitted it had been he who had come up with the idea. The impact on his colleagues, he admitted, was electric. “We were all