Invictus - Carlin [95]
They were due to leave for the stadium at one-thirty. At twelve Moonsamy went inside the house to brief Mandela. The security formalities dispensed with, he said, “Tata”—this was the affectionate name the black bodyguards used with him, meaning Granddaddy—“we were thinking, why don’t you wear the Springbok jersey today’?”
Mandela would usually put on his pensive, sphinx face when someone put forward an entirely novel proposal to him, especially one that carried political repercussions and concerned the always important matter to him of his public image. But this time he did not hesistate in his response. He broke, instead, into a radiant ear-to-ear smile. “He just lit up,” Moonsamy said. “He thought it was a briliant idea.”
Mandela had grasped the value of the gesture immediately. “I decided on this jersey,” he said, “because I thought, ‘When the whites see me wearing that Springbok rugby jersey they will see that here is a man who is now completely behind our team.’ ”
But there was a problem. He did not have a jersey, and there was only an hour and a half left before departure for the stadium. Going straight from Moonsamy to his secretary, Mary Mxadana, he ordered her to phone Louis Luyt, the head of the South African Rugby Football Union, right away. He told her that he wanted not just any jersey but—and this was his own idea—one with Pienaar’s number 6 on it, and a Springbok cap too. (He had left Le Roux’s cap at his residence in Cape Town.)
An hour after Moonsamy had proposed the idea, the jersey was in Mandela’s house, being ironed—at Mandela’s bidding—by his house-keeper. Now Mandela turned his attention to the game itself. His concerns, like those of every Springbok fan and player, focused on a very large black man named Jonah Lomu.
New Zealand had a formidable team, one of the greatest ever. In their captain Sean Fitzpatrick and the veterans Zinzan Brooke, Frank Bunce, Walter Little, and Ian Jones they had players who were not only household names everywhere that rugby was played, they were each the best in their respective positions in the world game. But their secret weapon, being touted already as the most formidable rugby player in history, was the twenty-year-old Jonah Lomu. Of Tongan origin, as dark-skinned as Mandela, he was six foot four and weighed 260 pounds. He was as big as the Springboks’ biggest man, Kobus Wiese, and he could run faster than Williams or Small—100 meters in less than eleven seconds. One newspaper called him “a rhinoceros in ballet shoes.” In the All Blacks’ semifinal against England, one of the favorites in the tournament, he’d proven himself practically unstoppable. He found his way across the line four times, for a total of 20 points. As the London newspapers put it, he made the England team seem like little boys.
Small’s position on the Springbok side meant that he would be the man responsible for keeping Lomu in check. The newspapers produced charts comparing the two players’ vital statistics, as if they were boxers about to step into the ring. Small—for once living up to his last name—was four inches shorter and weighed sixty pounds less than his opponent.
In the newspapers Mandela read himself opining on what to do about the All Black colossus. “Strategically it would be a mistake to concentrate on him, because they must concentrate on the whole team,” Mandela had said, before adding, as if surprised at his temerity in venturing into unfamiliar terrain, “But I am sure the Springboks have worked it out completely.”
Few shared his optimistic view, especially among the neutrals. The Australian coach, Bob Dwyer, was all over the sports pages confidently predicting that the “fit and fast” All Blacks would have the hefty Springbok forwards chasing shadows all afternoon; the Sydney Morning Herald had said the soon-to-be “bamboozled” Boks would “come nowhere