While in Jogja my reading material of choice was Invictus, by journalist and writer John Carlin. It was originally published as Playing the Enemy but the copy I bought had been retagged and was being marketed in conjunction with the new Clint Eastwood movie.
I had never heard of either book or movie until two weeks ago and when I read the blurb on the book cover, I hesitated briefly before getting it. I don’t really like buying into the hype and jumping on the bandwagon to read books that have been turned into motion pictures. But this time the story and characters were names I was familiar with. In a nutshell, Carlin narrates how rugby — more specifically the 1995 World Cup — served to unify South Africa in the early, fragile years after Nelson Mandela became president in the post-apartheid era.
It was great, Carlin himself makes no apologies for painting the role of rugby in such a jubilant and celebratory light. When we went to Cape Town we visited Robben Island and saw the cell and the areas where Mandela spent much of his 27 years in prison. But reading about all the inside details made everything so informative and vivid and really threw light into his personality. I thought the book would be a bit heavy on the political details but it was put in just the right context, interspersed with insights from key individuals so readers could get a full picture leading up to the World Cup.
I remember watching that final against the All Blacks. I remember rooting for the New Zealand team with the likes of Jonah Lomu, Andrew Mehrtens, Sean Fitzpatrick, Zinzan Brooke and Ian Jones. I remember the nailbiting finish when both teams went into overtime and Joel Stransky kicked that decisive drop goal. And I remember very clearly the celebrations after, in that frenzied Ellis Park stadium, when Francois Pienaar lifted the Webb Ellis Cup together with Mandela, who was wearing a Springbok cap and jersey.
But I had no idea how much it meant to the country at the time, and the extent to which the sport had been used as a political tool. I remember listening to the team singing the anthem Nkosi Sikele iAfrika — my sister and I would chant along every time the Springboks played that year — but had no idea how significant it was for the nearly all-white squad to be singing the Xhosa song. All we cared about was spotting our favourite player, scrum half Joost van der Westhuizen.
Many years ago — a year after I was born in fact — my father went on a playing tour of South Africa as part of an international line-up called the Tokkie Dragons, put together by Tokkie Smith, the man who started the famed Hong Kong Sevens. When my dad came home, there was such a storm of controversy over the fact that he had ignored international sporting sanctions against South Africa because of apartheid. He was subsequently banned for life at home, although this was eventually reduced to a year and he resumed playing for, and then coached the national team.
When I was older, I read all the newspaper clippings about my dad that my parents had cut out and collected from all those years and I had a vague sense of what transpired. But reading about apartheid and rugby in Carlin’s book gave me a much deeper understanding of what was at stake. In the closing chapters, the book brought tears to my eyes at quite a few passages. I could just imagine all the torrid, tense emotions involved on the day of the world cup final and even more so, what these hulking men were working towards.
Now I’m really looking forward to watching the movie.
