The Most Important South Africa World Cup – Invictus Review

I have trav­eled in South­ern Africa sev­eral times for busi­ness, and I am always struck when I talk to South Africans about Nel­son Man­dela.  When talk­ing to black South Africans, they look at Man­dela as a hero and the father of their coun­try, but they also have a more nuanced view and remain frus­trated at some of the pothole-type prob­lems that plague every­day life in their emerg­ing country.

How­ever, when talk­ing to white Afrikan­ers about their for­mer Pres­i­dent, there is no nuance.  I have seen more than one Afrikaner slam his hand down on the table and say with their quirky phrase, “Full stop– the great­est man this coun­try has ever produced.”

So how did this “con­victed” ter­ror­ist who spent 30 years in prison emerge from his cell to seduce the white minor­ity and build the most sta­ble, multi-ethnic and eco­nom­i­cally thriv­ing democ­racy on the African continent?

In his ter­rific new movie Invic­tus, direc­tor Clint East­wood tries to answer that ques­tion by focus­ing on the 1995 Rugby World Cup.  Based on John Carlin’s book Play­ing The Enemy,  Eastwood’s Man­dela, played bril­liantly by Mor­gan Free­man, is a leader who has stud­ied the white Afrikaner closely.  Man­dela knows that in order to build his nation, he must find ways to break down white fears over being a minor­ity and get them to buy into their new South Africa.

Rugby, a sport vital to Afrikaner cul­ture and a sym­bol of the Afrikaner ideal of grit and man­li­ness, proves to be the vehi­cle that Man­dela needed.  An ama­teur boxer in his youth, Man­dela under­stood the power that sport can have. From his jail cell on Robben Island, Man­dela taught him­self the Afrikaans lan­guage and would lis­ten to the inces­sant con­ver­sa­tions his jail­ers would have about the sport.  Upon emerg­ing from prison, he advo­cated that the 1995 Rugby World Cup be held in South Africa and that inter­na­tional rugby end its boy­cott against play­ing the Spring­boks, the name of the South African national team.

This was not an easy con­ces­sion for Man­dela to enforce.  To black South Africans, the green and gold Spring­bok jer­sey was a sym­bol of white oppres­sive rule, and many blacks wanted the team renamed and the col­ors changed.  Man­dela, who under­stood the deep attach­ment whites had for the team, fought this, and in one of the best scenes in the film, made a sur­prise visit to a meet­ing of the new South African sports min­istry to pre­vent this change.  His por­trayal of Mandela’s speech to these sports offi­cials, both com­pas­sion­ate and cal­cu­lat­ing, is Oscar-worthy stuff for Freeman.

On the other end of this equa­tion is the Spring­bok cap­tain Fran­cois Pien­aar, played by Matt Damon.  Pien­aar is a man who has spent his whole life think­ing about rugby, and has prob­a­bly never had an opin­ion about pol­i­tics one way or another.  How­ever, just as he seduced his prison guards, his prison war­den, the Min­is­ter of Jus­tice and even­tu­ally the last white South African Pres­i­dent FW De Klerk, Man­dela con­vinces Pien­aar to enlarge his vision and use the team to help unify the country.

The prob­lem is the Spring­boks are not a great team.  After years of being boy­cotted out of the rugby com­mu­nity, the team is out­classed when it plays inter­na­tion­ally.  How­ever, inspired by Man­dela, Pien­aar pushes the team in its train­ing and its atti­tude.  The team embraces the black com­mu­nity that once feared it, and by the time the World Cup comes, the ‘Boks are pre­pared and the coun­try is behind them.

It is at this point that the film takes an extra pass or two rather than prop­erly run­ning the ball across the line for a score.  The rugby scenes them­selves run long, espe­cially the final game between the Spring­boks and the New Zealand All-Blacks.  Rugby is a dif­fi­cult game to por­tray on film – it is bet­ter seen from afar than up close – and the actual final game was a tough slow war of attri­tion with few big plays.  East­wood cap­tures all the drama lead­ing up to the game, includ­ing Mandela’s famous walk onto the field wear­ing Pienaar’s #6 Spring­bok jer­sey and the nearly all-white crowd chant­ing “Nel­son, Nel­son…”  How­ever, the game itself seems to go on, and the end­ing for most movie goers was never in doubt.

The South Africa that is prepar­ing to host the 2010 FIFA World Cup is a dif­fer­ent place than the South Africa por­trayed by East­wood, Free­man and Damon.  It is a calmer, less dra­matic and more business-like place.  The daily papers are more con­cerned with the value of the Rand than multi racial rec­on­cil­i­a­tion.  For many South Africans, this summer’s World Cup will be a tri­umph of com­merce rather than sport.  That is all as it should be.  Thanks to Man­dela, Pien­aar and the mil­lions who put aside their griev­ances and embraced their new coun­try, the life and death drama can just occur on the field instead of around it.

Tagged as: FIFA, South Africa, World Cup