Playing the Enemy: Nelson Mandela and the Game That Made a Nation (29 page)

But there was no program on the simulator that could prepare him for the particular maneuver he had in mind. He had to go out and do some old-fashioned field work. “I spent a lot of time on the roof of Ellis Park and on the hills overlooking it to judge the best approach and to get a sense of what the fans would see. Ellis Park is in a depression and difficult to approach. I could see it was going to require an aggressive bit of flying.”

There was something of the Wild West about South Africa at that time. With so much radical change under way, the place felt recklessly alive with possibility. It was in such a spirit that Laurie Kay approached the most perilous professional challenge of his life.

“The Civil Aviation Authority has rules for flying over built-up areas and public gatherings. I believe the minimum altitude is two thousand feet. Well, obviously, these regulations had been momentarily waived. It was up to me to decide how low to go.” Kay and his copilot and engineer took off and headed, like a Second World War bomber crew, toward their target.

“We were three guys in the cockpit but as we prepared for our final approach I said, ‘Okay, guys. I’ll take full responsibility now.’ Because it was no good flying on an occasion like this so high they could hardly hear you. So I came down at a low angle to make sure that the words underneath could be read by the spectators, flying at the slowest speed possible short of a stall. At 140 knots. I went slow so that we could generate maximum power to climb once we were over the stadium. So when we got there—our time over target was between two and three seconds—we revved up the engines, we really opened up to their maximum sound and thrust so as to put as much noise and as much energy into the stadium as we possibly could.”

Kay flew so low he would have been jailed if the CAA hadn’t agreed to suspend the rules. He flew only two hundred feet above the stadium’s highest seats—the same distance as the plane’s wingspan. “And we made it back in time nicely, for the second flypast, inside eighty seconds,” said Kay, modestly adding, “We had factors in our favor. Visibility was terrific. No wind. But above all I wanted us to send a message down to the stadium, that we were strong and we were going to win. And so, yes, we emptied all the power we could muster into the stadium.”

The first reaction of the crowd, most of whom did not see the plane coming, was sheer terror. It was as if a huge bomb had gone off inside the stadium. The impact of the Boeing 747’s four screaming engines deafened every person in the stadium, making its walls vibrate. Louis Luyt was up in the presidential suite at the time, with Mandela next to him.

“How I jumped!” Luyt exclaimed. “And Mandela jumped too!” As did everyone in the stadium. “The bastard!” grinned Luyt, referring to Captain Kay. “He never told us he was going to fly that low. At two hundred feet! I got such a scare! He could so easily have touched the top of the stadium.”

Surprise and shock gave way to thunderous elation. That power Captain Kay emptied into the stadium electrified every soul present, and kept the crowd purring right to the game’s end. But that was nothing compared to the impact of act three of the pregame show.

Five minutes before kickoff, Nelson Mandela stepped out onto the field to shake hands with the players. He was wearing the green Springbok cap and the green Springbok jersey, buttoned up to the top. When they caught sight of him, the crowd seemed to go dead still. “It was as if they could not believe what their eyes were seeing,” said Luyt. Then a chant began, low at first, but rising quickly in volume and intensity.

Morné du Plessis caught it as he emerged out of the dressing room and down the players’ tunnel onto the field. “I walked out into this bright, harsh winter sunlight and at first I could not make out what was going on, what the people were chanting, why there was so much excitement before the players had even gone out onto the field. Then I made out the words. This crowd of white people, of Afrikaners, as one man, as one nation, they were chanting, ‘Nel-son! Nel-son! Nel-son!’ Over and over, ‘Nel-son! Nel-son!’ and, well, it was just . . .” The big rugby man’s eyes filled with tears as he struggled to find the words to fit the moment. “I don’t think,” he continued, “I don’t think I’ll ever experience a moment like that again. It was a moment of magic, a moment of wonder. It was the moment I realized that there really was a chance this country could work. This man was showing that he could forgive, totally, and now they—white South Africa, rugby white South Africa—they showed in that response to him that they too wanted to give back, and that was how they did it, chanting, ‘Nelson! Nelson!’ It was awe-some. It was fairy-tale stuff! It was Sir Galahad: my strength is the strength of ten because my heart is pure.

“Then I looked at Mandela there in the green jersey, waving the cap in the air, waving and waving it, wearing that big, wide, special smile of his. He was so happy. He was the image of happiness. He laughed and he laughed and I thought, if only we have made him happy for this one moment, that is enough.”

Rory Steyn, one of the members of Mandela’s presidential bodyguard, also had a front-row seat. He had been deployed as head of security for the All Blacks, which meant he was down on the field with them, by their bench. “Mandela, in that single act of generosity, he carried the entire South Africa into one new nation,” said Steyn, a former security policeman whose business for years had been to persecute the ANC and its allies. “The message from the black population was one we received with gratitude and relief. We share in your elation, they were saying; we forgive you for the past.”

With forgiveness came atonement. That was also what the cries of “Nelson! Nelson!” meant. In paying homage to the man whose prison sentence had been a metaphor for the bondage of black South Africa, they were acknowledging their sin, uncorking their bottled-up guilt.

Linga Moonsamy, standing one step behind Mandela on the grass, drinking it all in, experienced an attack of sensory overload. On the one hand, he was tasting the dream to which he had dedicated his life as a young ANC fighter; on the other, he had a cold-eyed mission to fulfill. “There I was, stuck almost to his back, and there was this roar and the cries of ‘Nelson! Nelson!’ and even though I felt so emotional, more deeply moved than I had ever been in my life, I was also doing a job, I was on full alert, scanning the crowd. And then over to the right-hand corner of the grounds I saw some old South African flags being waved and that caused a totally contrary response in me. The sight sent a chill down my spine. It was a sudden and alarming security alert. I knew we had to keep an eye on that sector of the crowd and I made a note of mentioning it as soon as I could to the rest of the team. Yet I was so torn, because I was absolutely blown away by the understanding of what it meant politically.”

The symbolism at play was mind-boggling. For decades Mandela had stood for everything white South Africans most feared; the Springbok jersey had been the symbol, for even longer, of everything black South Africans most hated. Now suddenly, before the eyes of the whole of South Africa, and much of the world, the two negative symbols had merged to create a new one that was positive, constructive, and good. Mandela had wrought the transformation, becoming the embodiment not of hate and fear, but generosity and love.

Louis Luyt would not have known what to make of it a couple of years earlier, but now he got it too. “Mandela knew this was the political opportunity of his life and, by God, he seized it!” said Luyt. “When that crowd exploded, you could see: he was South Africa’s president that day without one vote against. Yes, the presidential inauguration a year earlier was a great thing, but it was the conclusion of an election which some had won and some had lost. Here we were all on the same side. Not one vote against. He was our king that day.”

That was the point. Mandela had accurately gauged the power of his gesture when he had said that wearing the jersey “would have a terrific impact on whites.” He was everybody’s king that day. He had already had one coronation, at the soccer stadium in Soweto on the day after his release. That day, he was crowned king of black South Africa. Five years later, his second coronation was taking place at Afrikanerdom’s holy of holies, the national rugby stadium.

Van Zyl Slabbert, Morné du Plessis’s youthful inspiration and Braam Viljoen’s boss at the Pretoria think tank, was in the stadium. “You can have no idea what it meant to me to see these classic Boers all around me, with their potbellies, in their shorts and long socks, real AWB types, drinking brandy and Cokes, to see these guys, these northern Transvaal rednecks singing ‘Shosholoza,’ led on by a young black guy, and cheering Mandela,” said Slabbert, aghast at the recollection of the scene. “You would have expected him when he became president to say, ‘I’m going to get you . . .!’ Yet, no, he contradicts every stereotype of vengeance and retribution.”

Archbishop Tutu, who as a child would tramp over to Ellis Park to watch games with his mother’s sandwiches, had to live with the cruel irony of being prevented from attending the game due to a prior engagement in the United States. But he would not have missed the game for anything. He watched it, early in the morning, in a bar in San Francisco.

“Nelson Mandela has a knack of doing just the right thing and being able to carry it off with aplomb,” Tutu said. “Some other political leader, head of state, if they had tried to do something like he did, they would have fallen flat on their faces. But it was just the right thing. It’s not anything that you can contrive . . . I believe that that was a defining moment in the life of our country.”

No one captured the sea change that Mandela had effected better than Tokyo Sexwale, who had spent thirteen years on Robben Island convicted of terrorism and conspiracy to overthrow the government; who out of prison had become the assassinated Chris Hani’s closest friend; who as premier of Gauteng (previously Transvaal) Province had become one of the half dozen most prominent figures in the ANC.

“This was the moment when I understood more clearly than ever before that the liberation struggle of our people was not so much about liberating blacks from bondage,” Sexwale said, picking up on the core lesson he had learned from Mandela in prison, “but more so, it was about liberating white people from fear. And there it was. ‘Nelson! Nelson! Nelson!’ Fear melting away.”

And what of the last Doubting Thomas? What of Justice Bekebeke, the only one of the gang of eight at the Paballelo barbecue not wearing a Springbok jersey? It was a defining moment in his life too. He finally capitulated, powerless before the rushing tide of new South African sentiment that Mandela had unleashed.

“An hour before the game I was still torn and confused,” he said. “But then we turned on the TV and we saw these guys singing ‘Shosholoza’ and then that amazing fly-past and then the old man, my president, wearing the Springbok jersey. Well, I was battling! I still could not quite shake off the old resentment and hatred, yet something was happening to me, and I realized that I was changing, I was softening, until I just had to give up, to surrender. And I said to myself, well, this is the new reality. There is no going back: the South African team is now my team, whoever they are, whatever their color.

“This was a watershed for me. For my entire relationship with my country, with white South Africans. From that day on everything changed. Everything was redefined.”

CHAPTER XVIII

BLOOD IN THE THROAT

“I couldn’t sing the anthem,” François Pienaar admitted. “I dared not.” He had been desperate to rise to the occasion, to set an example, not to let Mandela down. He had rehearsed the scene over and over in his mind. But when the time came, when the two teams lined up on the side of the pitch before the game and the band struck up the first strains of “Nkosi Sikelele,” he couldn’t open his mouth.

“Because I knew that if I did, I’d fall apart. I’d just crumble, right there. I was so emotional,” the Springbok captain said, “that I wanted to cry. Sean Fitzpatrick [the All Black captain] told me later that he looked over and saw a tear roll down my cheek. But that was nothing compared to what I was feeling inside. It was such a proud moment in my life and I stood there and the whole stadium was reverberating. And it was just too much. I tried to find my fiancée, to focus on her, but I couldn’t find her. So I just bit my lip. I bit it so hard I felt the blood rolling down my throat.”

What had brought Pienaar to the emotional brink was Mandela’s visit to the Springboks’ dressing room ten minutes before. Between the jumbo jet flyover and stepping out onto the field in his green jersey, Mandela had asked Louis Luyt to take him down to the bowels of the stadium to say a few words to the players.

Pienaar recalled the scene. “I had just got strapped up and there we all were, in a state of tension like we’d never known, and so much was going through my mind, knowing that this was the biggest thing ever—one shot, one opportunity to seize everything you’ve always wanted. And I was just thinking about all that, but at the same time with so much attention to all the details of the game, and then, suddenly, there he was. I didn’t know he was coming, and even less did I know that he was going to wear the Springbok jersey. He was saying ‘Good luck,’ and he turned around and on his back there was this number 6, and that was me . . .

“You know, the passionate supporters, they’re the ones who wear the jersey of their team. So now here I am seeing him walking into the dressing room, in this moment of all moments, dressed like another passionate fan, but then I see that it is my jersey he is wearing. There are no words to describe the emotions that ran through my body.”

As he had a year earlier at Silvermine, Mandela caught the Springboks by surprise. As Morné du Plessis remembered it, before he entered the room the silence was absolute. “Suddenly the players saw him and everybody was laughing, smiling, clapping. The tension just fell away.” This time Mandela’s speech was shorter, more familiar, and more direct than it had been on the day before the Australia game. “Look here, chaps,” he said. “You are playing the All Blacks. They are one of the most powerful teams in the rugby world but you are even more powerful. And just remember that this entire crowd, both black and white, are behind you, and that I’m behind you.”