Morgan Freeman as Nelson Mandela in Invictus.
Matt Damon as Francois Pienaard, the captain of the South African rugby team in the movie.
performed by the Kiwi players that steal the courage of opposing players watching. They say the game is won or lost in the magic of this war dance. It is believed that when the players of the opposing team are scared by the challenge, they will lose. It is only when they can stand up to the dancing Maoris that they stand a chance. Watch the Maori war dance and then watch the Springboks take on the All Blacks in INVICTUS! When you watch the Finals of the 2015 Rugby World Cup, it will bring you back to “Invictus”. The movie, based on John Carlin’s book “Playing the Enemy: Nelson Mandela and the Game That Made A Nation”, chronicles the true story of how Mandela united a fragmented country using the power of Sport – more specifically, the sport of Rugby. When Mandela was released from Robben Island Prison in 1990 following 27 years of incarceration, he became a political hero and was elected the first black President of post-apartheid South Africa. His presidency faced huge challenges amidst rampant poverty, crime and racial divisions between the blacks and the whites. The movie follows the events of the 1995 Rugby World Cup to which South Africa played host. It was also the Springboks, the South African Rugby team’s
return to
international competition. When the test matches started, the Boks played badly, so horribly in fact that they were losing by unimaginable margins
22 FENGSHUIWORLD | NOVEMBER 2015
to their supposedly lesser competitors. The blacks in power tried to use this as an excuse to disband the Springboks, which had over the years come to symbolize white supremacy and oppression over the blacks. Most of the blacks despised the National Rugby team. Nelson Mandela noted that in all the matches, all the whites in the stadium would cheer for the Boks, while all the blacks would cheer for the opposition. That was when he fostered a devious gamble by going against the advice of all his closest counselors, by blatantly and publicly putting the prestige of his office solidly behind nurturing the Springboks. It was a risk he took, seemingly throwing away his popularity with the blacks, gambling his political capital with the blacks for something as seemingly unimportant as Rugby? But it was how he used the
Sport to unite a nation that was eventually to make Nelson Mandela such a great and successful leader.
Mandela realized the potential of the SPORT to unite his nation of bitter blacks and suspicious whites. Mandela viewed the World Cup as a mighty event that could inspire all of South Africa to come together as ONE nation, to close ranks against a common foe in the battle for the World Cup. He prayed that the event could make them forget whether they were poor or rich, white or black; and instead come together as one nation to celebrate that they were all South Africans. It was not an easy task, and commentators at the time speculated at how it would actually go down with the people. Mandela did not inherit a Rugby team that was a winning team; they were a losing team, and they were losing very badly. He sought a private meeting with the Captain of the Springboks, Francois Pienaard, and gave him the poem Invictus by William Ernest Henley, something he said had
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