UNLIKELY FRIENDSHIP
How Mandela inspired Pienaar, Boks to conquer the world all creeds and hues such as the country had never experienced before. Pienaar, interviewed on the field immediately after the final whistle, spoke the inspirational words, “not for 60,000 but for 43
Francois Pienaar, even 25 years on, conveys a sense of disbelief and awe when he talks of that crisp Highveld winter’s day that the Springboks won the Rugby World Cup for the first time.
The Springbok captain’s wonder is not so much about the fact that his team won the Webb Ellis Cup at Ellis Park on June 24, 1995, for he says he always felt they could pull it off, but that he received the golden trophy from president Nelson Mandela.
“I am probably the luckiest sports person ever because of the unique relationship [with Mandela],” he says of a man who became a father figure to him.
Their close bond, a young white Afrikaner and the famous black prisoner of Robben Island, grew out of Pienaar’s captaincy of the Springboks and Mandela’s visionary and altruistic support of a team who played in a jersey many of his followers despised.
It started with a cup of tea, he told AFP. “The president invited me to visit him in his office at the Union Buildings in Pretoria,” Pienaar says. “We talked about all things – not just the World Cup. He wanted to know a lot about me. “There were so many high-powered people waiting outside to see him and every time Mary [Mxadana, Mandela’s assistant] would come in to hurry him up, he would say to her, ‘Mary, I’m speaking to my captain.’
“I was so nervous before I went into his office and when I left I sat in my car and just felt I had been in the presence of a very wise and caring man and I felt safe.
“I know it sounds bizarre. You have no idea of his aura, the genuineness, the sense of humor. We laughed. There was an immediate bond.” Mandela visited the Springboks at their final pre-World Cup training session at sports fields in Cape Town and wished the awe-struck group of young men well; receiving in return a Springbok cap from Hennie le Roux, spontaneously removed from the head of Japie Mulder.
To a refrain of “Nelson! Nelson! Nelson!” Mandela officially opened the tournament in Cape Town and the Springboks took what their coach Kitch Christie had referred to as the “high road” by beating defending champions Australia. Thirty-one days and four more games packed full of dramatic incident later Pienaar and his men contested the rugby championship of the world against their oldest and most respected foe, the All Blacks.
Epic final
An epic final went into extra time before Joel Stransky landed his storied knockout blow sending a wave of patriotic harmony that swept over