Playing the politics of sport both fairly and brilliantly
Mandela knew the role of sport in SA went beyond entertainment and he used this knowledge wisely, writes Simnikiwe Xabanisa
NORMAN Mailer once said that sport, watched intelligently, could tell one about the times in which one lived. Few could have enlisted the help of sport stars to instruct their countrymen as intelligently as former President Nelson Mandela did.
When Mandela took over as president, sport was perhaps the only thing South Africans felt would remain the same amid a sea of bewildering change.
Throughout pre- and postapartheid South Africa, sport has been regarded as the one area governed by strictly enforceable laws, albeit disingenuously. This goes some way towards explaining the refrain that sport and politics just don’t mix — even though sport in South Africa had long been used to further the objectives of the government of the day.
During his tenure, Mandela made peace with the fact that sport would always have a role beyond mere entertainment in South Africa, and so he chose to intervene in his own subtle way. His wasn’t crass political intervention at “band wagon” level, however. It was the kind of positive intervention aimed at holding a mirror up to South Afria’s face to show us what super men and women her people are — and could be — through the very people they worship.
Mandela always saw the country’s sportsmen as figures capable of more than just outlining the landscape, but of shaping it with their deeds, too.
Towards achieving those ends, Madiba was always a phone call away from the country’s sports stars. He encouraged, congratulated and even cajoled them.
Mandela went as far as making it his personal business to know who all the country’s unofficial ambassadors were and what they were up to so that he could make that timely (or, indeed, untimely) call.
The late former national cricket captain Hansie Cronjé summed the effect up best: “What stands out in the meetings I’ve had with him is his in- depth knowledge of each person he spoke to. When meeting the team, he always called everyone by name, often nicknames, and spoke to each in his mother tongue. To me that was just incredible.”
Chester Williams, who was the only black player in the Rugby World Cup-winning squad of 1995, was equally impressed by his first meeting with Mandela. When introduced to the two teams, the then pres- ident leant forward as he got to Williams and whispered in his ear: “I’m glad you’re back in the team. It’s important for the country.”
Williams was awed that the president had been aware of his circumstances, but he resolved to block it from his mind. “I had to keep my emotions in check,” he said.
Mandela could always be relied on to phone the country’s sports stars when they least ex- pected it. A classic example was when he phoned his former World Cup hero, Francois Pienaar, who had moved to London, to congratulate him on the birth of his son in 2003.
“It was five o’clock in the morning and my wife, Nerine, answered the call,” Pienaar said. “I thought it was a hoax call from Jeremy Mansfield or something, but it was Madiba calling to congratulate us on Jean’s birth and offering to be his godfather.”
Not only did the former president get his wish, but he also got to give Pienaar’s son an African name, Mkhokeli, which is Xhosa for leader.
Surprise phone calls became Mandela’s trademark. Baby Jake Matlala, Penny Heyns, Doctor Khumalo — you name it — all were on Madiba’s speed dial.
Former world record holder and Atlanta Olympics gold medallist Heyns had her form constantly monitored by Mandela. At the national championships in April 1999, she swam her second-best 200m breaststroke time. “He phoned a couple of hours later, while I was still at the pool, to tell me he had seen that I was improving. He was just phoning to encourage me,” she said.
Mandela had a knack for reminding sportsmen of their responsibilities to the country, although he made the point in an encouraging manner, as opposed to putting them under pressure.
Ahead of his bout against the legendary Michael Carbajal in the US in 1997, Matlala got a call from Mandela. “He called to say: ‘All the best, you’re an ambassador for the country.’ I thought then, hey, I’m not alone, I’m representing the country.”
Madiba was also on hand through the lean patches. When the Springboks had lost five straight games in 2006, Mandela sent coach Jake White a letter to read to the team.
“I told the players they would have to get copies because I would get too choked up trying to read it,” White said.
Soccer legend Doctor Khumalo, who dated Mandela’s granddaughter, Rochelle Mtirara, was offered the old man’s shoulder to cry on when his father was
His cleverest use of sport was the way he showed the country what can be done with reconciliation
killed in a hijacking.
“That was the hardest time of my life,” said Khumalo, who was very close to his father. “But the support received, and Mdala’s presence, was reassuring.”
But Mandela’s cleverest use of sport and its stars was in the way he showed the country what can be done with a little reconciliation.
SA’s seamless transition to a democracy was considered a miracle, given that other African countries went the civilwar route after gaining their independence.
Mandela underpinned this by turning up at the presentation of the 1995 Rugby World Cup trophy — a tournament hosted and won by SA — wearing captain Francois Pienaar’s jersey. It was a gesture that took everyone from both sides of the South African “fence” by surprise.
Until then, reconciliation had been a concept preached ad nauseam. But when SA saw a beaming Mandela embracing a sport inextricably linked with Afrikanerdom and segregation, the conclusions were incredible.
Most who saw the gesture would have felt that if he managed to do that after being put in jail for 27 years by the apartheid government, then everyone could make the effort to meet one another halfway.
Matlala, who was in the stands that day, encapsulated the impact of seeing Mandela congratulate the Boks in a Springbok jersey.
The legendary boxer had grown up fearing and mistrusting white people. When out on his training runs, he wore a tracksuit with the name “Big John” Tate — the African-American boxer who beat Gerrie Coetzee in the late ’70s — em-
blazoned across it. In the early ’80s, he supported the New Zealand rugby team because he thought they were “all black”.
Yet there he was at Ellis Park, seeing Mandela hug the “enemy” to his bosom. “He unified the nation through sport,” said Matlala.
With that hurdle overcome, Matlala himself — the shortest professional boxer in the world, who won an SA record of four world titles in his career — has since become an icon for black and white South Africans alike.
Pienaar, the white Afrikaans captain with the nous to grasp the moment for what it represented, will never forget it.
“How can any moment beat seeing him walking out to congratulate us with my rugby jersey on?” said Pienaar of his best Madiba moment.
He still remembers exactly what Mandela said as he handed him the cup. “He said: ‘Thank you for what you have done for South Africa.’ To which I replied: ‘Thank you for what you have done.’ ”
Cronjé had also been touched by the moment. “To me, the greatest sporting moment since our return to international sport was seeing the president sporting a number six jersey, waving to the crowd and cheering more than anyone when Francois Pienaar hoisted the World Cup in 1995. That summed him up, I believe: a touch of class, humble and compassionate.”
After spending 27 years in jail for believing in a South Africa with equal opportunities for all, Mandela could have been forgiven for throwing his weight about when he became president. But the tone for his presidency was set by his words after he became the leader of the country.
“I’m not here to lead,” he said, “I’m here to serve.”
And serve he did, because humility was his middle name, something he tried to instil in sports stars. Matlala remembered Mandela warned him not to take his popularity for granted. “He told me to always introduce myself to people,” Matlala said.
Heyns was mortified when she and fellow Atlanta medallist athletes Hezekiel Sepeng and Josia Thugwane were invited to a state banquet in Pretoria. When they were seated, tea and biscuits were brought into the room. “Before we could help ourselves, Mr Mandela got up and served us. He was such a humble man.”
Pienaar had the pleasure of having Mandela attend his wedding, but he was humbled by the way the president asked if he could do so.
“We had been invited to a state banquet after winning the World Cup, and when we were there I introduced Nerine to Madiba as my future wife. He then asked her if she would be offended if he came to the wedding!”
This Pienaar anecdote shows that Mandela was always genuinely interested in the sports stars and their lives, as Williams found out when he got a call to visit the president at his residence in Cape Town.
“Myself and my ex-wife went. It was just the three of us. We chatted about everything — rugby, politics, life. He seemed to know everything. Sitting next to him and talking about daily things, I never felt he was above me. That was his gift, to make you feel equal.”
That said, Mandela could be firm. When he visited Cronjé — who was banned from cricket in 2000 for admitting that he took money to throw matches — at his home in Fancourt, Mandela pointedly did not exonerate the disgraced former Proteas captain, because of the kind of message it would have sent.
Just as the rest of South Africa felt he was a father figure to them, sports stars felt a similar affinity. Heyns admitted that the one thing she regretted in a glorious swimming career was not being able to walk the lap of honour with Mandela when she won her gold medals in Atlanta.
But Heyns understands the old man’s spirit and sums it up thus: “I just really admired him for everything he had gone through, his willingness to forgive. In sport, sportsmanship is not always there, but he embodied the spirit of how it should be.”