Playing the Enemy: Nelson Mandela and the Game That Made a Nation
Read Playing the Enemy: Nelson Mandela and the Game That Made a Nation Online
Authors: John Carlin
Tags: #History, #Africa, #South, #Republic of South Africa, #Sports & Recreation, #Rugby, #Sports
Table of Contents
CHAPTER I - BREAKFAST IN HOUGHTON
CHAPTER II - THE MINISTER OF JUSTICE
CHAPTER III - SEPARATE AMENITIES
CHAPTER VI - AYATOLLAH MANDELA
CHAPTER IX - THE BITTER-ENDERS
CHAPTER X - ROMANCING THE GENERAL
CHAPTER XI - “ADDRESS THEIR HEARTS”
CHAPTER XII - THE CAPTAIN AND THE PRESIDENT
CHAPTER XIII - SPRINGBOK SERENADE
CHAPTER XV - DOUBTING THOMASES
CHAPTER XVI - THE NUMBER SIX JERSEY
CHAPTER XVII - “NELSON! NELSON!”
CHAPTER XVIII - BLOOD IN THE THROAT
CHAPTER XIX - LOVE THINE ENEMY
Invictus
Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconnquerable soul.
In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.
Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.
It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll.
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.
—
William Ernest Benley
(1849-1903)
Praise for
Invictus
A
Washington Post
and
Financial Times
Best Book of the Year One of
The Independent
’s 20 Best Books of the Year
“This wonderful book describes Mandela’s methodical, improbable and brilliant campaign to reconcile resentful blacks and fearful whites around a sporting event, a game of rugby. . . . There are scenes that will open your tear ducts. . . . If
Invictus
were not so well written, it would deserve a place among the management tomes and self-help books that dominate business bestseller lists—a guide to leadership that plays to people’s better angels. . . . Don’t wait for the movie.”
—Bill Keller,
The New York Times Book Review
“I think the way [Carlin] carried out his task in South Africa [in the 1990s] was magnificent. It is easy now for a journalist to criticize everybody, including the government, but in those days you could count journalists with that courage on the fingers of one hand.”
—Nelson Mandela
“A triumphant conversion . . . A book that captures both the miracle of South Africa’s transition and the miracle of Mandela the politician. . . . This is not a sports book. It is a portrait of South Africa’s answer to George Washington and it works because Carlin got so close to Mandela and the people Mandela seduced. . . . This is, above all, the book of a great reporter.”
—
Financial Times
“Mandela’s story never fails to inspire . . . [but John Carlin] is the first to tell the tale through the prism of sport. . . . Carlin brings the story alive. . . . Many writers reveal the nuts and bolts of South Africa’s transformation to non-racial democracy. But few capture the spirit as well as Mr. Carlin.”
—
The Economist
“One of the best sports books I’ve ever read.”
—Jim Caple, ESPN
“If you have any doubts about the political genius of Nelson Mandela, read John Carlin’s engrossing book inspired by a rugby game. . . . The book is a slice of feel-good history. It also is a behind-the-scenes look at Mandela’s tactics in unifying a nation when that seemed impossible.”
—
USA Today
“Forget rugby: this is an all-knowing portrait of Nelson Mandela by one of the journalists who knows him best.”
—
Financial Times
“A classic sports-brings-the-community-together story.”
—
The Washington Post
“[An] absorbing and frequently uplifting tale . . . The book is an imaginative and captivating study of the twentieth century’s greatest African. . . . The magic of
Invictus
lies in its heart-warming anecdotes. Carlin had access to all the protagonists, including Mandela himself, and he teases some fantastic recollections out of them.”
—
The Christian Science Monitor
“It’s one of the greatest sports stories of them all—and John Carlin does the perfect job telling it. . . . Carlin . . . is a wonderful and clever storyteller, as anyone who has read his previous work about Real Madrid . . . will probably agree. This is a brilliant and hugely informative read.”
—BBC
“This inspiring book captures the power of one person to change a nation, and the redemptive, healing force of sports.
Invictus
offers a message of tenacity and hope that our society needs now more than ever.”
—Dave Grossman, author of
On Combat
and
On Killing
“A stupendously good book.”
—
Irish Examiner
“The train of events leading up to what has been called South Africa’s epiphany has long been crying out for a multilayered account and it is to John Carlin’s eternal credit that he has written it. This is not so much a sporting volume as a wonderfully crafted and beautifully written work of modern political history.”
—
The Times
(London)
“[A] revelatory examination of Nelson Mandela’s political genius . . . a tight, gripping and powerful book that shines a light on a moment of hope, not just for one nation but the whole world. Given Carlin’s cinematic feel for pace and structure, it’s no surprise to learn that a Hollywood movie is coming soon.”
—
Daily Express
(London)
“This outstanding book is not so much about rugby as about the ability of Mandela to harness the symbolic power of sport. It shows us that sport gains its power not only from the achievements of its players, but also from the dreams of those who watch them.”
—
Daily Telegraph
(London)
“Very few books match the historical sweep and world shaking urgency of this one.”
—
The Independent
(London)
“A fascinating story . . . [an] absorbing account.”
—
Sunday Telegraph
(London)
“[An] excellent book of redemption and forgiveness . . . that depicts how a divided country can be elevated beyond hate and malice to pride and healing.”
—Publishers Weekly
“A new slant on the familiar but always inspiring saga of Mandela’s rise to power.”
—
Booklist
(starred review)
“Intriguing . . . Nestled within Carlin’s stories are valuable insights into the political genius of Mandela both generally and specifically in his role in converging sport, culture, and politics.”
—
Library Journal
PENGUIN BOOKS
INVICTUS
John Carlin is senior international writer for
El País,
the world’s leading Spanish-language newspaper, and was formerly the U.S. bureau chief for
The Independent on Sunday
. He has written for numerous other publications, including
The New York Times, Wired, Spin, Condé Nast Traveler,
and
The Observer
(UK).
FOR MY SON, JAMES NELSON
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First published in the United States of America as
Playing the Enemy
by The Penguin Press,
a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc. 2008
Published in Penguin Books as
Playing the Enemy
2009
This edition published s 2009
Copyright © John Carlin, 2008
All rights reserved
eISBN : 978-1-101-15992-7
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“Don’t address their brains. Address their hearts.”
—NELSON MANDELA
INTRODUCTION
The first person to whom I proposed doing this book was Nelson Mandela. We met in the living room of his home in Johannesburg in August 2001, two years after he’d retired from the South African presidency. After some sunny banter, at which he excels, and some shared reminiscences about the edgy years of political transition in South Africa, on which I had reported for a British newspaper, I made my pitch.
Starting off by laying out the broad themes, I put it to him that all societies everywhere aspire, whether they know it or not, to Utopias of some sort. Politicians trade on people’s hopes that heaven on earth is attainable. Since it is not, the lives of nations, like the lives of individuals, are a perpetual struggle in pursuit of dreams. In Mandela’s case, the dream that had sustained him during his twenty-seven years in prison was one he shared with Martin Luther King Jr.: that one day people in his country would be judged not by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.
As I spoke, Mandela sat inscrutable as a sphinx, as he always does when the conversation turns serious and he is the listener. You’re not sure, as you blather on, whether he’s paying attention or lost in his own thoughts. But when I quoted King, he nodded with a sharp, lips-pursed, downward jolt of the chin.
Encouraged, I said that the book I meant to write concerned South Africa’s peaceful transfer of power from white rule to majority rule, from apartheid to democracy; that the book’s span would be ten years, starting with the first political contact he had with the government in 1985 (I got a hint of a nod at that too), while he was still in prison. As for the theme, it was one that would be relevant everywhere conflicts arise from the incomprehension and distrust that goes hand in hand with the species’ congenital tribalism. I meant “tribalism” in the widest sense of the word, as applied to race, religion, nationalism, or politics. George Orwell defined it as that “habit of assuming that human beings can be classified like insects and that whole blocks of millions or tens of millions of people can be confidently labelled ‘good’ or ‘bad.’ ” Nowhere since the fall of Nazism had this dehumanizing habit been institutionalized more thoroughly than in South Africa. Mandela himself had described apartheid as a “moral genocide”—not death camps, but the insidious extermination of a people’s self-respect.