When Is Rugby More Than a Sport?
When Nelson Mandela Used It to Unite His Nation
Hollywood has adopted the game of rugby and made Invictus, a big-budget feature film: first-class director, marquee stars. The film focuses on a rugby tournament 15 years ago in a land far, far away. So who really gives a rat’s butt? Why would anybody outside of a few OCD sports cretins expect to be enthralled? Yet they are. Maybe because it’s not a sports flick. Sport is the medium, not the message. The film, in fact, is a colorfully rendered portrait of a pivotal political event in the not-so-distant past.
That it all happened half a world away, failed to capture America’s attention, and revolved around a game barely known here and even less understood, means we could easily have missed the story behind the story. Clint Eastwood’s film gives this historical episode new, and well-deserved, life.
Nelson Mandela lived in a stone-and-concrete cell on a prison island for 18 years. For 18 years he slept on a mat, sat on a stool, and shat in a bucket. And this was more humane than what was inflicted on many of his people under Apartheid. Not to say Mandela had it easy. He spent a further nine years in other prisons. Twenty-seven years for pursuing freedom:
