Moral Icon William Kornblum and Leonard Quart - January 26, 2010
MORGAN FREEMAN was asked many years ago by Nelson Mandela to create a film based on No Easy Walk To Freedom, his 1994 autobiography. It never got made, but Freeman got his chance with Invictus, a big-budget Hollywood film, where he indeed plays one who is the “master of his fate.” Director Clint Eastwood uses sports, in this case rugby, to dramatize Mandela’s courageous political leadership. Rugby was the sport of the white Afrikaner minority (soccer was the game of black South Africans), and their nearly all-white team the “Springboks” was a symbol of apartheid. Based on the John Carlin book, Playing the Enemy, the film captures the story of the 1995 Rugby World Cup held in South Africa not long after Mandela became president. In the film’s opening sequence, Mandela has just been released from the prison on Robyn Island, and through a series of powerful black-and-white scenes, Freeman convincingly captures Mandela assuming the presidency amid African euphoria and white fear. But Mandela was still aware of the many difficulties that he now faced. Upon seeing a headline of an Afrikaner newspaper that read: “He Can Win An Election, But Can He Govern?”, he admitted, ”It’s a legitimate question.” As Mandela took office, most of the white staff members tendered their resignations and were preparing to leave. But Mandela surprised everyone with his grace, generosity, and profound understanding of the racial climate of his fractured society. He rejected the advice of his party and advisers and provided the rugby team with his wholehearted commitment in its quest to win the World Cup. It was a shrewd political move; Mandela knew that he needed white support in order to run the country and economy effectively and achieve some semblance of cultural reconciliation. Unlike some of his compatriots, Mandela had transcended the desire to punish his former jailers. But despite the complicated nature of his ascension, the film eschews genuine political analysis and only mentions in passing that the new regime faces severe problems, which included one of the highest violent crime rates in the world, unemployment, poverty, a “brain drain,” an HIV/AIDS pandemic, and a struggle to achieve monetary and fiscal discipline.
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