Invictus
Morgan Freeman as Mandela in South African movement
By Donna Bryson
South Africans say a new Hollywood film about sport, race and Nelson
Mandela will tell the world about the country’s history of struggle
and triumph despite some criticism that the lead roles are played by
American actors.
Clint Eastwood’s “Invictus” depicts Mandela, South Africa’s
first black president, as a strategist for racial reconciliation,
working to bring whites and blacks together after the end of apartheid
by supporting the country’s mostly white national rugby team.
Mandela, once reviled by many whites who saw him as a terrorist, strode
onto the field after South Africa won the 1995 Rugby World Cup final
wearing a national team shirt and earned rapturous cheers from a crowd
dominated by whites.
Chester Williams, the only black member of South Africa’s 1995
championship rugby team, hopes the nation will come together for next
year’s football World Cup as it did 15 years ago.
The movie is “a great opportunity for everyone, not only in South
Africa but the rest of the world, to see what Nelson Mandela has done
for the country,” Williams, who helped coach the actors during the
shooting of the movie in South Africa, told The Associated Press
Wednesday.
Most South Africans won’t see “Invictus” until its general release
Thursday, but the movie already has made headlines and dominated talk
show radio.
It has not been universally embraced, with some complaining that South
Africans should be starring in their own stories. Mandela is portrayed
by Morgan Freeman and Matt Damon plays the rugby team captain. But South
Africans have key roles, including Patrick Mofokeng as Mandela’s chief
bodyguard.
Mofokeng endorsed Freeman, saying at Tuesday’s premiere in
Johannesburg: “He was made to play the role. I think he is Nelson
Mandela.”
Acclaimed South African actor John Kani, who is not in the movie, told
the AP he understood international movies needed big stars like Freeman
to draw investors and audiences. But Kani was worried South Africans
would never get a chance to claim “bankable” status if producers and
the government did not try to develop and showcase local talent.
Still, Kani said movies like “Invictus” had broader benefits,
telling the world South Africa’s inspiring story.
In many ways, though, South Africa remains racially divided. Blacks
denied education and opportunity for generations under apartheid remain
in impoverished townships on the outskirts of cities where the best
neighborhoods remain largely white.
Some blacks complain Mandela spent too much time on racial
reconciliation and too little on economic development or fighting AIDS.
Black critics say whites did little in response to gestures Mandela
made, such as donning the rugby shirt or visiting a white separatist
enclave to have tea with the widow of Hendrik Verwoerd, the architect of
apartheid.
Sport, too, has not overcome the past. Attempts to reach out to black
fans and players have repeatedly run up against rugby’s legacy of
racism, and black fans have been attacked at rugby stadiums.
Football is seen as the sport of blacks, and excitement over South
Africa becoming the first African nation to host a football World Cup
has been tempered by charges from some blacks that white South Africans
didn’t support the bid and won’t go to the games.
“We’re still living the change, we’re still living the
transition,” said Oregan Hoskins, president of the South African Rugby
Union.
Hoskins said in an interview that Mandela’s bodyguards feared he was
risking his life when he went to a rugby stadium full of white fans. He
said that he did not know before reading the book by British journalist
John Carlin that “Invictus” is based upon how much planning and
force of will went into that moment in 1995.
Hoskins said even more people will learn by watching the film of “the
stature of the man, determined to go in there and make it work,
determined to make it successful, to make his country successful.”
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