Invictus: Nelson Mandela and the Game That Made a Nation

John Carlin is an intelligent, thoughtful, and insightful journalist; who worked as a foreign correspondent in South Africa. As the end of Apartheid beckoned, a revolution was occurring in the most unlikely of places: Robben Island, the Alcatraz-like prison island off Cape Town where the country's most dangerous prisoner, number 46664, was beginning to charm his captors. People think Nelson Mandela emerged from jail an inspired man. It's the other way. He went into jail on a moral high that he never buckled from. He held his head up, refused special privileges unless they were shared by all the prisoners and refused to negotiate as a prisoner "who has no rights". Through his Afrikaans warders he realised that to charm the devil (that were the ministers responsible for Apartheid) he needed to speak their language. So he taught himself Afrikaans, like part of his morning fitness routine that he continued until he physically couldn't anymore, including waking at 4am. He realised that rugby was the lifeblood of this white tribe of Africa, the Afrikaaners. And, just a year into the country's profound change over to democracy, after Mandela had been elected in a world-defining moment, Madiba enacted what was to be the greatest act of nation-building: embracing, endorsing, impersonating the Springboks. The national rugby team, long excluded from the global game because of sporting sanctions against Apartheid, become the surprise winners in their first return to the World Championship by beating the much-fancied, old foe, the All Blacks. Clad in black, the iconic New Zealand team had been supported by black South Africa through the dark days. Now, the leader of the country, the man whose image was never seen in the years flour-bombs rained down on New Zealand fields to stop South African tours, had become the very face of this formerly white, formerly representing everything oppressive about the Afrikaaners. It was a triumph of good timing, and simple humanity. It was as profound a gesture as it was a marvel of human dignity. The president of the country got behind his other boys (the national soccer team is known as Bafana Bafana, meaning the boys) and by appearing before final in the matching number 6 jersey of captain Francois Pienaar, spurred the Springboks on to a famous victory that will live forever in the annals of sporting triumph, and, so deservedly, in the history of South Africa's inspiration leader, the recently passed away Nelson Mandela. John Carlin is a gifted writer, who tells this intoxicating story as if you're sitting in the room listening to Mandela tell a young Pienaar that he had to win the game because the nation depended on it. You're on the front lines of this truly remarkable story of Mandela's almost divine power of forgiveness to heal his nation and unite his people. It's a wonderful read, one of the closest to this truly, truly amazing man that Nelson Mandela was. It should be everyone's festive season read. A reminder of the greatness of one man, who united a nation, and brought them all into a new era of democracy, freedom and the Springboks beating the best in the world.

This book should be read by everyone. What an awesome tribute to Nelson Mandala this publication has been. Amazingly, the South African rugby team played an integral role in the psychological impact of unification. Better than a Greek drama, start reading today.

It's a nice book, well redacted and also shows an interesting point of view about the creation of the new democratic South Africa. This book is not only about a game and about a world champion, is more than that, this book is about how one extremely rare type of person achieved one of the modern miracles, a revolution without a civil war. The book also try to explain how is it possible that a sport could be so gratified and also so important in South Africa's history and also shows how it is possible to be such a great person as it is Nelson Mandela and how he conquers his enemies without the use of any violence and only with the use of friendship and respect. I highly recommend this book to all kind of readers as an important part of universal knowledge and to remember how to manage your goals in a different way than to using any kind of violence

I agree with the other reviewers here about this book; it is indeed a "must-read". This book is not really a story of rugby, as later portrayed in the Hollywood movie; it is a story of a country struggling with a massive and long-overdue change in the fabric of its society. John Carlin tells the story of South Africa during the transition period after Nelson Mandela was freed from prison and apartheid ended. Whether you are an expert in this era or a neophyte, Carlin's writing and summary of this time is nothing short of superb. He is able to tell the tale of how South Africa managed an almost incomprehensibly huge change in its society without warfare, which is an incredible feat. Carlin had worked in South Africa and as such had background knowledge of the country as well as access to the many prominent figures that he interviewed for the book, including Mandela himself. The role of rugby in this book is as the thread that ties together the characters from all walks of life who appear throughout the story. It doesn't much resemble the movie in that sense, which relied more heavily on showing the rugby team, games, etc., as the primary driver of the story. The book is far more powerful. Everyone, and I do mean everyone, should read this book. It is well-written, fast-paced, emotional, and tells a story that would have been unbelievable if it weren't true. As a side note, the poem "Invictus", for which the movie was titled, brilliantly captures the bravery of Mandela and all of South Africa shown in this book. "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." Excerpt from Invictus, by William Ernest Henley

First of all I am an American, so no genes give me empathy for rugby. I was drawn to the original book by Mr. Carlin due to the movie Invictus. What I got was a wonderful expanse of what has made South Africa the miracle of the 20th century. With an awful experiment of apartheid and dispicable Boers behavior comes the saintly Nelson Mandela after 27 years in prison for organizing direct conflict with the government. Somehow much of the information that was revealed in this book like the conditioning for his release and expressions of Mr. Mandela to his jailers and fellow Xhosa have escaped the general press. He was selected for his attitude, his forsight and his charity half way through his prison term to be a possible "leader" should one man-one vote become law. Indeed the course of his jailing, the murders carried out in the townships, and direct challenge to his tolerance reveal a man that should not have had to share the Nobel Peace Prizewith anybody. This book is a wonderful history, sometimes told in the first or third person, with the ingenious choice to use what the Boers held closer to them than religion, rugby; to make South Africa a strong nation with the chance that blacks, and townships, could have the time to develop after 40+ years being tortured. I am a great fan of rugby and am always amazed at how any professional rugby player could put a NFL player to shame for conditioning and fortitude. This choice of team captain Francoise Pinaar to carry the message, invoking the Boks' green and gold colors, games, and international competition was a great story, both of sports challenges (similar to the 1960 ice hockey US Olympic victory), and how it seemed to bring along black participation to root for a sport they truely hated before the 1995 World Cup. It is too bad that the Movie "Invictus" chose to only touch the rugby connection, because I think they missed the true greatness of this book: How Mandela behaved and thought. This is as good a read as I've had in a long time. Maybe Mr. Carlin can come up with a similar story when, and if, the All Blacks ever win a Rugby World Cup. Good work.

*Playing the Enemy* is a wonderful book - moving, touching, filled to brimming with inspiration. This is the story of Nelson Mandela's rise to the presidency of South Africa, and the power of love (and rugby) to unite a nation. I laughed. I cried. By the time I finished this book, my heart was filled with hope for our world. This book was proof, to me, that nothing - absolutely nothing - is impossible to Love. "Mandela’s weakness was his greatest strength. He succeeded because he chose to see good in people who ninety-nine people out of a hundred would have judged to have been beyond redemption...By appealing to and eliciting what was best in them, and in every single white South African watching the rugby game that day, he offered them the priceless gift of making them feel like better people, in some cases transforming them into heroes. "His secret weapon was that he assumed not only that he would like the people he met; he assumed also that they would like him. That vast self-confidence of his coupled with that frank confidence he had in others made for a combination that was as irresistible as it was disarming." - from *Playing the Enemy: Nelson Mandela and the Game That Made a Nation* - Karen Molenaar Terrell, author of *Blessings: Adventures of a Madcap Christian Scientist*

This was an immensely interesting book. I was coming of age when stories out of South Africa were in the news almost daily. I remember this being one of the first major news stories that I followed as a young adult (the power shift, that is) and I remember being quite mesmerized by it. I'm glad I was able to read an insider's take on the happenings, and wish I hadn't waited 20 years later to do so. Interestingly, this is not a play-by-play of the rugby games. Outside of the final game, little details of the action on the pitch is described, and honestly, even the final game is not entirely descriptive. This book explores more of the juxtaposition of sports and political turmoil. Similar to the 1980 US Olympic Hockey Team. If you are wanting a story about rugby, it's not going to be your first choice. However, it's an extremely interesting perspective when discussing Apartheid and interesting to see how it was used as a political tool to unify a country that was completely divided. I'd highly recommend this book. It was a great way to explore the political shift in South Africa in the mid-90's without having to read a book that is written like a news article. The only thing I felt the book was lacking was a bit more background in some of the players on the team.

As I grew up in Britain I well remember the anti-apartheid demonstrations which routinely disrupted games against the Springboks in the 1960s, and how the game of Rugby was made to suffer at the hands of politics. There is thus a perfect and beautiful irony in the fact that President Mandela used that same game to unite the nation of South Africa in the Rugby World Cup 1995. Rugby had the last laugh and triumphed over politics, you might say. Interestingly in May 2010 just before it begins people are again asking whether the soccer World Cup will be able to unite the same nation in much the same way. Anyway, this is a truly inspirational and of course true story told in a masterful way and in great detail of the power of sport (and one sport in particular) to bring people together and allow them to overcome their racial, religious, political and other differences. And all credit to Nelson Mandela for learning Afrikaans while in prison on Robben island and thus crossing the barrier between the races which lesser men could never have surmounted. Ian Ruxton, translator of 'ULTIMATE CRUSH: Waseda University Rugby, Leadership and Building the Strongest Winning Team in Japan'