Thread: Invictus

I've just seen the movie Invictus, directed by Clint Eastwood and with Morgan Freeman as Nelson Mandela, Matt Damon as Francois Pienaar and Tony Kgoroge as Mandela's head of security Jason Tshabala amongst others.

Go see it if you can. It's a must-see movie. It is inspiring and beautifully made. Invictus is the story of how Nelson Mandela used his creative and political genius and charisma to rally the whole of South Africa behind the Springboks - or "Bokke" - and drive them towards victory over the All Blacks and the 1996 Rubgy World Cup.

I remember watching that final, and Joel Stransky's final drop-goal during the dying seconds of the game, which seemed like hours before the final whistle went. And then the explosion of joy all over South Africa and even here in Namibia. It was a fairytale come true.

Post-apartheid South Africa had been welcomed back into the international sporting frame and the World Cup was their first chance to unite a nation and prove things had changed. The movie does simplify things a bit by painting this picture of Francoise Pienaar being a pawn in Mandela's scheme of things, whereas in reality both Pienaar and his co-player Morne du Plessis did a lot to foster feelings of the "rainbow nation" on their own accord. I suppose Mandela is such a towering figure on screen as in real life that anyone else would stand a bit in his shadow. Anyhow, even with the finer nuances missed by director Eastwood it is still a convincing tale.

At the heart of the film is a small poem, also called Invictus, by William Ernest Henley, which apparently kept Mandela going during the darkest hours on Robbben Island for all those years, and which was a source of inspiration for him. The poem goes:

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be,
For my unconquerable 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.

What is so inspirational about the movie, and about Mandela (at least to me) is that it is of course not possible to determine fate, or the outcome of an event in our lives. But what is possible is to control our response to circumstances, however bad they may be and in that way impose our will, put the stamp of our soul on it and determine the terms of how we face even the most trying of circumstances. That's what happened in 1995, and the movie, the poem and the movie's theme sone "9,000 days" tells this story in a moving and clear way.

Absolutely loved it. Now just imagine South Africa win the Football World Cup!!!!