Before Christmas Liz and I went to see the movie Invictus, starring Matt Damon and Morgan Freeman. It’s a story that is so good that it is hard to believe that it actually happened–in post-Aparteid South Africa. When Nelson Mandela was released after 27 years in Prison, he was the first President elected in the post-Aparteid country. It was not an easy job he stepped into. But he was a different type of leader. He invited his jailers to sit in the front row at his innauguration and he became a fan of the Springboks–the South African National Rugby team–a team most Blacks would root against when other countries came to town. Rugby was a white man’s game and it represented the suppressive, dominating colonialism of Aparteid. But Mandela saw Rugby as the way to unite the divided country–especially since South Africa would soon be hosting the 1994 Rugby World Cup. South Africa had been the object of a years-long boycott and so they were pretty rusty against international competition. It was a tough up-hill climb but working with the team captain–played pretty convincingly by Damon, the team criss-crossed the townships, giving clinics to young black children, they learned and boldly sang the new national anthem (in Swahili), trained incredibly hard and beat Australia, Somoa, and New Zealand to win the World Cup. Blacks and whites cheered together and hugged each other as the country celebrated an incredible victory.
A couple of take-aways: Leaders are elected to be courageous and help their electorate be more than they think they can be. This was also Mandela’s advice to Francois Pienaar, the Springbok’s captain regarding how to lead and inspire his team. Second, transformation can be lead from any domain. More posts to follow.
