How Nelson Mandela won the 1995 Rugby world Cup

I just got back to my hotel after running a solid 10km around the Charles River in Boston. It was a beautiful day here and I really figured my inspirational highlight today would be my run. I was contemplating going to enjoy dinner on a nearby patio or just getting some room service and unbeknownst to me watch the ESPY Awards (ESPN Sports Awards). I always find it interesting how very small decisions made can take you down completely different paths. This post would have been on a completely different topic, that will come later this week. Lucky for you (and me) I decided to stay in.

At this year’s awards, through narration by Morgan freeman, a special video by Barack Obama and live presentation by the Tennis Williams Sisters, Nelson Mandela was awarded the Arthur Ash Award for courage. It was accepted by his son and daughter.

It told the story of how Nelson Mandela brought his country together in the violent times of Apartheid and specifically how he focused on unifying blacks and whites together through sport, in this case the 1995 Rugby world cup. He skillfully brought the world cup to South Africa in that year and in the run up asked his fellow black followers to support the hated white National Rugby Team (Spring Bok) as they vied for a world title, while using the Spring Bok as a catalyst to unite a nation.

“So, barely a month after he had taken office, he invited François Pienaar, the Springbok captain, for tea at his office in Pretoria. He wooed him instantly (”I felt like a wide-eyed kid listening to an old man telling stories,” Pienaar told me) and, without the big blond son of apartheid quite knowing it yet, recruited him to the new South Africa cause.
Mandela’s challenges did not only lie on the white side of the apartheid fence. He had to do some tough political persuasion among his own black supporters too.

They had been brought up to detest rugby. Next to the old anthem and the old flag, there existed no more repellent symbol of apartheid than the green Springbok shirt. That was why the blacks-only pens at rugby stadiums were always full on international match days, cheering the Springboks’ opponents.

But Mandela set himself the mission of converting black South Africans to the perplexing notion that “the Boks belonged to all of us now”, as he put it to me.”

To read the rest of this great story click below:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/features/3634426/How-Nelson-Mandela-won-the-rugby-World-Cup.html