How Madiba saved the Springbok

There are many stories told of how Nelson Mandela saved the Springbok emblem from extinction, but the best is the tale of a meeting with Mluleki George, currently in divorce proceedings with the ANC but then a firebrand sports administrator.

George wanted the Springbok shot and butchered, and came to the meeting with a well-prepared agenda and a practised argument. He stood up to speak but was waved down by Mandela.

"I want to say something first," said Mandela, and proceeded to give an impassioned speech in defence of the Bok. When he finished, he looked around the room and told his ANC comrades: "Right, the media are waiting outside; let us go and talk to them." George tried to object, no doubt waving his agenda like a drowning man asking for a lifebelt, but Mandela eased him out of the door to the journalists had gathered. "We have come to a unanimous decision," said Mandela. "Mluleki will now inform you of that decision." George had been impossibly snookered; he announced the Springbok would stay.

The story, told to me by a respected member of the old guard of the ANC, may have become exaggerated down the years, but it illustrates quite beautifully how astute a politician Mandela was and how adept he was at turning a situation to meet the greater good.

Mandela is now too fragile to become involved in the current battle for the Bok, which has come under attack once more at a sports indaba this week by Butana Komphela, the chair of the parliamentary sports committee and a politician with more mouth than meaning. That a sports indaba was being held in Durban came as a surprise to many, but it is not a surprise that Komphela has used it to orchestrate an attack on what he believes is one of the more obvious symbols of apartheid (however, the Union Buildings and Parliament itself, where those evil laws were formulated and passed, have not yet been torn down). The Springbok emblem is the easiest of targets, removing it would be a final act of revenge against white South Africans. It would also be an insult to the work done by Mandela in preserving it. It would lessen the memory of that wonderful day 13 years ago.

In Playing the Enemy: Nelson Mandela and The Game That Made a Nation, John Carlin's tale of Mandela and the 1995 Rugby World Cup final, The Independent's former Johannesburg Bureau chief, recounts how Mandela came to terms with his own loathing of the Springbok and then realised the power that emblem could have in pulling together his young and uncertain democracy.

"They had got hold of the old flag, they had half got rid of the old anthem and this, the third great symbol of apartheid, could not be allowed to remain the badge of a team that represented the new South Africa," wrote Carlin.

Mandela got wind that the ANC national executive were going to push to have the name changed and felt that at the time it would have fuelled the growing right-wing resentment in the country. Professor Johan Heyns, a former Dutch Reformed Church moderator, had declared in 1990 that apartheid was a sin. He was assassinated by a gunman at his house in Pretoria in 1994 and Mandela was horrified. Then a plot by a right-wing organisation against the new Government was uncovered, but Mandela learned from his intelligence services that other right-wingers saw the good in the new administration: "Others were saying: 'No, you can't (topple the government). Look at what they have done for rugby, look at the international rugby they have given us'," said Mandela. "I decided to act. I made a statement. I suggested we must retain the Springbok."

This did not sit well with many in the ANC and Makhenkesi Arnold Stofile, the now minister of sport, was one of those who disagreed most vehemently. Stofile had been instrumental in pushing for the international sports boycott, taking away the "opium that kept whites in happy ignorance".

"It was apartheid in tracksuits," said Stofile.

Mandela spoke to each of those who attacked him, but made a special effort with Stofile, asking him to stop by his house so they could "talk about this sports animal".

"In the end," said Stofile after being informed of the national importance of the Springbok, "we agreed to disagree."

The Bok had been saved, although Mandela had another fight on his hands. Now he had to convince black South Africans to embrace the Springboks, both the team and the emblem.

He started his campaign to do so at a June 16 rally in Ezakheni in KwaZulu-Natal, putting on the Springbok cap midway through his speech. Hennie le Roux had given him the cap at a Bok training session. "You see this cap I am wearing, it does honour to our boys who are playing France tomorrow afternoon," Mandela told them. They started booing him. "My own people, booing me," he told Carlin, but he won them over.

"Amongst you are leaders. Don't be short-sighted, don't be emotional. Nation-building means that we have to pay a price, in the same way that whites have to pay a price. For them to open their sports to black people, they are paying a price; for us to say we must now embrace the rugby team is paying a price. That's what we should do."

Mandela won the crowd over, and having saved the Springbok, the Springboks then saved him by winning in the rain in Durban and in the crisp air of Johannesburg on that magical day. It would not be an exaggeration to say that Mandela and the Springboks saved South Africa by winning the World Cup.

The Springbok emblem is the past, the present and the future of South Africa - the black and white, the good and the bad, the glorious and the infamous. Those wishing to destroy it, might want to read Carlin's book before doing so.

Playing the Enemy: Nelson Mandela and the Game that made a Nation is published by Atlantic