Playing the Enemy: Nelson Mandela and the Game That Made a Nation [Paperback]

John Carlin (Author)

Book Description

Release date: July 28, 2009

Beginning in a jail cell and ending in a rugby tournament- the true story of how the most inspiring charm offensive in history brought South Africa together

After being released from prison and winning South Africa's first free election, Nelson Mandela presided over a country still deeply divided by fifty years of apartheid. His plan was ambitious if not far-fetched: use the national rugby team, the Springboks-long an embodiment of white-supremacist rule-to embody and engage a new South Africa as they prepared to host the 1995 World Cup. The string of wins that followed not only defied the odds, but capped Mandela's miraculous effort to bring South Africans together again in a hard-won, enduring bond.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Carlin offers the final dramatic chapters of how then president Nelson Mandela and his wily strategy of using a sporting event—the Sprinkboks rugby team in the 1995 World Cup—to mend South Africa. Carlin, a senior international writer for El País, quotes Mandela: Sports has the power to change the world.... It is more powerful than government in breaking down racial barriers. After giving an informed capsule history of apartheid's bitter legacy and Mandela's noble stature as a leader, the scene is set for the influential rugby match between the solid New Zealand team and the scrappy South African squad in the finals of the World Cup, with 43 million blacks and whites awaiting the outcome. All of the cast in Afrikaner lore are here—Botha, DeKlerk, Bernard, Viljeon—as they match wits with Mandela. Carlin concludes this excellent book of redemption and forgiveness with chapters that depict how a divided country can be elevated beyond hate and malice to pride and healing. (Aug.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Booklist

*Starred Review* Nelson Mandela spent 27 years in a South African prison because of his position as the military leader of the African National Congress, the leading anti-apartheid organization. Amazingly, while inside, he actually increased his influence as a resistance leader. In 1994, after his release, he was elected South Africa’s president in the country’s first free election. Realizing that his new government was on tenuous ground and could disintegrate at any moment, he sought a symbolic moment that would unite the black citizenry with white Afrikaners and hit upon the idea of South Africa hosting rugby’s first World Cup. The first step was to convince South Africa’s national team—the Springboks—to get aboard. Mandela’s charm, determination, and patriotism won them over to the point that the team wound up singing the national anthem of the black resistance movement in a much-replayed television spot. Improbably, Springbok—once the sporting symbol of Afrikaner dominance and arrogance—advanced to the cup finals, gathering more fans, black and white, with each win. Carlin, former U.S. bureau chief for the Independent, was assigned to South Africa during the transition from white to majority rule. He personally interviewed most of the principals involved in this fascinating story and undertook the project with Mandela’s blessing. A new slant on the familiar but always inspiring saga of Mandela’s rise to power. --Wes Lukowsky --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 288 pages
• Publisher: Penguin Books; Reprint edition (July 28, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0143115723
• ISBN-13: 978-0143115724
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.3 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.1 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (63 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #157,566 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #9 in Books > Biographies & Memoirs > People, A-Z > ( M ) > Mandela, Nelson
  • #10 in Books > Sports & Outdoors > Other Team Sports > Rugby
  • #39 in Books > History > Africa > South Africa

More About the Author

John Carlin is senior international writer for El País, the world's leading Spanish language newspaper, and was previously the U.S. bureau chief for The Independent on Sunday. His writing has appeared in The New York Times, The New Republic, Wired, Spin, and Condé Nast Traveler.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

80 of 85 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A book about rugby? Don't be fooled. This is so much more... September 3, 2008

By Jesse Kornbluth TOP 500 REVIEWER

Format:Hardcover

If you read nothing else this year, get your hands on "Playing the Enemy" and read pages 201 to 253.

It won't take long.

By the time Nelson Mandela walks into that stadium, your heart will be pounding. By the time he walks into the Springboks locker, you'll be in tears. And you'll cry pretty much straight through to the end.

All because, on June 24, 1995, the South African Rugby team beat New Zealand to win the Rugby World Cup.

If you're like most Americans, you know that Nelson Mandela spent 27 years in prison --- 18 of them in a tiny cell on Robben Island --- and emerged without hatred to spearhead a peaceful transfer of power in South Africa. But you probably know nothing about the 1995 Rugby World Cup match. John Carlin's brilliant book corrects that, and, along the way, presents a concise biography of a remarkable man.

In these pages, Nelson Mandela is a brilliant politician with a genius for disarming his enemies. To Mandela, everyone is human, everyone can be reached. The only question is how. In prison, he would introduce his lawyer to his "guard of honor" --- and his jailers would find themselves shaking hands with an attorney they loathed. And he used his dead time in prison to teach himself Afrikaans, read the Afrikaans newspapers and familiarize himself with Afrikaner history.

Rugby is the favorite sport of Afrikaners, the dominant white tribe in South Africa --- "apartheid's master race." All but one of the 15 players on the Springbok team were white. In a stadium that held 62,000, 95% of the crowd would be white. No wonder that blacks saw the Boks as a symbol of oppression.

"Don't address their brains," Mandela believed. "Address their hearts." One direct way to do that was through sports. People love their teams; the connection is purely emotional. If the Springboks could come to engage both blacks and whites, that might end the sense among blacks that sports in South Africa was "apartheid in tracksuits" --- and might make whites more accepting of blacks as equals.

Mandela did not just lay out a goal. He met and charmed the white lords of rugby, then lobbied for the World Cup to be played in South Africa. He invited François Pienaar, the Springboks captain, to visit him and encouraged him to see his sport as "nation building". Soon the team was learning how to sing "Nkosi Sikele", the black national anthem. And, because a storybook fantasy was becoming reality, the Springboks advanced steadily to the World Cup finals.

The pages that are your homework begin on the morning of the championship game. One of Mandela's bodyguards got an idea: Mandela should enter the stadium wearing a green-and-gold Springbok jersey. Mandela improved on the idea --- his jersey, he said, should have Pienaar's number on it.

Across town, the players had been staying at a hotel. To calm their nerves, they went out for an early morning jog. As they left, Pienaar recalled, "Four little black kids selling newspapers recognized us and chased after us and started calling out our names --- they knew almost everyone on that team --- and the hairs on my neck stood on end... It was the moment when I saw, more clearly than ever before, that this was far bigger than anything we could ever have imagined."

Five minutes before kickoff, Nelson Mandela walked onto the field to greet the players. To the Springbok jersey, he had added a Springbok hat. "When they caught sight of him," Carlin writes, "the crowd seemed to go dead still." And then the chant --- from the almost all-white crowd --- began: "Nel-son! Nel-son! Nel-son!"

I'm going to leave it there, so as not to spoil the magic of the next pages for you. Just know that what happened in that stadium that afternoon was a crazy quilt of glory: atonement, forgiveness, liberation and celebration. It's the kind of event that happens when people who have known only hatred and fear drop the burden of history and move past their differences. Winning a game? That day South Africa climbed a mountain.

It is a measure of the quality of this story that Morgan Freeman is producing a film based on the book --- and playing Nelson Mandela. Matt Damon will be Pienaar, the South African rugby captain. And Clint Eastwood is slated to direct.

I guarantee you: Audiences will cheer. And weep. And these will be tears of joy, because --- for once --- a national leader had perfect pitch, and all of his countrymen knew it, and they all got it right.

In other countries, even in our own, skeptics doubt that this kind of brotherhood can be engineered. It can be. It was.

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Simply stated-"A Must Read!!!" January 8, 2010

By L. Lawlor

Format:Paperback

A powerfully moving account of the impact of perhaps one of the most incredibly haumane and politically gifted individuals of all time, Nelson Mandella. (In reading this one cannot help but think of Ghandi.) The story of the transformation of South Africa, as put forth by this gifted author, John Carlin, is mesmerizing. Hard to put down. We are introduced to an array of individuals, on both sides of the predgeudicial conflict. The descriptions of the personalities involved are vivid and individualized in a most comprehensive manner. You develop a true feel for the ingrained vitriol of each. To witness the transcendant changes that these people went through is at once exceptionally emotional, and at the same time heart rendering. Well written. You are there involved in the excitement of the moment. The significance of a single sporting event, the world cup rugby competition in 1995, held in South Africa, and its impact on bringing the two cultures together, is absolutely fascinating. A most enjoyable adventure to read this book. Of course I am definitely looking forward to seeing the movie, but doubt that it could be as good as this book. Hope a lot of people read it.

14 of 15 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Inspirational and a Reminder How Great Leaders can Change the World December 4, 2009

By John G. Jazwiec

Format:Hardcover

I read this book over a year ago. I was pleasantly surprised to see it made into a movie. The book was well rated by the NY Times but it was hardly a best seller. I spent my time reading this book, marveling at Mandela from lawyer, to a prisoner who charmed his captors, negotiated with the government in secret, always without malice and never lost his dignity through it all. That was inspiring, but more so was how he brought together his country using the a World Cup Rugby Match. You are not human if you dont find yourself crying at what he accomplished. Mandela never had a lust for power, he ran the country and then retired. He never used his incarcertion to get back against people. Having Morgan Freeman playing him (the voice of God) is a particularly strong metaphor and remind us that leaders like Mandela come once in a generation.