(CNN) — Francois Pienaar is the fresh “larger blond young buck out of apartheid,” a white Southern area African just who grew up fantasizing from glory toward the brand new football profession.
The guy turned into a star while the master regarding Southern area Africa’s federal rugby cluster — a hobby disliked by many people black colored South Africans due to the fact online game of its oppressors.
But on the June several, 1994, Nelson Mandela summoned Pienaar so you’re able to their work environment to ask your so you’re able to gamble a remarkable part.
Nevertheless the more youthful Mandela are such good “more youthful, brash Muhammad Ali” within his childhood exactly who crazy, and you will spooked white South Africans, Carlin writes inside the publication
While the Mandela offered Pienaar java with dairy, the guy offered new celebrity football athlete snippets from their audacious package. One package would electrify Southern area Africa, continue Pienaar to help you their physical and psychological limitations, and you will concrete Mandela’s character since the a beneficial transcendent commander.
“We leftover you to definitely earliest interviewing an impression that people was basically into the an excellent give inside South Africa,” Pienaar told you. “We believed safer that have him.”
What happened immediately after Pienaar’s meeting with Mandela is actually very magical one it seemed to unfold such as for example a film. Now, 15 years after, it is. “Invictus,” a beneficial Clint Eastwood-directed motion picture into the Mandela, opens nationwide which Saturday.
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