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South Africans are enjoying a second straight World Cup victory, spawning a racial unity that even Hollywood could invent and an escape from the country’s unrest.
By John Eligon
Report from Johannesburg
The application corridor thundered with the euphoria of a country where it seemed, for the moment, to have left its differences behind.
Celebrants spoke Zulu, Sotho, Tswana, Afrikaans and English. They were black and white, young and old, mining company executives and restaurant waitresses.
They sang and danced in combination with songs played over loudspeakers. They waved South African flags. They wore the same green and gold kit as their rugby heroes when they gathered at Johannesburg’s Oliver Reginald Tambo Airport on Tuesday to welcome the team’s home after the French championship match. A bronze statue of Tambo, with his hand raised, stood in jubilation, as if giving his blessing to a scene made imaginable through the paintings he painted to overthrow apartheid.
Last week, South Africa became the winningest country in the brief history of the Rugby World Cup, winning their second consecutive crown and fourth overall. Since then, this country of 60 million people has gone mad.
The festivities will reach a raucous level over the next four days as the team embarks on a cross-country tour, starting with parades in Pretoria, the executive capital, and Johannesburg on Thursday.
“Unity” is how Maureen Mampuru, 43, black, described the effect of the victory on the country; a description shared by Martin Peens, 60 years old and white; Jacqui Vermaak, 56, white; Happy Mthethwa, 40 years old and black; Michelle Volny, 43, white; and Gloria Leshilo, 34 years old and black.
The 2009 Hollywood blockbuster “Invictus” tells the story of South Africa’s first Rugby World Cup victory in 1995, just a year after democracy, and how it unified a racially divided nation. At the time, I attributed all the globular racial concord that the film Portrayed to Hollywood romanticism. I think a victory in rugby may never have had a real effect on the racial divide in a country that has just emerged from decades of legalised racism.
But I’ve been living in South Africa for two years and I felt the thrill of watching the Springboks, as the team is called, win a world championship while cheering on the country’s rugby-obsessed population.
The concord produced by the good luck of the World Cup, I can say, is an exaggeration.
When the final whistle blew last Saturday and South Africa claimed a tense 12-11 victory over New Zealand, celebrations erupted across the spectrum of modern South Africa: from bars in the grimy townships of Soweto to the open-air plaza of a posh grocery shopping center. in Pretoria to the bar where I saw the setting in an affluent northern suburb of Johannesburg.
There, black and white supporters tasted victory together. Some hugged others. Others shouted a Zulu folk chant sung at sporting events: “You’ve never seen one like him!” »
“I’m reliving 1995,” Francois Pienaar, captain of South Africa’s 1995 team, said in a telephone interview. For years, during the apartheid government, the national rugby team had been thought to support the country’s white minority. But 1995 was the first time black enthusiasts had gathered en masse around the team.
“It’s just rugby,” Mr Pienaar said. “It’s a nation. It’s a matter of hope. It’s a long-term construction for everyone in our country. “
At the airport on Tuesday, a white circle of family members held a sign that read “Siya for President,” a reference to Siya Kolisi, whose life reflects freedoms once inaccessible to black South Africans. He is the first black captain of the national rugby team. team, is married to other interracial people, and after the victory, posted a video on Instagram of him and several white teammates doing a popular Zulu song that necessarily says they are brothers.
This type of demonstration, specifically around race, was similar to the one in 1995, John Carlin, the author of “Playing the Enemy,” the e-book that animated the movie “Invictus,” said in an interview. This World Cup was necessarily the first time that black and white South Africans “were united in purpose and purpose,” he said, adding that “it was incredible to see. ”
But there are differences between 1995 and today.
At the time, many South Africans were filled with hope that, under a new democracy and a new president, Nelson Mandela, they could achieve no unusual success.
“Winning the cup in 1995 showed that we can work together if we only pay attention to each other,” said Mampuru, who works as an administrator for a political party. “If we respect each other, we can do so much more together. “as one. “
But today, the population has had time to absorb the many errors of the democratic promise of the last few decades. Corruption, lack of leadership and disparities that have been deeply entrenched since apartheid have left the country grappling with crises. Electricity is unreliable. Unemployment and crime rates are high. Race continues to determine where many other people live and their reports at school.
The country’s turmoil is so great that, for many, this Springbok victory looks like a well-deserved escape and has encouraged celebrations far more intense than ever.
After watching the game at the bar, I rolled down my car windows and drove slowly down a busy street to get home late at night. Fans piled up on both sides, brandishing their phones to capture the moment. All warnings about car or cell phone thefts had been forgotten. Everything seemed comfortable.
“We hope this doesn’t end up in a little party for a week,” Kolisi, the team’s captain, said after landing in South Africa. “He wants more done. “
The ruling African National Congress, a once-lauded liberation movement that bears much of the blame for South Africa’s ongoing struggles, has wasted no time in making its victory a political merit ahead of next year’s national elections.
Following the victory, the African National Congress issued a message congratulating the team and applauding “the pioneering leadership of President Cyril Ramaphosa. “Fikile Mbalula, one of the most productive members of the African National Congress, wrote on Twitter that Mr Ramaphosa was the only “two-time Rugby World Cup champion president”. Ramaphosa delivered a nationally televised prime-time speech on Monday in which he congratulated the Springboks before listing his government’s achievements and then pointing to Dec. 15 as a public holiday.
However, no amount of enthusiasm or commentary can mask the bloodless truth of South Africa’s challenges.
After the final, power outages meant to relieve the overburdened power grid returned for the first time in 10 days and have occurred every day since. Four days after the game, the country’s finance minister presented a grim budget report that foreshadowed serious spending cuts.
When I asked a security guard in my community if he had seen the game, he gave me an exasperated smile. Her community, located in a predominantly black township, had been without power for two weeks, so she could only pay attention to her phone, but ignored it. South Africa is number one globally in a domain and is pleased with that.
John Eligon is the Johannesburg office leader responsible for Southern Africa. In the past, he worked as a journalist in the National, Sports and Metro offices. His paintings took him from the streets of Minneapolis after the death of George Floyd to South Africa for the death of Nelson Mandela. funeral. Learn more about John Eligon
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