Invictus

Joost van der Westhuizen came to Buenos Aires to promote the film Invictus. The thing is he is part of the story described in the film directed by Clint Eastwood: the final game in which the Springboks - the South African national team - beat the fearful New Zealander All Blacks team led by Jonah Lomu in the 1995 World Cup. This was a victory Mandela - who spent 27 years in jails - used as a bridge between blacks and whites.

The secret story behind the film Invictus told by one of its protagonists: a World Cup and a victory that acted as a go-between for blacks and whites. Joost van der Westhuizen was one of the Springboks that won the 1995 Rugby World Cup in South Africa. The film by Clint Eastwood shows how the Nobel Peace Prize, with the help of Captain Francois Pienaar, managed to lead the black community into cheering for those who until then had stood for apartheid.

He watched the movie a second time in Buenos Aires and got emotional again. Next month he turns 39 years old; Mandela will call him, as he usually does every February.

Joost van der Westhuizen has a transparent look. He's tall. He's not huge: at first sight, his body, the body of a rugby player, does not seem to reach two metres. And it wasn't his height per se, but his height in relation with space that shocked him when he visited Robben Island, the old South African prison washed by the Atlantic Ocean, only 12 km off the coast of Cape Town. Joost van der Westhuizen stayed in the 46664 cell for only ten minutes. Enough time to lie down on the floor, using slow and careful movements, and see his feet and head touch against the grey walls.

"And Nelson Mandela is as tall as I am. Just the idea that he stayed in such small place during 18 years is really shocking. Even more so because of the fact that when he was able to come out he forgave the people that put him in there -and that's a lot to do," says Van der Westhuizen.

The film is based on the book The Human Factor, a remarkable book by the English journalist John Carlin about how the Nobel Peace Prize, once President, gave shape to that unity using sport. The subtitle of the book is very eloquent: "Nelson Mandela and the game that made a nation."

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