Political Football: A Review of Invictus

We are in the last week of our two-month South African adventure. This is the stage of a long trip when the desire to squeeze every last drop out of the experience is in active competition with the urge to just throw away all your filthy clothes, get on a plane and go home. Now.

And at this moment, your favorite Radical got a nasty stomach flu, and was unable to do anything at all.

Except go to the movies, where we saw Invictus. This is the new film directed by Clint Eastwood that stars Morgan Freeman as Nelson Mandela and Matt Damon as Francois Pienaar, the captain of the South African national rugby squad, the Springboks. It memorializes the year after the historic election in which Mandela took office backed by a resounding majority of South Africans, most of whom had voted for the first time in their lives. It is a self-consciously uplifting movie, in which swelling music cues the viewer to moments of high emotion, even if little in the script has given you anything to be emotional about.

If you have seen the movie you might say: what script? I'm not sure I would have had a clue what was going on if I hadn't been reading memoirs and histories of modern South Africa for the last few months. Scenes with any dialogue at all are few and far between, and since we already know that South Africa did not collapse into anarchy after 1994 and that the Springboks did win the World Cup in 1995, the only real suspense in the movie is whether Madiba is going to be assassinated by a rugby fan (which we also know didn't happen.) The cinematography is fantastic, and also self-indulgent, given how little story there is. The editor clearly went off to lunch and never came back, as the film is close to three hours long. If you like this sort of thing, there are many scenes of nice male behinds in little white shorts that hide a large, grunting mass. ("Why are they doing that?" my companion whispered. "It's a scrum," I said, divesting myself of one of the two things I know about rugby. "Yes, but why are they doing that?" she persisted.)

Needless to say, if you are not already in love with rugby, and have been waiting for your whole life to have someone make a movie about it, you may feel as lukewarm about this movie as I do. On the other hand, the movie is so long and repetitive that if you know nothing about rugby, I can guarantee that by the end of Invictus, even though you will have learned almost nothing about South Africa, you will have learned the rules of rugby. In fact, the entire last hour is consumed by the World Cup rugby tournament. Political lesson? The way to Afrikaaners' hearts was through their cleats; black South Africans, in turn, were gracious in victory and could, metaphorically, "learn how to play a new game." By winning the World Cup (which they could not have done without the spiritual leadership of Nelson Mandela), the Springboks ensured that the new South Africa would be a harmonious one.

Really! Racial reconciliation was all about rugby? You don't say? But it's true. At the beginning of the movie, whites and blacks are barely speaking to each other, except at the urging of Mandela; by the final goal of the final match, blacks and whites are hugging each other, and black Africans have utterly forgiven decades of brutal colonial domination. The Afrikaaner police state that murdered, tortured and dismembered thousands of people, often quite randomly, has melted into an invisible past. Afrikaaners, on the other hand, have also extended one big hug to the people they kept a boot on for decades: they have given up racism, painted their faces in ANC colors, taken the maid to the World Cup final and been relieved of their fears that the country will descend into political and economic chaos that will send them fleeing to Canada and Australia.

Do I have to say that I found the movie hugely disappointing? And it isn't just because the interpretive gloss of Invictus isn't true (at the same time, I happen to be reading Antjie Krog's amazing account of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, Country of My Skull in which the violence perpetrated on all sides, and the messy incompleteness of reconciliation, is described in moving detail.) It's because Eastwood, Freeman and Damon all have really good politics, and they have made a Hallmark Card of a movie that is designed to take South Africa off the map of the American mind as a place where American money should be targeting specific problems of health care, education, housing, and economic inequality that were engineered during the apartheid era with the full cooperation of the United States government and many powerful American corporations. Interestingly, in May 2008 the United States Supreme Court ruled that three law suits suing over 50 US corporations for their role in apartheid may be tried in US courts under the Alien Torts Act. And in December, 2009, slightly more than a week before the release of Invictus, the Center for Constitutional Rights filed a lawsuit against Ford, General Motors and IBM for their support of the apartheid regime.

From the beginning, the big debate about reconciliation in South Africa has been whether it can occur without compensation. It's not just that millions of people were deliberately immiserated under apartheid for over half a century, and resources redirected to lift the condition of Afrikaaners (who themselves believed that they had been unjustly held back and impoverished by the English.) It's that millions of people are still immiserated by the world apartheid made, and that Nelson Mandela could not unmake by becoming a rugby fan.

It is also true that the hatreds bred by apartheid and the violent resistance to apartheid could not breed a new world either. Mandela knew that, and the story about the Springboks is a small part of what he really did to effect a peaceful transition to black citizenship and an ANC government. But by telling a story about the power of sport to resolve political problems, Eastwood, Freeman and Damon have simply played into an old and tired American nationalistic myth about race that has nothing to do with South Africa, either in 1995 or now.

Happy New Year From Cape Town

For me, January 1 is not only the beginning of a new year, it is when I heave a sigh of relief that the holiday season is over.

Last night, after having drifted off to sleep around 10:15, I woke up as a party at a nearby apartment was chanting "Five! Four! Three! Two! One.....Happy New Year!" I threw on a shirt and stuck my head out the window. Fireworks went off over at the V & A Waterfront and individuals lit Roman candles in the street, sending colorful balls of flame sixty feet into the air. It was about 65 degrees, clear and breezy. I thought about going home soon; about my new South African friends and how I will stay connected to them; about my rowing buddies with whom I have celebrated the last two New Year's Days by racing in sub-freezing weather; and about the St. Anthony's Society back in Shoreline, that puts on an outstanding fireworks display outside my bedroom window every year.

Then I went back to bed.

One of the odd things about this trip has been experiencing three holidays -- Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year's -- in a South African mode. First of all, it is summer here, and these are all holidays which are either historically American (as in the case of Thanksgiving), or ones on which being cold and spending wads of money make them characteristically American. When it isn't cold, certainly for Christmas, it seems Not Fair. I recall the Christmas in my extreme youth when I received a sled on a day that was 50 degrees and raining; and an even warmer New Year's day when I was dashing around the West Village in a tux and a little red bow tie at 5 A.M. feeling like I had been transported to another planet.

Like many people (only some of whom will admit it) I don't categorically love the holiday season: some of my favorite Christmases have been spent eating Chinese food and going to the movies in a deserted New York city scape. I come from a small family, and although I remember the excitement and fun of many of our holidays with great fondness (including the one where a small black kitten launched himself five feet in the air to steal a turkey drumstick, galloping off to consume it under the Christmas tree as we all laughed helplessly) academic life is not conducive to holiday-making. Thanksgiving? A precious six days to catch up on work, and by Sunday night you would rather eat glass than teach the last three classes and give exams that no one wants to take. Christmas Eve? The day that follows grading season, when you are finally free to do all your shopping at consumer-choked malls. New Year's? Oh hell -- here comes the American Historical Association meeting, and I haven't even ordered my spring books yet, much less sent my paper to the comment and chair.

You know what I mean? However, this year it has occurred to me that if I only put more thought into it, I could turn this sucker around. This year, my holidays looked like this:

Thanksgiving: a day like any other day, celebrated in a beach community outside Cape Town. No one but us knew it was Thanksgiving. I happily reviewed all the Face Book status updates from my Native American friends who, for obvious reasons, aren't fooled by the happy Pilgrim and Indian feast thing, checked "Like" on all of them, and made myself a big sandwich for dinner. The two of us watched the sun set as sea kayakers in sleek vessels raced madly around the bay; we then turned on the BBC to watch Barack Obama pardon the turkey. It occurred to me that he should have eaten the turkey and pardoned Leonard Peltier instead. That's what Nelson Mandela would have done.

Reconciliation Day: this is a South African national holiday analogous to Thanksgiving, but one which graphically demonstrates the difference between South African nationalism and the odd melting pot nationalism that we are used to in the United States. Originally called Dingaan's Day, December 16 commemorated the victory of the Voortrekkers over the Zulu Nation in 1837 at what became known as "Blood River." It was the moral equivalent of celebrating the Battle of Wounded Knee as a national holiday, but the reason it is also the equivalent of Thanksgiving is that on the eve of the battle, the outnumbered (but heavily armed) Afrikaaners swore an oath to G-d that in exchange for granting them victory, they would build a church on the spot and always celebrate a day of thanksgiving. In the view of their descendants, G-d came through (so, in a more American vernacular, did Smith & Wesson.) Hence, in 1910, December 16 became known as the Day of the Vow (later Day of the Covenant), when Afrikaaner nationalists rallied the faithful -- not against those people who are indigenous to Africa, who they already considered to be permanently defeated -- but against their English oppressors.

I know it's confusing, but it's a complex country.

On December 16 1961, Nelson Mandela, Joe Slovo and others founded Umkhonto weSizwe, or Spear of the Nation, the armed wing of the ANC. Subsequently, December 16 was often a day of tension and violence. While Afrikaaners dressed in kapies and rode around in ox wagons, the Afrikaaner state celebrated its hold over the majority by police beatings of random black people and tear gassing demonstrators when necessary; Africans and their allies contested apartheid by demonstrations and selected acts of terrorism planned for that day. Hence, once apartheid crumbled in 1994, the day was re-named the Day of Reconciliation, in an act deliberately aimed at quelling competitive nationalisms. Shutting the door on a bad past and moving on is something we would never do in the United States. For example, our fear of offending Italian voters and putting a dent in Hallmark Cards' revenues prevents us from acknowledging publicly that Columbus was the first European to launch the program of slavery and decimation that was eventually extended from Hispaniola to the rest of the hemisphere.

If we were South African, we would re-name it Italian American Appreciation Day, or Encounter Day, and be done with it.

In any case, I spent Reconciliation Day at my work site, and listened to 150 black Africans from many walks of life sing "Nkosi Sikelel' iAfrika"with their fists over their hearts. It was very, very moving.

Christmas: Associated primarily with the beginning of summer and the school holiday, as far as I can tell. The South Africans where I was -- in Johannesburg and the Garden Route -- do not indulge in the mania for decoration that we Americans do. Gift giving did not seem to be a big deal either. I managed to purchase six pre-baked miniature minced pies from Woolworth's (an upscale food store here, known as "Woollies" by all and sundry.) Prior to a spaghetti dinner prepared on a hot plate by yours truly, we went down to our local beach, where hundreds of African families were holding braiis (cookouts) on the beach. Drinking was heavy, but genial, and you could spot the occasional beach reveler in bathing trunks and a Santa hat.

I will be processing my experiences on this trip for some time to come, I am sure. But one of the things these very toned-down holidays made me think about is that South Africans don't appear to associate celebration with conspicuous consumption. A holiday is pretty much a day without work, maybe an extra church service, and that's it. Perhaps there were trees, presents and lavish dinners behind the high walls and electrified fences that middle and upper class people invest in here, but if so, you didn't see these things in public. South Africa, for all the excesses that are attributed to those at the very top, is also drastically poorer than the United States, and people often deliberately refrain from displaying nice things in public lest they become a target of violent envy. I carelessly mentioned to a friend some weeks ago, struggling to articulate the difference between how each country presents its economic public face, that even kids who are poor have iPods in the US. "Then," she inquired sincerely, "What makes them poor?" I began by saying that I live in a society where there is no felt obligation on the part of the state to feed or house anyone, or guarantee them an education or a living wage (which is why people are poor), but found that I couldn't explain why US parents will then scrimp and save to give a child the perfect sneakers, a prom dress or a cell phone contract.

Oh well: it's only the first day of 2010. Happy Radical New Year, dear readers!